HP recently held a 25th anniversary party for its DesignJet large-format printers, which are still in production today. The company chose to have the party at the HP Graphics Experience Center in Barcelona, Spain. Matias del Campo, architect and co-founder of SPAN Architects, was a guest of honor.

del Campo took some time out at the party to reflect on some his career milestones he and his company achieved using HP DesignJet technology. When he and fellow architect Sandra Manninger first launched SPAN Architects in 2003, HP DesignJet had recently introduced a family of affordable multi-format printers, allowing SPAN to compete with established design studios. del Campo has already been printing on a DesignJet 1000 for four years at a local copy shop.

“The quality of line drawings and the print speed were amazing. I could illustrate even very complex designs very clearly, whether they were CAD line drawing or full color renderings,” del Campo says of the technology. “With every new HP DesignJet, I thought ‘this has to be the maximum that the technology can achieve.’ And each time they are faster and image quality is higher. Now, it is what I expect from HP.”

When it was time for he and Manninger to launch their own business buying an HP DesignJet was a high priority, he says.

“For a small studio starting out on a limited budget, our multi-format HP DesignJet printer was perfect,” del Campo says. “We saved print costs on outsourcing but more importantly, we could compete for more projects, at least one a week. HP has democratized the ability to compete for projects. You don't need to be a large company to own and run an HP DesignJet printer, but you can compete on a larger scale.”

Today SPAN Architects has offices in Detroit and Shanghai, and prints and shares projects using its 36-inch, web-connected HP DesignJet T920 Printer.