Last week media were invited to Barcelona, Spain for the HP 'Behind the Scenes' event – A Celebration of 20 Years of Innovation and Leadership for Large Format in Barcelona. This was a unique event because it also included a tour of the HP facilities together with stops at other interesting locations in the City of Barcelona. It is in Barcelona where HP began in 1988, setting up large format printing operations. 

Francois Martin, HP EMEA Graphics Arts Marketing Manager

There has been much growth over this time for HP in Barcelona. Most people are familiar with HP's printers for consumer use, but GIS, CAD and large format printing professionals who are involved in cartography, architecture and utilities will often mention the company's products, being most familiar with them.

This was my first time inside HP's facility in Barcelona. And this event involved many of the staff at that facility, including the people who design, build and maintain the printers. This resulted in a sense of closeness as well as interaction, and put a face on HP that has been missing in large measure, over the years. I had mostly experienced HP as a big company that makes printers prior to this visit. But now I can share with you some of the thoughts, passions and people behind them.

But the facility tour was planned for the second of the two day event, and much more was to be experienced on the first day.

Torre Agbar
(Image: City Barcelona)

Torre Agbar
The Torre Agbar was the first stop on the tour. This new building, designed by Jean Nouvel was inspired by Montserrat Mountain landscape. The parabolic shape is designed to provide the effect of a geyser from the earth as light streaks to the heavens. The buildings color changes, with specially designed windows and 4500 lights over its 142 m height. The windows of this building are small strategically placed pixels, each causing the colors to change as light reflects. Visitor's can overlook at the city by travelling to the top where the offset center is visible. Initial construction began in 1999 and was completed six years later.

Institut D'Arquitectura Avancada De Catalunya (IaaC)
This institute, situated in the heart of the city, is a well known international center for architecture education and research. Vicente Gullart is both an architect and educator, serving as the Director of the IaaC. In collaboration with Media Lab Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he

Models at the Institut D'Arquitectura Avancada De Catalunya (IaaC).

Digital Impact Customer Panel
The Digital Impact Customer Panel included four presentations by individuals familiar with the benefits and usefulness of HP products, particularly with a view to work processes and improved efficiency.

Digital Impact Customer Panel - (l. to r.) Roger K. Yager, Nina Stern, William A. Mano and Vicente Gullart)

Roger K. Yager, P.Eng. vice president, Knappett Projects Inc., British Columbia, Canada spoke about distributing documents within his organization and the need to increase efficiency. The shift from paper documentation to digital documentation distribution has meant improvements in planning. His organization has spearheaded improvements through the use of web-based interfaces, such as those being developed by HP. Projects are now on electronic planners and individual documents are easily located in the organization – a major change over local printers, previously. Benefits included savings in cost as well as time and he also pointed to the fact that people could be anywhere and receive the information they need.

Nina Stern, Director of Creative Services, Rockwell Group - is the driving force behind the 250 person company based in New York and Madrid who is responsible for the use, implementation, and accessibility of new technology to further the creative process. Nina has managed to establish new networked technologies, including large format printing, across the organization in support of complex drawings and visualisation. In her words, “people could not see the importance of computers in the largely hand drawing environment until the connection to design processes were made.” Currently Rockwell Group is working on new interiors for John F. Kennedy airport in New York. She see's constant evolution in technology and the need for increased speed in the design process for work in her company.

William A. Mano is a large format imaging consultant based out of Paris, France - shared details from his many years of experience in the print- imaging industry. He pointed out the importance of consistent workflows and the fact that printing is only part of the larger process involved. Most projects involve a design, bid, build and maintain phase as well. “The future is about involving people from the design through to the operation phases,” he said. He mentioned the increase of worldwide projects, necessitating wider collaboration and document sharing across great distances – again pointing to the need for internet print capability. “Printing is becoming more decentralized and people are connecting from wherever they are inside buildings, or between them.” It was interesting to learn, as he pointed out, that web-based printing has the capability to level the playing field with many smaller firms being able to compete with higher professional print quality due to the decentralized functionality of large format printing over the web. Consequently, Mano said, “there are trends around software and higher levels of management in color reproduction.”

