Outlet PDX: With Love, Outlet 💛💛💛

Happy February everyone  When the world looks bleak and we’re struggling to write an upbeat intro to our newsletter we look at our incredible community and remember why we do this work.

Last year we launched our Community Give Backs program where we donate 10% of our printing income to a different mutual aid group or organization each month. For January we donated $250 to Main Street Alliance and this month we’re raising $ for the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition (PIRC). As always we have a table full of free protest posters, flyers, zines, and red cards. Come get some! Melt some ICE and show up for your neighbors! And THANK YOU to everyone who prints with and supports us for making it possible for us to keep giving back.

You can also support us by taking a workshop! You can find all of our Riso Basics workshops posted for the year, plus special riso classes focused on digital illustration, hand lettering & sign painting, photography, book binding, cut paper accordion zines, and more! Find our full schedule of workshops and events here.

Have a project you’d like to print? You can sign up to print with us in person during our open hours 5 days a week or request a quote to print with us remotely. We also offer private workshops for your birthday party or team retreat, and one-on-one classes every week. Let’s PRINT!

Check out our 2026 workshop schedule! Come learn about RISO with us!

Hand Lettering & Sign Painting for Riso Workshop

Saturday 2/28: 10am-2pm

Location: Outlet (2500 NE Sandy Ste E)

Join us in a hand-lettering workshop where you’ll learn some time-honored sign painting techniques from instructor Kirsten Bauer to use in your riso printing practice! Explore hand-lettering & techniques used by sign painters to make letters POP! Learn the basics of outlines, shades & shadows, decorative and beveled letters, and how to translate these into risograph prints!

Digital Illustration for RISO Workshop

Saturday 3/14: 10am-2pm

Location: Outlet (2500 NE Sandy Ste E)

Come take an advanced digital illustration for RISO class with Outlet’s co-owner Leland Vaughan and learn all the secrets for using digital formats to bring your illustrations to life as riso prints! This class will focus on how to get the most in terms of overlays, color variation, and opacity from only a few inks—you can create incredibly rich, multifaceted images using only 3 colors!

4 Color Photo Process for Riso Workshop

Saturday 4/11: 10am-2pm

Location: Outlet (2500 NE Sandy Ste E)

Learn how to turn full color photography and other images into beautiful 4 color riso prints! Explore the history of 4 color printing and use of halftones in printmaking and go through the process of setting up a full color image to print on the riso as a CMYK process print.

SAVE THE DATE! Summer Story Fest 2026 is happening 6/27-6/28 and applications are OPEN!

*TOMORROW!* Portland Zine Symposium Party & Anthology Release

Thursday 2/11: 6pm-8pm

Location: Outlet (2500 NE Sandy Ste E)

Join us at Outlet PDX this Thursday from 6-8 pm to celebrate the Portland Zine Symposium’s 25th birthday! We’ll have copies of the latest PZS Anthology, featuring nearly 20 zinester contributions from Symposiums past, as well as items from our zine archive for you to peruse. Come get some refreshments, read some stories, and talk about zine plans to come!

Check out the organizations and mutual aid groups we’re supporting this year! We donate 10% of our printing sales every month. Come print with us and support important causes!

We’ve still got a few copies of our 2026 calendar left! 12 artists! 24 colors! A whole year of RISO! Grab one before they’re gone!

Other tidbits of news:

Our full class schedule for 2026 is LIVE! Come take a workshop with us!

Group workshops not your thing? We have one-on-one workshops available every week!

Friendly reminder that we continue to offer fully masked appointments for printing, shopping, and drop-ins via our online booking form to keep our most vulnerable community members safe. All of our workshops and events require masks while indoors, with masks encouraged in our courtyard. We always have masks here if you need them.