Colours and Inks

Colour Charts

Here are scans of our Risograph colour charts. Please note: some of these ink colours are impossible to reproduce on screen, and have a unique look that can only be seen in print. Print versions are available in the studio, and copies are free to take for the Emily Carr community.

All Inks, 10% to 100%

Each ink colour’s range of value, 10-100%. This is an 18 ink print, and took 9 passes.

Overlap Chart

Every 2-ink overlap combination using our studio colours. This is an 18 ink print, and took 9 passes.

 

About Risograph Inks

The COMD studio currently has 18 inks: Bright Red, Orange, Yellow, Sunflower, Kelly Green, Hunter Green, Light Teal, Aqua, Medium Blue, Midnight, Purple, Violet, Fluorescent Pink, Coral, Light Lime, Brown, Flat Gold, and HD Black. The machines hold 2 ink cylinders, and can do either single colour prints, or dual colour (2 inks in one pass.)

In Riso printing, the inks come out wet and need time to dry, and part of the drying process is that the inks need to absorb into the paper. That’s why all paper for Risograph needs to be uncoated – it needs that natural paper fiber surface.

Colour Matching

Risograph colours never look the same on screen and in print, but sometimes it’s useful to have a close colour to look at while you’re working, or doing test prints on a regular printer.

Studio Swatches

The ECU COMD studio has templates and swatch files that you can download to work with a of special placeholder colours for our Riso.  Each colour is set up as a special spot colour, and with the name of each Riso ink.

Pantone Colours

If you have the Pantone colour system available in your software, and want to use them as placeholders in your Risograph files: when you’re adding swatches or channels, choose the colour library “Pantone+ Solid Uncoated”, and use the following numbers for each Riso ink:

Bright Red
 Closest Pantone: 185 U
Orange
 Closest Pantone: Orange 021 U
Sunflower
 Closest Pantone: 116 U
Yellow
 Closest Pantone: Yellow U
Light Lime
 Closest Pantone: 387 U
Kelly Green
 Closest Pantone: 368 U
Hunter Green
 Closest Pantone: 342 U
Light Teal
 Closest Pantone: 320 U
Aqua
 Closest Pantone: 637 U
Medium Blue
 Closest Pantone: 286 U
Midnight
 Closest Pantone: 296 U
Purple
 Closest Pantone: 2685 U
Violet
 Closest Pantone: 265 U
Fluorescent Pink
 Closest Pantone: 806 U
Coral
 Closest Pantone: 177 U
Flat Gold
 Closest Pantone: 1245 U
Brown
 Closest Pantone: 7526 U
HD Black
 Closest Pantone: Black U

We got these approximate Pantone numbers from stencil.wiki , who have an excellent list online of other Riso ink colors that exist, and rough Pantone, CMYK, RGB, and hex matches for each.

Pantone and Risograph are two totally different companies, and two different systems of colours and inks, so these numbers aren’t official colour matches for Risograph – but they do make good placeholders for Riso files. If you don’t have Pantone available in your software, or are having trouble finding or using these, try our custom studio Riso swatch set instead.

Health and Safety

  • Riso printing uses wet ink paste. Try not to touch the wet ink on freshly printed pages, the drums, or the master sheets.
  • The inks are soy and rice bran based, but they do contain other ingredients that can cause irritation. However, they are not actually classified as a hazardous material that requires warning label icons. SDS available in studio.
  • No, even though it contains soy and rice ingredients, Riso ink isn’t considered edible. A surprisingly common question!
  • If ink gets on your hands / skin, thoroughly wash it off with soap (in the studio sink, or the bathroom.)
  • If ink get in your eyes, flush it out immediately with lots of water, and seek medical advice. We have an eye wash station at the studio sink.
  • If you ever feel unwell while printing or are bothered by the ink smell, please take a break and if possible go outdoors for some fresh air. The prints can have a smell while they are drying, and we have increased ventilation in the room to help compensate for that.
  • Gloves are recommended when handling large amount of prints with heavy ink (as in: projects where it’s difficult NOT to touch fresh ink.) We have nitrile gloves available for free studio use.

Drying

  • Drying time varies, and can be hard to predict, and it can take 2 or 3 days for prints to reach their maximum dryness. Riso ink is not archival or fully permanent: dry ink can still smudge when touched, and colours can fade in sunlight.
  • All prints are most vulnerable to smearing and smudging within the first day after printing.
  • Prints that are double-sided or have more than 2 colours need more than one pass through the machine, and need to dry overnight or longer between each pass. 
  • Do NOT run wet prints through the Risograph again.They can smear and make a mess both on the paper, and on the machine’s rollers and wheels – and that mess can affect the next person’s prints.
  • Cut down on drying time and risk of mess by minimizing ink coverage and the use of 100% colours in your original, and setting the machine to the lightest ink density (1 out of 5). It can also help to print on thicker paper.

Even after Riso prints are dry, it’s still possible to smudge the ink, similar to handling newspapers or pencil drawings. Some options to deal with this:

  • Spraying them with a fixative. This is possible, but not recommended. If you do this at school, it must be done in one of the ventilation booths, and never in the studio. It is not recommended because most of these products are hazardous (check the can for warning labels like “poison” and “flammable”), they may add an unwanted surface texture to the piece…and it doesn’t actually fully seal or protect the ink.
  • Layering small pieces like stickers or cards with clear self-adhesive film. This actually works well, and results in a glossy look. We have this material available as a shared studio supply for COMD students – please ask the technician. It’s a lot like clear tape, but bigger (18 inches wide)…and for small pieces, you can actually do the same thing with a roll of tape (which we have available in the studio up to 2 inches wide.) The downside: you lose the nice look and feel of the natural paper surface, it’s extra work to carefully apply it to your sheets, and it’s not a very sustainable material because it’s plastic (however, the film we have here is not vinyl or PVC, for any projects that need to specifically avoid that.)
  • The best strategy, for most Riso projects: keep the properties of the ink in mind when you’re designing, avoid really heavy ink for high-touch pieces, and just be a little more careful with them than other types of print! It’s part of the medium that Riso prints are often imperfect and don’t last forever, and it’s often better not to worry too much about this.