You can hire us to print your zines, posters, books, flyers and more. The main service we provide is risograph printing.

Email us at info@tinysplendor.com to get a quote for your project. Please include the following in your email:

• Where you are located? (This is important because we have studios in both LA and Berkeley)
• What you want to print? (a poster, a zine, etc.). Provide an image for us to review.
• If it is a book or zine, please specify how many pages
• Dimensions
• How many colors & what colors (see color chart)
• How many total copies?
• What kind of paper want? (color, weight and finish)
• Do you have a deadline
• Attach any examples of what you’d like printed to help us understand your project better
• Additional cost file/layout work, shipping and any special instructions

Color chart for LA studio
Color chart for Berkeley studio

What file types do you accept?
PSD or JPEG is great. We can also take PDFs, .AI, and PNG.

What resolution should my files be?
300 dpi is fine. For really detailed artwork we recommend 600 dpi. Anything higher is too high.

What is the biggest / smallest I can print?
The biggest size we can print is 11”x17”. Prints can be as small you like.

How many colors can/ should I use?
There is no cap on how many colors we’ll print for you, but the price goes up with each additional color. Riso ink is transparent and colors overlap and blend together when printed over one another. As such you can often get a lot of colors resulting from just two or three color inks. The limited color palette is part of the appeal of the riso “look”. We can help you figure out what colors to print in if you’re unsure.

What kind of paper can the riso print on?
The heaviest weight of paper we can print on is 110lb. cover (thick card stock). The lightest we will print on is 20lb. text (sorry, we won’t print on newsprint -- it’s too inconvenient!). We cannot print on paper that is coated, glossy, textured, or rough on the edges.

Does my file have to be print ready?
No - we will take care of color separations and other file prep. If you do send us separations, please have them saved as layers within a single PSD file.

Can I use your risograph to print my own project?
Yes, but only if you’ve taken a [workshop] before to familiarize yourself with our machine.

Besides riso, do you offer other kinds of printmaking?
Yes! Our Berkeley studio (Max’s Garage Press) is a community printshop equipped for lithography, silkscreen, relief printing, and etching. You can hire us to print your edition, or you can sign up to rent time on the presses to come print yourself. For more info please email MaxsGaragePress@gmail.com

A Risograph is a stencil-based duplicator. It has a limited color-palette and can only print one color at a time. Each color requires a dedicated ink drum, a cylinder wrapped in a metal screen and filled with ink. Thermal heads cut artwork into a film, creating a stencil which automatically wraps around the ink drum. During printing, ink is pushed through the stencil and onto paper, creating a print.

Risograph prints have a certain look that offers some of the character and charm classically sought after in traditional printmaking. Because only one color can be printed at a time, the process of layering colors requires manual registration, which is imperfect. This allows each printed color to retain it’s vibrancy, unlike a digital print, and to share a quality similar to analog prints.

That being said, the Risograph can also print up to 600dpi in a preset dither dot pattern. This means it can reproduce almost any kind of imagery, from full-color photographs to delicate paintings to detailed drawings. The inks are transparent, allowing colors to blend when layered on top of one another.

The quality spot-color process and the inviting look of Risograph printing is why we were originally drawn to it. Additionally, we love that it’s able to print really fast and in really large volumes. The Risograph is also extremely cost effective, rivaling other quick and cheap printing methods like inkjet printers or photocopiers.