About

Office Offset is a research project by Jan Blessing, which consists of a continuously growing archive, the website and an experimental print workshop.

Office Offset


The term Office Offset describes fully-equipped miniature offset printing machines the size of a photocopier/laser printer. What distinguishes it from the printing industry at large is the fact that it never belonged to it. Office Offset rather belongs to the category of duplication devices like a mimeograph, photocopier, or Risograph.

officeoffset-overview

From left to right: Mimeograph Gestetner 466; Photocopier Lumoprint LX3; Risograph RISO CIR; Office Offset machine Roto 611.


The top-of-the-line Office Offset machines achieved the best printing quality in comparison, and the highest print runs for almost twenty years from their introduction. They were used all over the world, especially in Europe, North and South America, and South Asia. Despite these factors, this technology did not stand up to the easier-to-handle Xerox copier and disappeared completely in the late 1980s. Along with the demise of this technique, records related to it also largely disappeared, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that today it is a forgotten print/duplication process from the late twentieth century. 

This website derives from the image and text archive from an ongoing research on Office Offset as a technology of production. Beside the historical reappraisal the website is dedicated on the artistic and cultural aspects of Office Offset. 

The rediscovery of these fully capable miniature offset machines marks a new era of experimental offset printing. By de-contextualising the former intended usage and in conjunction with modern technology, it is possible to transform a former duplication technology into an experimental printing technique, which offers a vast amount of options to explore offset printing, without the restrictions maybe given by an commercial printing company.

At our Office Offset print workshop we are up for any experimental exploration and are open for all kinds of collaboration with artists, institutions or publishers. In addition to print projects we also offer workshops and lectures for students or anyone else who is interested in those unique machines.

Our machines
1 × Rotaprint RTE
1 × Roto/Rotaprint 613 N
1 × Roto 613 S
1 × Roto/Rotaprint 625 (for Flexo Office Offset)

Enquiries
mail@officeoffset.com

Instagram
@office_offset

Opening Times
Monday–Friday, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm

print workshop