After a tumultuous move forced by rising rents, Salt Lake City’s Riso Geist marks its new beginning with a collaboratively made risograph calendar that lets the medium’s particular strengths do exactly what they are meant to do.
Riso Geist has been Salt Lake City’s flagship risograph studio since 2017, but earlier this year Derek and Brighton Ballard found themselves having to leave the space they had worked in for four years after the rent was raised beyond what a small independent print studio could absorb. The calendar that inaugurated their new space was a deliberate act of marking the moment.
“We found it fitting to christen this new space with a calendar, symbolising the new year, new fight, and new goals for our small print studio,” Derek Ballard says.
The 2026 calendar is a collaboration between the two, with Derek and Brighton sharing duties across illustration, layout, print and production. Each monthly page is built from a hand-drawn illustration finished with custom texture processing and crafted gradient backgrounds, a combination that plays directly to risograph’s particular qualities: the way its colours interact, the slight unpredictability of registration, the warmth and material presence that digital printing cannot replicate. French Paper Co Construction Grout Grey stock is used for the interior month pages, with a heavy kraft paper for the front and back covers, material choices that give the object a considered physical presence from cover to cover.
The calendar is also, in the context of what Riso Geist has always stood for, something more than a studio announcement. Political action has been a foundation of the studio’s work since its inception; they have offered free printing for local activists from the beginning and remain committed to using printed material to empower those fighting for change. A calendar marking a new year and a new fight, made by a studio that chose not to disappear quietly when the economics turned against it, carries that ethos in its very existence.
Riso Geist is a risograph studio, publisher and workshop space based in Salt Lake City. Their work has been shown in local and national galleries and book fairs, and is stocked by Printed Matter.
ARTIST LINKS
risogeist.com
@risogeist / @neuergeist
neuergeist.com
2026 Risograph Calendar, Riso Geist. Hand-drawn illustration with custom texture processing, French Paper Co Construction Grout Grey interior stock, heavy kraft paper covers. Collaboration between Derek Ballard and Brighton Ballard. Photography: Derek Ballard.
