When the Kansas City Chiefs needed to recognize their top, "Level A", corporate sponsors, they came to Digital Lagoon for some new ideas. Lagoon printed a series of Larry Johnson images on brushed aluminum DiBond as a replacement for the Chiefs' standard gift of Tiffany crystal. To make the images literally standout, Lagoon utilized the precision of the ZÜND cutter to cut out the image and a stand before engraving each stand with the Chiefs logo and "LJ #27". The star running back personally autographed each of the finished gifts before they were presented to the corporate sponsors.

The ZÜND Cutter Can:

• Create three-dimensional displays
• Custom cut display boxes from a variety of materials
• Contour cut any complex or simple shape; no dies required
• Cut, plot, route, crease . . .
• Handle material up to 70"x117"

Digital Lagoon recently added the ZÜND graphics cutter to work in conjunction with the Inca Spyder Printer. The ZÜND cutter uses a Digital Optical System that reads the registration and bar-coding that is applied to the graphics during Inca Spyder printing process. This is automatically read by the ZÜND cutter to give a high quality precision cut on a wide variety of materials including: Gator, Foamcore, labels/decals, Sintra, Lexan, plastics, metals, fabric, banners/posters, magnets, and window film.

US consumers hit the Internet hard this past holiday season, spending a record $24.6 billion (not counting travel revenues) at online retail sites, a 26% increase over 2005. According to comScore Media Metrix, online sales for 12 days during the November/December holiday season surpassed the 600 million mark - each day.

• Jewelry and luxury goods led the way while spending at UPS, USPS and FedEx pushed up the shipping sites some 19% over last year.
• Wednesday, December 13th marked the heaviest online spending day with some $667 million spent, followed by Monday December 11th ($661 million) and Monday December 4th ($648 million).
• In comparison, only six days in 2005 hit the $500 million mark, the top day being Monday, December 12th at $556 million.
• For the entire year, 2006 online retail spending reached $102.1 billion, according to comScore Networks, a 24% increase over 2005.

Members from both the production and marketing teams recently attended the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago. This week long conference offered a comprehensive look at the latest trends, tools and technologies that are shaping the interactive marketplace. Topics covered in the conference included organic search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click search management, viral marketing, social search and Web analytics. Some interesting tips and information also included the following:

• Link to new content from the homepage because it gets indexed the most often.
• Link to authority sites in your niche (known as "Link Love").
• Page content is crucial to ranking pages - use keywords more often than you would in off-line copy.
• Use synonyms for keywords in copy.
• Keep it to 250 words per page and split articles as necessary.
• Make pages more "local". Local results are considered more relevant by search engines.
• Remember that product benefits sell products, not specs.
• Create spin-off content from existing popular content to capitalize on the traffic generation you already know works.
• Search engines are tapping into human knowledge more widely through tagging, click through tracking, search history features and other methods.
• Always compete with your own results, not industry standards as no two Web sites are the same. Don't just focus on being in the top 30 - look at where you are now and set a baseline.

Welcome New Employees

Angela Castellon
Purchasing Agent
With a Bachelors degree in business and management, Angela brings fifteen years of experience in the manufacturing/distribution industry, including purchasing, vendor management, and logistics to Digital Lagoon. As a buyer and office manager, she works closely with the production and management staffs to maintain material stock to keep Digital Lagoon's projects moving forward.

Kathy Hamilton-Dix
Account Development
Kathy came to Digital Lagoon with a long history of experience in typesetting, graphic design and large format printing. With her combined experience in these areas, she brings a wide knowledge of what her customers expect in the field of large format printing. She has belonged to many trade associations over the years and has built long-lasting relationships in the graphics community.

Clayton Fixsen
Art Director
Clayton comes to us with over eleven years of experience in design, production and creative direction. He is well versed with creating dynamic content for various types of media. His wide range of capabilities adds even greater depth to Digital Lagoon's award-winning creative team.

Patrick Mallahan
Internet Programmer
Patrick has been in the Information Technology field for three years and has been programming for six. His background also includes also infrastructure architecture, hardware installation and repair and telecommunications. He is currently working full time at Digital Lagoon while pursuing his degree in Computer Information Systems with an emphasis on Security from DeVry University.

Adam Martin
Art Director
Adam graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with emphasis on Graphic Design from the University of Kansas. His professional experience in the design world includes experience with signage, Web, print and a motion graphics. His diverse experience brings yet another facet to the Digital Lagoon design arsenal.