Earlier this month I spent a day in Leeds, looking at the impressive array of digital print firepower at Communisis' Leeds facility, and hearing about the group's plans to ultimately migrate all of its high-volume litho print over to high-volume ink-jet.

It was a perfect day out for a print anorak, and I was ridiculously over-excited about seeing the HP T300 kit in action as up until then I hadn't had the privilege of seeing the HP's high-speed inkjet system operating in a live factory environment. Yes I do need to get out more.

While explaining the firm's digital journey group digital manager Andy Lydiatt shared an amusing anecdote about when the business installed its first brace of HP Indigo sheetfed presses a few years back. The number one machine minders on the ‘proper' printing machines next door (ie big web offset presses) promptly added a cheeky sign saying ‘photocopier room' to the digital print room door, and stuck ‘Toys R Us' and ‘Also available in adult sizes' stickers onto the kit.

I laughed like a drain. It reminded me of when DTP systems first appeared, to the general derision of professional typesetting and repro folk (I was one at the time), who were used to making miniscule adjustments in kerning and letterspacing, and access to rather more than a handful of badly-cut fonts.

The rest, as they say, is history. Lydiatt's tale made me think about how we all need to challenge our prejudices from time to time. The team at Communisis originally launched the digital wing on the back of operational efficiencies, within six months they'd become one of the largest producers of digital documents in the country. If things go according to plan that 'photocopier room' will ultimately take over the 'legacy' litho printing at Leeds.

And nowadays some of those Communisis machine minders are now bringing their considerable skill and know-how in high-speed personalisation - as well as their sense of humour - to the HP inkjet webs.