In my final year at the University of Michigan with a world of resources at my fingertips through the STAMPS School of Art and Design, I felt it was time I deserved to do a project completely for the joy of creating on my own. For a class my sophomore year I had the privelage of using a Risograph to print out a design for a class and I never forgot about the magical machine since that project. What is a risograph you ask?

 

 Risograph is a brand of digital duplicators manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation, that are designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing. It was released in Japan in 1980.

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 With risograph printing, you can do up to two colors per print. Each design has to be created as two separate files, one with one color, and one with the second color- as you pass the paper through the printer, it layers the second color on top with varying opacities using color from the second color drum. This untraditional process of designing your print is what makes the risograph an interesting challenge, with the actual prints always coming out "perfectly imperfect." You can try as you might to digitally predict what the prints will look like with the two layered colors, but you won't know until the machine has manually printed the designs out. Risographs are like mass screen printers ideal for comic and small poster making where the minimum printing number is 25 because of how it burns a stencil for your each individual color design.

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As I usually work in themes, I wanted to come up with something that utilized both words and visuals to make a series of posters.I came up with visually illustrating common idioms in the english language, carefully chosing idioms that could be paired with an expressive illustration. My vision for these posters context-wise was maybe hanging them up as a series in a children's bedroom or playroom for a pop of color and charming decor. After printing the risograph posters, I packaged them in a collection of 12 each so the customer could pick from one of 2 series.