DESCRIPTION Columbia University Visual Arts MFA Catalogue CLIENT Columbia University DATE April 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Designed by students from the Visual Arts MFA at Columbia University PRINT CREDITS Stencil printing: The Use of Literacy Offset printing: G & P printing, NYC

QUANTITY PRODUCED 1,000 PRODUCTION COST $5,000 PRODUCTION TIME 2 weeks DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 8.5 in × 5.5 in. PAGE COUNT 104 PRINT METHOD Cover and 11 signatures printed on a stencil printer. 2 signatures printed on offset. PAPER STOCK Via Vellum, warm white, 70 lb. text by Mohawk NUMBER OF COLORS 7 spot colors with 2 sections printed 4-color process BINDING Nested signatures in a fold around cover

Designed by the MFA students Columbia University School of Arts Visual Arts Program students and printed by The Uses of Literature — a small independent press and publisher run by Duncan Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York — this catalogue is a welcome change from the glossy and smiling-kids catalogues that most schools, even for their creative MFA programs, put out. In the description of the project, Duncan continually refers to a process called “stencil printing” and since I didn’t see anything that actually looked stenciled I thought I would ask:

I use the term “stencil printing” to describe the process of printing using Risograph duplicators but perhaps a more accurate term would be “mimeograph print.” The Risograph printer uses a thermal process to burn a very fine quality stencil which is then wrapped around an ink drum. The drum is rotated as paper is passed through the machine and ink is pushed through the stencil onto the paper. The paper travels through the Riso in a relatively straight line (rather than the torturous route that paper is forced to travel through a photocopier) which makes it possible to print unusually heavy and light paper stocks.

Mimeograph machines have been around for about 130 years (I had a hand cranked model when I was a teenager in the UK) but the production of the digital mimeograph or duplicator is a relatively recent development.

I tend to use the term “stencil print” rather than mimeograph or duplicator because essentially the process is based around the production of a stencil (even though of a very high quality). “Duplicator” sounds too mechanical and “mimeograph” too old fashioned.