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Category: Resource
We’re printing our type specimen books on the Risograph printer, and they’ll come out great. But, the Riso has a number of quirks that we need to work with when designing. So, here are some general guides:
- Don’t design in a way that the two colors need to line up perfectly. We can get registration – the lining up of the two different colors – pretty close, but it’s rarely exact. So, design in a way that can tolerate (or even benefit from?) that kind of imperfection.
- Avoid huge areas of solid colors. Because the Riso prints with real ink that’s slow to dry, very large areas of color have trouble drying and often create messes which don’t end up looking great in the end.
- We’re using two colors for this, but remember that you can use tints of those colors. If you use the files I uploaded for your class, there are spot colors set up in them, and you can use a tint of that spot color by adjusting the slider in the Color palette in Illustrator. Remember, this is different than the Opacity palette! It looks like this.
Type 2, 9:30 AM:
Book: 7×7 (spread is 14×7)
Colors: blue & sea foam
Download 14×7 Illustrator file with spot colors
Type 2, 2:00 PM:
Book: 7×10 (spread is 17×10)
Colors: pink & blue
If you found something in the template books you want, these are the files that are on the CDs.
The first and most important tip I can give you is to learn to love the pen tool: It’s the foundation of all vector-based software.
No matter how many crazy effects they bake into Illustrator, the pen tool is the only thing you really need to master and is the single most important tool for vector drawing. It takes time to learn how to use it well and to teach your brain to think of it as just another mark-making device—not dissimilar to a real pen or pencil—and once you have, vector drawing will feel natural.
Jessica Hische
Tutorial on vector letters by J. Hische
