Jumbo Press

posted by Emily Gosling April 5, 2021

For a little joy and colour in a world that can, at this point, feel relentlessly gloomy and grey, you could do far worse than to cast your eyes over Jumbo Press’s website.

The press, which specialises in riso-printing, began life in Deptford, south east London, and has since moved to the sunnier climes of Barcelona. Pre-pandemic, the idea was that Jumbo would be based between the two; but for the time being, Barcelona it is. Cofounder Jake Lucas acknowledges that there’s “definitely a contrast in the two places,” but “one thing which is great about print is that there is always a need for it wherever you go (you just need to try not to break the printer on your travels).”

Lucas cofounded Jumbo Press with Marta Font, and the pair had met while studying for a degree in music business. “We wanted to be music managers or AnR guys,” Lucas recalls. “It took us a while to find the wacky world of illustration, but we are here now and happy we found it!” Lucas kindly answered a few questions for us about the ins and outs of running a riso press, ending with a little canny (alebit niche) financial advice.

What does running Jumbo Press usually involve?

Our schedule really depends on the week. We try to split an even amount of time between collaborating/commissioning new projects and working for clients. Running a small business it feels like there’s always a million and one things you can do from wholesaling your books to managing the socials to sending the things. So we just try to keep on top of as much as we can and keep on printing.

Why the name Jumbo Press?

Jumbo just came around by accident really. We first started by making zines for a community cinema in Deptford (south east London): we would print a zine every month on the films that were showing and distribute different free zines from friends. Through that we found risograph printing, as we were looking for an affordable/cool/eco way of printing the zines and felt we needed a name to kind of publish them under.

We actually called it Mommas Home Made at the start in honour of my crafty mum, but Jumbo and elephants just seemed to make sense.

I love the branding/wordmark and site design – who’s behind those?

Thanks! Marta coded up the website stuff, she’s brill at all that work and is getting more into that now. I work a lot with a Chilean artist called Nato Floral on branding stuff. One day he just randomly started direct messaging us with elephant drawings he made, and we have been working together ever since.

And who did the lovely illustration on the Jumbo Press shop site?

The current header one is by Alesdiv, a friend of ours from Barcelona! He’s brilliant and lovely guy, we are actually making a knitted jumper together, which will be coming out after summer.

What are the keys to maintaining a good working relationship?

Always collaborate. Everybody has good ideas and new perspectives, so listening to each other and taking things onboard has always been really helpful for us!

How did you go about getting your own riso printer? Any tips for people wanting to do the same?

Ebay, Gumtree, Wallapop, Craigslist—whatever is the second hand website going. Things always pop up, it just takes patience. The colours are the difficult part as they are like Pokemon: everyone wants to catch them all.

How do you go about choosing who to work with? Is there a particular style/vibe/ethos you look for?

That’s a difficult question as we really love all kinds of illustration. It really depends on what project we are working on as some illustrators work really well for editorial/print and some others for apparel/ branding etc. Lately I’ve been trying to work more with artists who are local to us in Barcelona, as I love being able to meet the artist and learn about their practice. But, we are still exploring with Jumbo and want to be able to work with as many great artists as possible regardless of following or stage in their career.

Is there anyone you’d love to work with but haven’t yet?

Matt Furie, Simon Hanselmann, John Pahm…

What are the best, and the most challenging aspects of running your own press?

Getting to work with some of the loveliest of people ever and helping make work happen. But definitely sometimes it’s difficult juggling things to make it all work in harmony.

Clearly you think Riso is great, I also think Riso is great… but what makes it so great?

Hahah… I guess the vibrant spot colors, feel and texture it gives that other machines can’t replicate. A big part for me is definitely the culture surrounding risograph, there are so many great small presses that are experimenting and using a risograph as a platform to publish some really interesting work like Floss Editions, Pupi Club and Colorama.

If you had £20 to spend in your own shop, what would you buy and why?

A swatch book and a print for sure! But if you’ve got a little bit of extra change the Bubblegum vol. 2 book we recently did has over 30 artists all of which I couldn’t recommend more.