Fanzine Printing Workshop

The student arts center hosted a fanzine workshop where they set up a Risograph printer and let anyone come in and print a short-run publication for free. I made a 12-page zine of my own photographs with captions. The tactile quality of Riso ink on uncoated paper, slightly raised and a little smudgy at the edges, made the whole thing feel more real than anything I've posted online. Soy-based inks and imperfect color registration mean every copy is slightly different. That built-in imperfection turns each zine into a unique object rather than a reproduction. I stapled 20 copies and left them on the free shelf in the student center. They were gone by the next morning. Someone had to physically pick each one up and carry it away, which felt like a different kind of engagement than getting likes on a post. Workshop organizers showed us basic layout in a free software program and how to fold and saddle-stitch the pages. The entire process from design to finished copies took about 3 hours. I want to do another one. Working within the Riso's 2-color limitation forced me to think about composition differently, and the result looks better than anything I could have printed on a standard inkjet with full color.