Way back in the dark ages, I worked in a print shop. I’d use a huge wall-mount camera with a vacuum-back with screens to make halftones, and print them on an AB Dick 360CD printing press. I hand-cut designs in rubylith for photographic designs, and made silk-screen masks by cutting two-layer lacquer sheets with an X-Acto knife. All this was fancy high-tech in those days, and fueling an explosive growth in small-press “reprographic” shops. Consolidation, Kinko’s, and desktop publishing were all looming — almost imperceptibly — on the horizon.

Well, that was a long time ago. I haven’t gotten significant quantities of ink on my hands in years. But at CrashSpace, there is a Risograph machine. Once high-end business printers, these fast, multicolor mimeo machines are very popular among zine makers.

I was in the space, and one of the folks there offered to teach me how to use the Risograph. It was a fun experience taking a photograph and performing color separations. Next, we put in a stack of scrap paper, loaded up the scarlet ink drum, and ran a collection. Then it’s pulling out the scarlet ink drum, loading up the black ink drum, and printing the next color. All of this, without cleaning platens, rollers, or burning new plates! What’s more, all of this, without getting my hands covered in ink!