Hato Press – Riso Printing Workshop

Riso printing seems to be everywhere these days. Not really understanding the process, I was delighted to stumble across a workshop on Zine Making with Hato Press. Established in 2009, the guys at Hato bought their own riso printer to publish their own books. With lots of demand from their friends to print for them too, it made good sense to start running a printing press. Today Hato comprises of three parts: Hato Press, a printing and publishing house; Studio Hato, a design studio specialising in publications, exhibitions, education and workshops and its newest member Hato Labo, an interactive design studio.

Last Wednesday I attended the workshop. There were six of us. We had three hours but ran over. Justin, our teacher and Hato’s MD was patient and friendly. The aim was to make a 16 page A6 zine booklet, trimmed and stapled. We were allowed to use 2 colours in total. That means that 8 pages were in one colour and the other 8 pages in another colour.

First, what are you going to fill the pages with? There were a plethora of magazines available to cut out from. I chose to bring some black and white photocopies of my own sketches. Everyone concentrated really hard!

These are some of my templates for the booklet.

Once we filled all 16 pages, we were able to choose 2 colours from this chart. Easier said than done! What would you have chosen?

Some of the ink cartridges hanging up as display.

These were the actual housing for the ink cartridges. Hato have about 3 riso printing machines and all were used that evening.

A lovely blackboard explaining the riso printing process.

One of the riso printers in the printing room. They do look like photocopying machines.

This next piece is one 8 page side of one of the attendees. I liked that she used photographs and layered her templates.

This is one of my 8 page template printed in teal.

So once both sides of our templates were printed, we folded the page into a booklet. Justin trimmed all books while we in turn stapled them together. Voilà! Here’s my final piece. Teal and fluro orange. Like the combo?

I really enjoyed the workshop. Ideally I would have liked to print 2 colours on one page to experience that process. Next time I know what to expect and what results the riso printing will give me. Check out Hato’s future workshops.
Thank you Justin for all your help.

This post will stay live until Monday 30th November.