The ceremony was held on March 11th at the Weinberg Center for the Arts in Frederick, MD and Lehman was present to accept the following awards:

• In the category of non-traditional advertising a Silver ADDY™ was awarded for the Spires Door Hanger for Spires Property Services.
• In the category of Web site, B-to-B HTML/other, services, a Silver ADDY™ was awarded for the Rudderow, Hill, and Associates Web site for Rudderow, Hill, and Associates.
• In the category of elements of advertising, a Silver ADDY™ was awarded for the Hall Coaching logo for Hall Coaching.

Upon receipt of these awards, Lehman remarked, “Each of these awards were for projects that the client really trusted my firm’s creative abilities. Not only was the client happy with these pieces, I am thrilled that other professionals feel that these pieces were exceptional as well. I can’t wait to tell the clients!”

Lehman wishes to thank all of the clients who made this possible and would like to recognize their work and contribution which helped make these pieces award-worthy. He is confident that many of his current partnerships will lead to further recognition at the 2011 ADDY™ Awards.

HUVCO has had a long relationship with Sunoptics as a dealer of its HPDS products for many years and this merge gives the HUVCO clientele an even wider array of product offerings, new levels of support, and additional people on the ground here on the east coast. In addition, a new division of the company will focus on a particularly strong local market which has been dominated by HUVCO for the past few years.

HUVCO and Tobin Lehman started working together in 2002 with product illustrations. Through the years, Tobin Lehman has consulted on identity development, search engine optimization, Web development, print campaigns, brochures, and outdoor presentation graphics. The HUVCO Web site still outranks many of its competitors in SERPs (search engine result pages), including Sunoptics.

We wish the team at HUVCO the very best.

Analytics Intelligence with Alerts
Use the power of monitored data patterns to allow Analytics to send you daily, weekly, and monthly reports on your Web site metrics. Trends that may take months to surface can now come to your inbox with minimal effort.

Engagement Goals
You can now start tracking items such as ‘time on site’ and ‘pages per visit’ to give you a better analysis of branding goals, or site success in addition to your other established goals.

Mobile Reporting
With a simple code addition, Analytics can now start tracking your mobile site and mobile based applications for iPhone and Android devices. This includes breakout data on device types and national carriers.

We are really excited to start looking at our clients’ sites with these new features in mind and providing new metrics to help define the growth and success in the months ahead.

The site itself is built on Wordpress, using plug-ins to support the SEO and contact form functionality. An overall light installation make the framework expandable for future pages and posts within the entire site.

• Use both sides of printed paper, recycling when full
• Recycle Everything. (Cans, paper, electronics, ink cartridges)
• Drink tap water instead of bottled
• Buy 100% or more post-consumer content in paper goods and office supplies.
• Use skylights to light the office during the day
• Shut down the computers and printers at night (after back-ups of course)
• Set computers to sleep after a short period of away time
• Go paperless for documentation (PDFs)
• Use soap and water to clean desks, chairs instead of chemical cleaners
• Walk to work and meetings when able.
• Use real utensils and dishes, not plastic and paper
• Offer sustainable hosting options to our clients

All of these are simple steps that I am taking but I’m sure there is more that could be done. If you have ideas or suggestions, please post back and let me know.

I recommend this book to anyone who manages a team or interfaces directly with customers. We need a team of dedicated and thoughtful customer service representatives, not just the one who sits at the front desk. With the holiday season quickly approaching, consider empowering all of your employees with this small book. It just might be the best present your office receives.

The conference provided the opportunity to participate in many thought-provoking workshops, listen to some very talented speakers, talk to vendors, and mingle with the design elite. These conferences, in their basic form, allow us as an industry to share stories from our practices, discover new inspiration, discuss design theory, and develop new skills with the hope that everyone returns to the office with renewed passion for the design process.

This hope was realized in the office of Tobin Lehman. With numerous ideas to integrate into our clients’ projects, and new tools to create more successful work, this conference may be a turning point in our work.

Interested in seeing it for yourself? Check out the following links to some of the conference’s best speakers. (Videos will be posted soon via AIGA, so many of these are simply for reference.)

David Butler, VP of Global Design, Coke
Roger Martin, Author
Al Bell, Founder Stax Records
Stefan Sagmeister

We would like to thank all our clients and colleagues who supported this company from the beginning for your business, advice, and guidance. Our growth in the past year exceeded our expectations and for that, we are very grateful. In the coming year we hope to continue to beat expectations for our clients in our strategic consulting and account management, as well as our continual focus on the highest level of quality in each and every product.

In the next quarter we will be doing some outreach to our clients with surveys and new product offerings. Our research break over the past week, has only opened the door to new strategies and channels available for our clients, and in 2010 we will expand our offerings to bring more of those channels in reach and more consumers to your doors.

Thank you again for a great year one!

Tobin Lehman

As the Internet continues to be a wonderful place to explore, participate, and consume, the technology we use to engage this plane of reality is in a constant state of development by software developers and their communities. As builder of site that use this technology, we must provide the most progressive and robust experience possible to our clients and their customers, keeping up with these advancements. In this progressive response, we must also leave behind software of the past to continually provide a cost effective solution to our clients. The following list states the current minimum browser standards covered in our development projects.

Microsoft: Internet Explorer 7

Mozilla: Firefox 3.0, Camino 1.5

Apple: Safari 3.0

In addition, as future web browsers emerge on the market, compatibility for your site and these new browsers may become suspect to new issues. As a proactive approach, you or your marketing department should be conducting an evaluation and review of these new browsers as they emerge. Happy browsing!

These types of relationships can not come without investment. This means extending beyond your comfort level at times to reach new and unfamiliar personalities with confidence and an open, accepting nature. When meeting someone who does not share your interests and outlook on life, you can develop a better relationship by exploring common threads such as heritage, locality, education, view points, and social ties. There is always somewhere to start an open, engaging dialog with a client that extends beyond the scope of the work at hand. It’s our opportunity to extend that olive branch, to set aside differences and communicate in a manner that is both honest and constructive.

The last thing anybody wants to to work with someone they can not communicate with. I believe in looking at each client as a potential relationship and an opportunity for growth. And as you “give” yourself to these relationships, you will inevitably receive more than you give.