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PRINT GOCCO is an unique Japanese printing machine - a compact portable unit that
exposes screens in seconds using flash bulbs and is then used to print postcards, its
extraordinary feature is that you can ink the screen with several colours and produce
multicolour prints in one go!

Widely known and used for printing New Years Cards in Japan, it is virtually unknown in
the U.K.

The first work I saw made with PRINT GOCCO was one of Japanese mailartist Ryosuke
Cohens BRAIN CELL prints in the early 1980s. These astonishing multicolour A3 prints
were printed in a riot of clashing ink colours - with areas printed in neon pink swirled
together with metallic gold alongside parts printed in a splodgey mess of dark blues and black!

Each BRAIN CELL brought together contributions of small designs by 60 different artists from
around the world - functioning as a visual embodiment of the international postal art network.

I enjoyed taking part in BRAIN CELL - it was exciting sending images to Ryosuke Cohen in
Japan, then waiting for the completed print come through my letterbox a few weeks later.
Like most other BRAIN CELL participants I puzzled over how they were printed, it certainly
looked like some kind of screenprint - but nothing that I could figure out.

Was it some traditional Japanese printing method?*
Something that Ryosuke Cohen had invented himself?

At some point I discovered that BRAIN CELL was printed with something called a PRINT
GOCCO and as an aficionado of idiosyncratic printing methods I immediately wanted to add one
to my arsenal of home printing devices.

Eventually in 1996 I found a U.K. supplier through a small advert in Exchange and Mart
and bought my first print gocco for £120 - quite an investment for someone who was
unemployed at the time and didnt really know how it worked!

After a few years of producing some unadventurous postcards designs, I found cheaper
inks and supplies through the internet, experimented and played around more with the
PRINT GOCCO and figured out how to use the computer to prepare artwork. By 2002 Id
produced some impressive multicolour two-print postcards - printing up to 300 at a time
- the maximum number that could be laid out to dry on the floor of my room.

I felt Id got quite good at using PRINT GOCCO!

When mentioning PRINT GOCCO to friends Id casually invited several to have a go at using
it, but no one had actually taken me up on this offer. Now it felt like the right time to share
PRINT GOCCO with other artists, I started thinking about how this could be done
and gradually developed the idea of PRINT MORE POST CARDS.

Inspired by the briefcase-style box that PRINT GOCCO comes in, I imagined myself in the
role of a travelling salesman/print technician - travelling around the country, visiting artists,
demonstrating how it operated and working together with them as they experimented
with this new printing device and handprinted a limited edition of postcards.

PRINT MORE POST CARDS worked like this -

I prepared an invitation booklet containing technical information about PRINT GOCCO,
examples of some of my postcards and advice on how to prepare artwork.

Copies of the invitation booklet were sent to 12 of my favourite artists, illustrators and
designers - chosen for their wide variety of different styles and creative approaches, who I
thought would enjoy the challenge and whos work would adapt well to PRINT GOCCO.

Most print more post cards participants came round to my house for a day to print their
cards. In the morning we selected the ink and card colours, then worked together printing
the background print of 500 postcards - this took approx 2 1/2 hours.

Cards were left to dry in specially made drying racks.

Break for lunch, MATSU the local Japanese restaurant was a logical choice.

In the afternoon we completed printing with a second print - foreground/darker colours,
then left the cards for 24 hours to dry completely.

Artists designed the reverse of their card and a PRINT MORE POST CARDS logo.
Soon after wed printed the fronts I completed the cards by printing the backs.

Each artist recieved 250 copies of their card. The rest were complied into two beautifully
packaged sets of 6 different cards.

Look out for future PRINT MORE POST CARDS sets...
PRINT GOCCO combines elements of screenprinting and rubberstamping. Instead of using
a squeegee to pull ink across a screen, the inked screen is pressed directly down onto the
surface to be printed - the fine mesh of the screen gives a high resolution print.

The press-printing technique combined with specially formulated inks allows you to
ink parts of a screen in several different colours and then handprint multicoloured
postcard-sized prints.
Place the artwork for your postcard on the foam rubber printing pad, artwork must be
Black & White and carbon-based - a photocopy is ideal. Insert a new screen into the lid of
PRINT GOCCO, put 2 flash bulbs into the reflector unit and place this above the screen.

Hold the lid of PRINT GOCCO with both hands and press down firmly for a few seconds,
when the screen is in direct contact with artwork, the flash bulbs are triggered, heat from
the bulbs exposes the screen by fusing carbon in the artwork with the screens plastic
coating.
Remove the reflector unit and the screen, fold back the clear plastic backing of the screen
and apply ink directly to the inside of the screen. Once inking is complete, replace the
clear plastic backing and place the screen back into PRINT GOCCO.

