Project

Gota

Identity

Stationery

2025

Client

Gota, a risograph print studio in Lavapiés, Madrid

The brief

Lucía Ferrer and Pablo Ibáñez opened Gota in Lavapiés in 2019 with one second-hand risograph and bought a second machine in 2023. They print posters, zines and record sleeves for illustrators and small labels, and what people come for is the ink: 21 colour drums, from a deep blue to a fluorescent pink. Their cards were white, set in Helvetica, and said none of that. The brief was a small identity they could print themselves, on the same two machines, between paying jobs.

The idea

Show the overprint. Clients kept asking what two inks would look like together, and the only answer was a test sheet pinned by the door. So every Gota piece prints two circles in two inks, overlapping, and the third colour where they cross is the answer. Each card pairs a different two drums from the shelf, and whoever is at the counter fans out a handful when someone asks. The name is set in one wide, rounded grotesk that holds up in every ink.

Ink cards

Each card pairs two drums from the shelf, printed as two overlapping circles on 300 gsm uncoated card, with the wordmark small in the corner. The backs are solids in one of the two inks. Risograph solids come out slightly uneven, and we left them that way.

A stack of Gota cards with pink and blue circles overlapping, on fluorescent pink

A Gota card front with two circles and its solid blue back, on blue

Four Gota cards from above in different ink pairs, one solid pink

Gota cards standing in an oak card holder, on yellow

Overprint posters

The studio’s own posters use the same two circles at full size, so the overlap shows the grain of the ink. They hang in the window and go out with every large order, rolled.

A Gota poster with pink and blue circles taped to a white wall

A stack of Gota posters with a curling corner, on pale yellow

Close-up of the dark blue overlap and the riso grain on a Gota poster

Job tickets

Every order leaves with a ticket printed in blue: the job number and two dots for the drums each layer went through. A client can reorder a poster two years later and get the same thing.

A Gota job ticket, number 214, clipped to a stack of posters

A Gota job ticket tucked into a rolled poster tied with string, on blue

Around the studio

A tote for carrying prints home, the studio’s zine and the board by the counter where every new ink pair gets pinned up when it comes off the drum.

A Gota tote bag with yellow and pink circles on a wooden peg

Gota’s stapled zine with two overlapping circles, on yellow

Gota cards pinned in a grid on a cork board

What changed

Gota printed the first cards themselves over two weekends in March 2025, and the test sheet by the door came down a month later. Quotes now start with the fan of cards on the counter, and two-colour jobs went from one in five orders to almost half.

Credits

Okapi: Tomás Reis (lead designer), Beatriz Correia (identity), Ana Pires (print)
Gota: Lucía Ferrer and Pablo Ibáñez (founders)
With: printed in house on Gota’s two risographs; photography by Nacho Prieto, Madrid

Client

Gota, a risograph print studio in Lavapiés, Madrid