The neighbourhood of San Nicolás in Cali, Colombia, has been the centre of the graphic arts industry of the city and, thus, is an ideal place to observe the industrial and cultural development of Cali in the 20th century. Starting as a zone with a significant craft heritage in the early 20th century, San Nicolás, where most of the city’s editorial industry has been concentrated, more recently evolved into an area of major industrial and commercial activity; it was transformed by Cali’s accelerated growth in the 1960s and 1970s and is not longer considered peripheral in terms of the urban area. Such factors, together with the organizational abilities of small and medium printing entrepreneurs, have contributed to the establishment in the neighbourhood of printing companies of scale that have taken advantage of the opportunities created by the editorial business.