A Way With Words : Risograph Guide

For this collaboration with Think Forward CIC and The Old Electric, part of A Poet in Every Port (Southbank project), we set out to design something that could only exist on a Risograph press.

The brief called for a hand-drawn typeface that felt like poetry in motion: letterforms with rhythm, flow, and a sense of finding your own path rather than following a fixed line. Printed in a single ink, Riso gave us the chance to play with different opacity levels and tones of colour, layering marks to build depth where lines crossed and doubled back. Printed on uncoated stock, the guide has a tactile, natural feel that suits the handmade quality of the type.

The result is a guide that feels handmade and alive, echoing the way words themselves layer and shift meaning depending on how they’re read a fitting visual language for a project about poetry, place, and the paths people carve for themselves through both.