Vicente Gullart, Director of the IaaC – mentioned 3 primary areas where he saw new developments originating on architecture. First, the trend toward Web 2.0 and the idea of citizen participation, allowing more people to share information and thoughts. He see's the internet as providing the impetus to share more information through print using web-based technologies to further citizen participation. Secondly, the need to save and manage energy is impacting where energy sources will originate. Gullart said, “we are seeing the beginning of buildings that create energy and then connect together to supply energy to other buildings and needs.” Thirdly, the internet is providing a way to connect to share resources – into neighbourhoods. This sharing of resources is directly related to shared printing, not only local printing, but more fully enabled through the internet.

Barcelona Forum

3D Model with light showing Barcelona urban development.

HP Site – Sant Cugat
The main HP site is located to the north of Barcelona near San Cugat. It is here where the company began in the mid-1980's in Spain. While manufacturing was conducted on these premises, it has sinced moved offshore. However, the administrative, design and planning remains on the campus.

Guayente Sanmartin was recently appointed as the world wide large format marketing director.

“We are currently moving to include Graphic Arts into the LFP solutions business.” She explained that HP operates facilities in San Diego as well, and that operation is primarily print head focused with color reproduction and the highspeed digital pipeline work being conducted there.

Manel Martinez, general manager for LFP printing in EMEA offered up some interesting slides about the division growth. But not before explaining that he started with HP by working on research and development for the Draftmaster pen plotter. “We also started with 3 in marketing and 12 in the lab,” he said. He outlined the changes over time since 1988, including the switch from monochrome to color, decreases in price, improvements in photo-quality, greater speed followed by production quality with speed and finally to the current focus on end-to-end solutions. “We experienced 9% growth in 2007 and currently hold 65% of the active market share in LFP,” Martinez said. “Our technical market grew by 9% and maintains 75% market share with 27,000 units sold to date (T610, T1100, Z6100). These are significant numbers and attest to the market demand, particularly for CAD and GIS users who are a large part of that technical group.

Product Development
Josep Tarradas is large format commercial PSP Lab Manager for the Barcelona Division. His responsibilities include worldwide new product development. “Everything started with a pen,” he says. “I began with HP by working on the Draftmaster and designed a hard drive for the printer – to make it more useful for our customers and my first product was the InkJet 250 – made in Barcelona for under 2000 USD at that time.” Tarradas

Inspecting print nozzle sizes.

“We are beating Moore's Law,” Tarradas said. That in reference to the fact that print heads now combine more nozzles, leading to more pixels, than first thought possible. It is worth noting that a single print chip contains the equivalent of 12 Pentium processing chips in terms of capability, at Euro 1200 each, which HP has reduced to about twelve Euro. The HP GL/2 high output plot driver was invented here – and was developed by Dr. Ross Allen's team in San Diego whom we met last year. HP has also had about 1500 patent disclosures in 12 years. While InkJet technology is developed in Barcelona, the laser print technologies originate in Boise, Idaho.

Erin Rae Hoffer, from Autodesk gave a presentation entitled 'A Vision for Design and Construction: Opportunities for Industry Change with Building Information Modeling. Her presentation pointed to the widening gap between technology and productivity in the construction industry – construction is losing ground. “A need exists to develop relationships with clients, attract talented individuals and improve coordination in the design/build process,” she said. “We need to decrease operating costs while reducing liability issues.” This theme is one that has been growing over time and many professionals point to a need for major changes in how design and construction is accomplished.

Environmental testing of printers to withstand high temperature and humidity.

“The relationship between architecture and sustainable design is changing rapidly and the processes are particularly influenced. Construction needs to take advantage of these technologies into what we refer to as Integrated Project Delivery,” she said. Hoffer discussed issues of interoperability and labelled HP technology as a 'Tool of Imagination' – supporting the BIM transformation.

Marc Jongen, strategic marketing, large format printing for HP shared information about the web-to-print solutions. “Today we are interested in moving data and documents to wherever people are,” he said. There is a growing need to collaborate and share documents and, once again, the web is seen as the route to enable that. The new HP 'Instant Printing Toolkit 2.0' is now available and enables online planroom developers to begin building print networks that can operate to enhance print tasks. A key point is that Adobe is working with HP to bring the Toolkit with PDF functionality.

Original HP Draftmaster printer.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.