Eric explaining about colour accuracy at the proofing table

Last Thursday the ladies of Design Lab hit the road for Aurora. Destination? The AIIM printing house, for a tour of their facilities. Luckily, Alexia was driving or else MC would have driven us to Ancaster.

AIIM, which stands for Avant Imaging and Information Management, prints the lottery brochures and print material for one of our clients, the London Health Sciences Foundation. It’s a big job, but AIIM specializes in large volume printing.

We arrived at AIIM pumped up and ready to go. Most of us had never been to a printing house before so it was great that we were getting this tour. Our host was Eric Johnston, whom we’ve worked with on the Millionaire Lottery and Dream Lottery projects for the last 5 years. Always very high energy, he presented a slideshow of their services to us in the AIIM boardroom. Little bowls of candy adorned the table… it was like we had never left Design Lab! (Inside info: we’re big candy eaters at DL…when the candy gets low, we get cranky.)

Some highlights from the presentation were:

•  Direct mail pieces can be highly personalized to the recipient by pulling information from a database and digitally printed on the fly.
•  Direct mail can also have geo maps using Google maps or Mapquest. One example indicated stores in the vicinity of the recipient’s home.
•  AIIM has an online service for clients to order and modify print materials, taking the middleman out of the equation and providing faster turnaround times.
•  AIIM branded M&Ms!
•  Eric’s good natured arm swing

On to the tour! First of all, I didn’t expect it to be so loud in the printing area. There was a lot of yelling going on (between us). The printing presses were huge, the largest one being a 10 colour press with the ability to print 5/5. We watched in fascination as one of the operators loaded a plate on to the press (well at least I watched in fascination!). But the biggest highlight of the tour was watching the guillotine come down on a huge stack of paper! It made a “whoosh” sound as it trimmed the paper to size. MC likened it to the sound a T-1000 makes.

We were promised a liquid lunch after all the touring, so off to Chinook we went. Lunch started off with an innocent question from MC to Eric: “Are your twins fraternal or identical?” Well, Eric launched into a full on explanation about how identical and fraternal twins are conceived, describing his “little guys” and his wife’s eggs. Then we learned that a woman can actually have twins fathered by two different men! What?? Yes, it’s true. (Kim looked it up when we got back to DL.) After that awesome discussion and entrées, we dived into the Dufflet cakes that were dangled in our faces as soon as we entered the restaurant – how could we resist?

We arrived back at Design Lab full, liquored (well some of us) and with a greater understanding of the printing process. Thanks Eric!

To see more photos of the tour, visit our Flickr page.