Nice to meet you.
We are modest riso house.
Modest Riso House is a design and print studio located in Holland, Michigan.
From 2016 to 2023, we owned and operated Washington Street Outfitters, a retail store built around quality goods, thoughtful design, and creating a memorable customer experience. Greeting cards were always one of our favorite parts of the shop.
After selling the store, we started a new chapter in Burlington, Vermont, where we were introduced to risograph printing while working at the University of Vermont. It felt like the perfect medium for bringing our ideas to life.
Not long after, we moved to Holland, Michigan and ordered our first risograph duplicator.
Today, as a husband-and-wife team, Spenser and I (Zoé) design and print everything by hand from our small home studio.
Our work is shaped by years of retail experience, design, and paying attention to the small details, interactions, and moments that make everyday life interesting.
We care about quality, texture, color, and creating cards that feel personal enough to send and special enough to keep.
meet the humans
Spenser has a BA in Psychology(2015), which honestly explains a lot. He’s the perfectionist of perfectionists and we love him for that. the one adjusting things by half a millimeter, catching details nobody else sees, and somehow making it all work in the end.
He’s also the funny bone behind a lot of our cards, with a great sense of humor and a brain full of weird observations. When he’s not printing or designing, he’s usually surrounded by records, CDs and music gear.
Zoé has a BS in Fashion (2016) and brings both the design eye and heart to the studio. Through a lot of love, grief, change, and laughter, she's slowly found herself, and this business has become a way to share pieces of that with other people.
Equal parts design brain and feelings department, she's just as likely to be fine-tuning a layout as she is cooking something good in the kitchen during a long print day.
Design and printed in
Holland, michigan
At the core of our hearts and our designs, we want to make this life a better and more fun place, and a little empathy can go a long way.