You can ink the screen with several different colours, the inks will move around
slightly during printing but will not mix. Alternately you can use ink blocking -
thin strips of foam rubber, to separate inks and prevent them moving. The PRINT
GOCCO inks are opaque and oil-based, with a range 30 colours to choose from.
Place a blank 148 x 105mm postcard on the printing pad, lower the lid, pressing down
gently so that the inked screen is in direct contact with the postcard - you've printed your
first PRINT GOCCO postcard!

One inking of the screen will print about 100 cards, when parts of the print start to fade,
you can either replenish the ink or wipe it all off and re-ink in another colour scheme.
The set-up cost for a screen, 2 flashbulbs and 2 tubes of ink is approx. £10.00.
Launched by the RISO KAGAKU corporation in 1977 the PRINT GOCCO B-6 was a
massive success, eventually selling over 10 million units. Used mainly for printing New
Years Cards and Greetings Cards in Japan, PRINT GOCCO rapidly became ubiquitous, a rough
estimate would be that 1/3 of all households in Japan (Pop. 127 million.) posess one.

RISO drew on their 30 years experience manufacturing duplicators, stencils and inks
to create the PRINT GOCCO, which was specifically designed as an all-in-one domestic
printing product which could be used by all the family to print high quality, colourful cards.
The name was chosen to reflect this usage - in Japanese PRINT GOCCO means
'play printing' or 'playing at printing'

RISO promoted PRINT GOCCO in Japan with the annual handmade card competition which
ran 1977-2001 "The aims of the contest are to nuture creativity of children and students
by creating hand-made picture postcards with stencilled printing and to foster effective
communication by sending and receiving these postcards."
I interviewed REI RICH, who used PRINT GOCCO from the age of 12 onwards, she
made New Years Cards with drawings of horses for the year of the horse, monkeys for
the year of the monkey etc.. Her mum helped with exposing the screens and entered the
finished cards in the annual competitions. REI and her sister were very sucessful, regularly
winning prizes of print goccos and printing supplies - so much so that they built up a
stockpile of 5 PRINT GOCCOs which they redistributed to friends!

One year REI won the top prize - a PRINT GOCCO painted in orange and black tiger
stripes to commemorate the year of the tiger. There was a party for the prize winners
and REIsuffered the embarassment of being interviewed and appearing in the local
Kanazawa region newspaper, her winning design was featured alongside the other entries
in an exhibition at the RISO head office in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

In recent years PRINT GOCCO sales have been hit by the widespread availability of home
computers and affordable, easy-to-use full-colour inkjet printers. RISO responded by
launching the PG-11 model with a moveable printing pad that gives excellent registration
for prints using 2 or more screens, together with a set of cyan/magenta/yellow inks for
full-colour print separations.
BRAIN CELL - Please send me your stamp design, rubberstamp, or 150 stickers or seals. I will print or paste these materials onto the A3 size paper, creating 150 sheets. I will then send a sheet back with a list of addresses to each participant. I will publish at intervals of 8 to 10 days at that time will include 60 people or so.
BRAIN CELL c/o Ryosuke Cohen, 3-76-1-A-613 Yagumokitacho,
Moriguchi City, Osaka 570, Japan
www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~cohen/info/english.htm

www.riso.co.jp/english/
The RISO website - with a company history, background information about development
of PRINT GOCCO and details of their main area of buisness - high volume digital
stencil printers.

MATSU Japanese Restaurant, 558 Mile End Road, London, E3 4PL. recommended.

www.fingerstothebone.com
Information about PUDDING - Shu-Ju Wang's PRINT GOCCO test-print magazine,
which tries a variety of methods, tools and papers.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gocco/
A typically unexciting yahoo group!

FOOTNOTE
*Traditional Japanese papermaking contributed to the development of stencil printing.
David Gestetner who created the first stencil duplicator in the late C19, made stencils
from a durable fibrous plant-material paper that was used for making Japanese Kites.

REFERENCE
The Origin of Stencil Duplicating. W. B. Proudfoot, Hutchinson, London, 1972.


Imagined, instigated, facilitated, realised, packaged & distributed by Mark Pawson.

Funded by a London College of Communication Research Grant - thanks L.C.C. !

Artwork & text © 2005 by Mark Pawson, Alan Brignull, John Dilnot, Lizzie Finn,
Pete Fowler, Mike Gabel, Dan Holliday, Xtina Lamb, Michael Leigh, Rachael Matthews,
New Studio & Zeel.

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