Tianying Yu uses Risograph to make soft and nostalgic impressions of the things we might miss day to day

Most of Tianying Yu’s work is inspired by things she passes by day to day in New York City that catch her imagination: “objects I find on the street or a feeling that just appears”, she says. These are often small moments she wants to hold on to for a bit longer, and what better way to cling on to “unseen narratives” than by translating them into hundreds of frames to keep forever, ones that carefully merge colour into soft, nostalgic, grainy impressions. Like a lot of designers prone to printmaking, Tianying makes use of Risograph when it comes to recreating these smaller everyday details: A deer spotted at a distance through the frames of a binocular, a fish lantern moving in the wind as if swimming, fruit spinning through a blender.

Using geometric shapes and bold, joyful colours the illustrator brings her digitally made motion pieces into the warm printed palette of the Risograph to bring “a more human touch to my work”, she says. “I enjoy the spontaneity and imperfections of printmaking: unexpected colours mixing and multiplying, slight misalignments – the things that can’t be perfectly replicated on a computer.” These surprises tend to bring a sense of personality to Tianying’s illustrations, that, for her, always makes them feel more like “art created from the heart, rather than just adjusting keyframes”.