Cesar Salas remembers walking down a street in South Phoenix, passing out a flyer he had designed himself, when he spotted an Adobe logo in the window of a small print shop called DNL Press. “This is the place where they do these things,” he thought. He walked in and asked for a job.
That instinct has guided the Phoenix College alumnus from the family restaurant to college, the printing industry, and eventually a business of his own. Today, Cesar Graphics is a full-service print shop rooted in the South Mountain and Laveen communities. What began in a small converted office has grown into a 6,400-square-foot creative production hub with 11 employees.
A Designer Before He Knew the Word for It
Salas first discovered the pull of design at his parents’ restaurant. Sitting at a Power PC Macintosh computer, he began making flyers and menus for the family business. The technology captivated him: the ability to open a program, manipulate an image, and bring an idea to life on the screen. At the time, he did not necessarily have a name for what interested him or a picture of where it might lead. He simply wanted to understand it. “I wanted to learn more,” he said. That desire brought him to Phoenix College.
Salas remembers walking into Hannelly Center and scanning the printed course schedules, mapping out his prerequisites and building toward something he could already sense but not yet name. He immersed himself in graphic design, studying Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and digital photography. For Salas, Phoenix College was where an early interest in design began to look like a possible career. The creative work he had begun exploring on his own gained structure. He developed practical design skills while also studying small business management. Those courses helped him understand customers, resources, and the work required to build something that could last.
“Phoenix College is where I learned the craft and gained the skills to keep moving forward,” he said.
Learning by Doing
After graduating from Phoenix College, Salas went to work at DNL Press. He started at the front desk, helping customers and completing projects such as funeral programs and business cards. Each job helped bridge the distance between academic training and professional work. A later position at a digital print shop introduced him to large-format production. At both shops, he paid to use his employers’ equipment for jobs from his own growing client list. He was learning the industry while quietly building Cesar Graphics before it had a location.
From a Circle K to a Commercial Anchor
The first official home of Cesar Graphics was an office carved out of a vacant Circle K building owned by Salas’s father. The roughly 20-by-20-foot space held a worktable, a portfolio of samples, a small Xerox machine, and a hand-lettered banner out front. Salas registered the business in 2003. He continued waiting tables at his parents’ restaurant while selling print jobs from the side door. Entrepreneurship was familiar in the Salas family. His mother could wait tables and sell Mary Kay during the same shift. His father ran a restaurant and made space for his son’s early business. “This entrepreneurship mindset, I got it from them,” Salas said. “You just keep on offering what you can do.” When his father had to sell the building during the economic downturn, Salas faced a choice: close the shop or sign his first commercial lease. He signed the lease. The move to a 1,000-square-foot storefront on Baseline Road came near the end of the 2008–2009 recession. Salas held on by outsourcing jobs he could not yet produce in-house, building relationships, and reinvesting what he earned. Over the next 18 years, Cesar Graphics grew department by department, machine by machine.
The Philosophy Behind the Press
Salas’s business philosophy is rooted in curiosity. Cesar Graphics now handles printing, signs, embroidery, wall graphics, and trade show displays because he kept exploring what else might be possible. He flew to Iowa for hands-on training with a precision cutter used to create signs and displays. More recently, he purchased two vintage Heidelberg letterpresses from a closing shop. After months of watching tutorials and studying the machines, a visiting pressman walked in and showed him which oil to use. The presses are now being coaxed back to life. “If I had settled from the beginning and just done printing, I wouldn’t be doing signs,” Salas said. “I wouldn’t be doing these things that bring other opportunities.” His patience has mattered as much as his curiosity. Building the company has meant slow weeks, cash-flow pressures, unfamiliar equipment, and developing a staff. His instinct is not to dwell on a problem, but to ask, “How can I make this better? How can we find a solution?”
In 2025, the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce named Salas its Entrepreneur of the Year. The recognition brought a few quiet tears and gave him a chance to reflect on how far he had come. “Sometimes I don’t stop to realize how far I’ve come,” he said. “Receiving that recognition felt really good.”
Building for the Next Generation
Salas’s daughter Haley runs the digital press. His younger daughter, Brittany, handles logistics, deliveries, and purchase orders while studying supply chain management. His son Armando operates a marketing agency from a suite inside the shop. The business has become a place where the next generation can develop its own skills and ambitions.
He is also working with the Phoenix College Art Department to create an internship pipeline that would give graphic design students hands-on experience in printing, signage, embroidery, and design production. For Salas, the proposed internship would close a circle. The student who once walked the halls of Phoenix College looking for classes that could turn his interest into a career can now help another student make the connection between the classroom and the working world. “You sometimes get more value out of seeing your customers happy about your service versus the money that’s coming in,” Salas said. “If you’re happy with that, it’s going to be easier to go through all of the ups and downs.”
More than two decades after starting Cesar Graphics, that satisfaction still drives him. The business has grown, but Salas remains guided by the curiosity that first drew him to design and a desire to keep learning and improving.
“It started as something I loved, and now it’s what I do every day,” he said.
Have you turned your passion into a profession? Share your story with us for a chance to be featured.