ArtistExpress.net

10/02/2024

We've been long overdue for a post, but today is officially our 10 year anniversary! Thank you to all who kept us going this whole time! 🤘 Now back to NYCC prep!

05/27/2024

Today we observe Memorial Day, and pay respect to the honor and memory of those who have served.

We will be out of the office today and resume communication tomorrow.

05/03/2024

Free Comic Book Day with AZCAF and Samurai Comics is tomorrow! Join JAY FOTOS studios, Val Hochberg () and our own Ben Glendenning () and Anastasia Stillsmoking () at Samurai Comics' Chandler location for the most wonderful day of the year in comics!

Ben and Ana cooked up some NEW sketchbooks for the show, and we will also be giving away our own ArtistExpress Sampler book, featuring a collection of stories and artwork from our staff with any support you show these awesome guests!

Go show some love, buy some comics, pick up some free comics and enjoy the festivities for Free Comic Book Day 2024! 🤘

04/26/2024

We hope everyone has a great time at C2E2 this weekend!

While you’re out making money, connections and fans, we’ll be here installing our new KM AccurioPress 12000 (replacing our current 7000 series model, and also our now FOURTH production printer with another 3000 series machine!

Our uptime will be significantly improved with these additions! We’re going through some growing pains and coming out the end with better equipment and hopefully a better customer service experience!

04/21/2024

If you’re going to Scottsdale Comic Book Show today, stop by and see one of our own, Ben Glendenning doing sketches on site with proceeds going to the Golden Apple Foundation!

‘Old Man Con’ as it’s been affectionately nicknamed is a beloved single day comic show in AZ which focuses on older books and a curated list of sellers and exhibitors!

Always a good time! 🤘

04/16/2024

If you're stopping by Old Man Con next weekend, check out one of our own, the always awesome Ben Glendenning doing sketches on these killer 5x7 Sketch Cards available at the show!

Here's a sampling of some of his cards! You may see a few others from out staff that may make an appearance too!

04/15/2024

We are a packed house for C2E2!

If you placed an order over the weekend, just a heads up we write them up the following Monday! We got a few we are getting back to, but thank you for your patience as we work through a ton of orders!

As always, please reach out if you need anything!

04/11/2024

It's not often that our print clients get mentioned by Billboard, but here's a new project featuring the band Rush they just covered that we are stoked to be helping with! 🤘

You can buy "Orbit: Rush" online and learn about the rock band and their rise to fame through this illustrated graphic novel comic book.

04/01/2024

It finally happened. Came in to a board room meeting to meet our new owners, Sabre, Inc.

63 likes, 5 comments. “welcome to Sabre”

03/29/2024

*****Happy Friday!*****

So...why would we show off a printer of ours in such disarray like we did yesterday? Plenty of reasons!

First one being we pull no punches, and will always be transparent about the goings-on of the business, good or bad! It's been a tough week, but thankfully we made it through it. Everything that needed to ship today did, and that's because we strategically have a redundancy and fallback system in place if anything ever fails.

Second is that you probably get grief from the print companies you have or also currently work with about lead times, rushes, delays etc. This is an example of a no-win situation if it were any other print shop using only one primary printer. This issue would shut down business, and cost you time and money. For us, it's a delay, but not an insurmountable goal to maintain our lead times we worked out with our customers during the event one of our printers goes down. Anything can happen, and better preparedness with your orders will prevent an issue like this keeping you from hitting YOUR goals with our print services!

Third...catharsis? Print shops tend to take the brunt of customer frustrations in the event things don't go as planned, even if it involves things beyond their control. Sometimes it's just nice to say 'Hey, sometimes these things just break down'!

We'll share more interesting print defects as they happen overtime and explain why they do happen, so you can be better informed on how this process works!

So how did one of our big printers going down affect things this week? Well as you know, we launched our new website! Because we had to do some mental gymnastics to keep on schedule this week, lots of content updates for the website that would have been made by now had no chance of being made. Over the weekend, I'll be looking to expand on that.

That includes our RECIPES section of the website, where right now you can download project files for how to lay out books of varying page sizes, as well as a handful of other non-book projects FREE of charge! There's examples of how to use our Product Builder to best print specific products, like for instance how to make a vintage styled comic book like the one pictured. It'll show you which options to pick! There will be hundreds of 'Recipes' we plan to build, and more in-person training events hosted by ArtistExpress which will focus on how to best set your work up to print!

We got a ton of orders this week through the new website and the feedback's been exceptional! We'll be continuing to refine the process as we go, and working with anyone who is struggling to use it.

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend! It's been one hell of a week!

-Anthony

03/29/2024

You know when we tell you lead time is important? Well thank goodness we have three printers!

However, our printer supplier buddies at Pacific Office Automation think that one of our printers having THIS issue not be fixed and always patched with a band-aid for almost a year now is acceptable. We all know the answer...it's not. We know it, our customers know it, and hopefully POA will too.

Because of this, we have to get creative with our current orders, future orders, and everything in the printing process to make sure we always hit our deadlines with the best print quality we can make happen. This yellow toner issue has been the bane of not just this week, but as mentioned earlier, a very long time. Needless to say, this printer is tagged out for the time being, and this particular printer will be rotated off our floor for a better one. This right here is the end result after being told it's good to go after multiple techs working on this over the last two days. If POA wants our next printer to be one of theirs, there's a lot of good faith that needs to be shown our way.

At this point, we probably log more work after hours than during actual work hours solely because keeping this particular printer going is an exercise in futility. But we will always do what we have to to make sure you get what you want on time, every time.

-Anthony

03/28/2024

WonderCon is this weekend, and a ton of our favorite creators and artists will be there! Hope y'all have a great time, sell out and come back to us for more of that printing goodness!