home / glossary
The riso glossary
Sixty terms you will hear at the counter, defined the way we define them in person. Print designers arriving from CMYK land: start at the top, and welcome. Your gradients are safe at home.
Drum
The rotating cylinder of mesh that holds one ink color. Each color in your design needs its own drum. Machines hold one to five drums at a time.
Master
The wax-covered paper stencil the machine burns your art onto, then wraps around the drum. One master per color per run. Burns cost money, which is why we check files first.
Spot color
A single pre-mixed ink, printed as one solid pass. Riso is a spot-color process: the shelf has eleven inks and none of them mix in the drum.
Overprint
What happens where two ink passes overlap. Pink over blue makes violet nobody bought. Overprint is a design tool here, not a bug.
Misregistration
The drift between two color passes. Riso registration is mechanical and imperfect by nature. We design for it, and customers keep choosing the crooked proofs.
Halftone
A photo converted to dots so a single ink can render it. Dot size carries the tone. Photos on riso look like newsprint's stylish cousin.
Bitmap
Pure black-and-white image data at 600 dpi, the ideal input for a master. Textures and photos both become bitmaps before they become prints.
Feed margin
The edges the machine's grippers hold. Ink too close to the paper edge gets clipped. Design with margins or plan a trim.
Side lay
The lateral paper guide that decides where the image lands left-to-right. The crank we nudge between passes, by feel, like a submarine periscope.
Stock
Printer's word for paper. Specified by weight (#) and finish. We stock twelve, from 30# newsprint to 22pt chipboard.
Text weight
Lighter paper for interior pages, roughly 80# here. The 'pages' of a zine.
Cover weight
Heavier paper for covers and posters, 100# to 110# here. Stands up, survives mail, feels like a keepsake.
GSM
Grams per square meter, the metric paper weight. 118 gsm is about 80# text. We list both because the world is inconsistent.
Soak-in drying
Riso ink dries by absorbing into uncoated paper, not by evaporating or curing. It needs an hour of rest between passes and overnight before handling.
Set-off
Ink transferring from a fresh print to the sheet stacked on it. Prevented by rest and patience, both famously free.
Banding
Stacking prints into counted groups with a paper band. Part of every job. We band in 25s and 50s by house habit.
Saddle stitch
Stapling through the fold. The standard zine binding, fast and honest.
Coptic binding
An exposed-spine chain stitch that opens completely flat. Slow, beautiful, taught by Dev from a 1930s manual.
Long stitch
A exposed-thread binding where the sewing shows on the spine. Dramatic and sturdy.
Washi
A family of Japanese papers, often long-fibered. Gorgeous, temperamental, sometimes refuses to feed. We test before you commit.
Duplexer
A machine that prints both sides in one pass. Riso mostly is not one. We flip stacks by hand, which is the workout part of the job.
CMYK
The four-color process used by offset and inkjet. Riso does not use it; bringing CMYK files just means we separate them for you.
Duotone
A photo rendered in exactly two inks. The riso signature look, and the subject of our best-attended workshop.
Grain direction
The direction paper fibers run. Fold with the grain or the spine cracks. The first thing Dev teaches and the last thing anyone remembers.
Creep
When inner pages of a saddle-stitched booklet push outward and get trimmed short. Compensated by shuffling page positions during imposition.
Imposition
Arranging pages on the sheet so they land in order after folding. We do it for you. It is the least glamorous and most important step.
Bleed
Extra art extending past the trim line, 0.125 inches here, so cuts never leave white slivers.
Trim size
The final dimensions after cutting. Standard zines run 8.5 x 11 folded to 5.5 x 8.5.
Light table
The backlit glass table where we check separations and registration. Also where all negotiations over file fixes happen, over coffee.
Proof
A single test print of your run. We pull them free, you approve them, then the drum runs. Approving the proof means approving the drift.
Edition
The total number of copies printed of an artwork, after which the drum is officially retired for that job. Numbering is available.
Waste
The sheets consumed by setup and jams, always a few percent. We recycle all of it into the sketch paper pile by the counter.
Drum swap
Swapping an ink drum between runs. Ten minutes, two hands, one prayer. Scheduled between jobs, never during.
Jam
What happens when paper disagrees with the feed path. Three jams and the run stops, house rule, saves the master.
Open studio
Thursday nights till 9: the doors open, the drums run, anyone can print. The engine of the studio and the best two hours of our week.
Skew
When the image prints at a slight angle across the sheet. Caused by paper curl or an unaligned feed table. Sometimes a defect, sometimes the whole point.
Ghosting
A faint second image from ink transferring through the drum's excess. Rare on good machines, legendary on old ones.
Ink drum life
Drums are rated by copies: roughly 10,000 for a pigment, less for a metallic. The counter tracks drum mileage like a taxi meter.
Pressure
The drum-to-paper squeeze. Too light and the ink skips; too heavy and the paper embosses. Set once per stock, checked by feel.
Scoring
Creasing paper before folding so the fold is clean. Any fold over 80# text needs it, and skipping it is how covers crack.
Grain long / short
Grain parallel to the long edge (long) folds better for books. Short grain folds better for maps. You will get this wrong once.
Hickey
A print defect: a small ring where dust or paper fiber blocked the ink. Named cheerfully by an industry with a sense of humor.
Chatter
Horizontal bands from feed inconsistency. The machine's version of a stutter, usually a sign the feed table needs attention.
Blockout
Painting an area of the master with blocker fluid to fix a mistake. Old-school, still done, still satisfying.
Registration marks
Small crosses printed in each ink to check alignment against each other. Put them in your file; we will thank you and trim them off.
Buttering
Coating a drum with a light, even film of ink before a run so the first impressions match the last. Named for the sound the roller makes when it is done right.
Chatter
Regular horizontal banding from feed inconsistency or a tired pressure roller. Shows up in flat tints, hides in busy art, which is why busy art prints first.
Clip registration
Holding masters in alignment with side clips instead of pins. Faster, slightly less exact, beloved for zines.
Color key
Low-tack proofing film laid over a sheet to preview ink layers before a full run. Also the name for the stack of films themselves.
Density curve
The practical map from how dark a gray looks on screen to how it dots on paper. Every studio keeps their own, usually taped next to the machine.
Drum out
Running a drum until it is nearly empty before cleaning. Wasting under a gram of ink per cleanup is this studio's quiet point of pride.
Feathered edge
Ink creeping past the vector edge along paper fibers. Worse on absorbent stocks. Sometimes a flaw, often the charm.
Fifth unit
On our five-drum machine, the drum we rent to guest artists. Whale's fifth unit has printed more variety than any other drum in the state.
Ghost impression
A faint repeat of the previous print from drum memory at high speed. Fixed by slowing down, which fixes most things.
Halftone ladder
A test strip of tints from 5% to 95% printed on each paper stock, kept on file and consulted forever.
Ink split
Separating one tonal artwork across two drums so midtones become overprints. The cheapest way to make a print look expensive.
Job ticket
The one-page summary that travels with every job: specs, inks, paper, quirks. We keep 852 of them and will show you one.
Master waste
Sheets lost while a new master stabilizes, usually the first five to ten of a run. Priced into every quote up front.
Moire alert
The check we run whenever two halftones share a page: ten degrees apart minimum, or the shimmer is a deliberate choice.
Night shift rate
The after-midnight surcharge for jobs that must run while the studio sleeps. Unpaid for a full year. We keep it anyway.
Vocabulary acquired?
Bring the files. We speak fluent bitmap and will translate your design into two inks for free at the consult.