FARMINGTON — A 76-page Welcome Guide to showcasing the beauty and benefits of living in Franklin County has earned the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce a national honor.

The chamber recently learned that its first 2007-2008 Welcome Guide is a winner in a 2009 national competition sponsored by Graphic Design USA, a business-to-business magazine for creative professionals. The competition is one of the largest and most esteemed in the world of graphic design.

Out of more than 8,000 entries this year in 23 categories, the chamber guide won an Award of Excellence in the category of brochures and collateral.

The guides, written yearly, contain a variety of information about the local area and the businesses of chamber members which are now sent globally to potential visitors.

“We have a ton of requests every day for the guides. Many requests from our Web site are sent all over the world,” said Lorna Nichols, executive director.

The chamber had a vision, before hiring Nichols in 2006, to produce a better piece “in-house,” chamber President Matt Wotton said. “We saw the need to step up production and sought a director who had the capability,” he said.

The board also wanted to reduce costs to farm the project out and with Nichols skills, a committee, purchased software and a lot of support from the chamber membership, the guide is produced using chamber members, he said.

“This recognition is definitely a good indication that what we have been doing is heading in the right direction,” he said.

With a good product in hand, one board member suggested seeing how it would compare to similar products by entering the competition. According to the date range in contest rules, the first two guides were submitted.

“With entries solicited from across the United States — from small offices to corporate professionals — for us to be recognized in little old Franklin County is really cool,” Nichols said.

Learning the basics of graphic design long before the age of electronic graphics, Nichols learned to typeset ads working for Franklin Printing. She then went on to work for the Morning Sentinel in Waterville doing page layout and typesetting ads.

After that, she didn’t remain in that line of work but kept doing graphic design on her own, she said. Basically self taught by trial and error, she continued producing things like restaurant menus, brochures and business cards.

“It’s an interest I have. Some people like to garden or paint . . . for me, it’s very therapeutic,” she said.

A self-proclaimed perfectionist, Nichols gives much of her own time and effort to make the Welcome Guides something very special.

“I want people to like it and take it and come here,” she said. “Our whole goal is to promote Franklin County. Winning an award like this puts us out there even more. While everyone’s been focused on exposing the coastal region, Maine is its interior. Franklin County has been a well-kept secret and we don’t want it to be that way.”

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The Franklin County Chamber of Commerce’s 2007-2008 Welcome Guide wins a national award.