Perusing this year’s photography trends, there’s nothing to shock or delight: The woman is the hero, the product is the hero, green is the hero, the almighty buck is the hero and … the hero is the hero. It’s about what you’d expect in — yes, I’m going to say it — this economy.

1. Microstock Photography. Driven by a need for affordable, royalty-free stock photography for Web use, many brands are choosing microstock over other royalty-free and rights-managed stock photography agencies. Major stock houses are marketing photos at lower, affordable prices in hopes that designers will become enamored with the quality and move up to more expensive photos. But beware; chances are that direct competitors may be using the same image you just bought for the low, low price of $1.

2. Belief, Spiritual Heroism and Sanctuary. As outlined in this Getty Images report, the testimonial trend in portraiture is shifting to accommodate ideas around “belief,” “spiritual heroism” and “sanctuary.” Consumers are hoping to obtain a sense of control in an age of information overload.

3. Women Subjects. A different Getty Images analysis reveals that 36 percent of all advertising tear sheets picture individual women, compared to only 5 percent that picture individual men. This makes sense; women buy for themselves, their partners and their family. Additionally, women are beginning to revolutionize the image space in advertising, particularly in business imagery as companies start to develop leadership models based around female values.

4. Green. From bugs to trees, lifestyle to industry, “green” will become the default position for clients and advertisers. The trick here is not to make photography choices that are too cliché.

5. Packaging: Show, Don’t Tell. Much packaging sitting on store shelves is loaded with bullet points, copy bursts and lists of features and benefits, all of which ends up confusing the customer. Let simple, eye-catching photography show the consumer what’s in the package and, if possible, the product’s benefits. Designers can achieve this by depicting a solitary, sharply focused product on a white or colored background or by using a shot that evokes a mood or feeling about the product and that illustrates the benefit to the consumer.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

This had to be the most challenging design job ever: “Turn my garbage collection company into a beautiful brand.”

Waste Management first came to my attention when I saw how consistently they handled all their trucks. The large WM logo appeared on every clean, green and white truck that came to pick-up my nice green trash can. I was impressed.

That’s the best packaging redesign yet.

Thanks to Brand Packaging.

Google’s Project 10 to 100 is an open call for ideas that will change the world by helping as many people as possible.  On the site, you can submit an idea and vote on other people’s ideas. Final idea selections will be made by an advisory board, and Google has committed to funding the winners. The deadline is October 20, 2008.

Everyone has an opinion and everyone has their own experience of the ever-swirling, ever-changing, available-at-a-moment’s-notice technologies. I find that current trends in mobile media are fed by actual pros, benefits that I am able to make work with my lifestyle.

I am all about keeping my personal and professional life as organized as possible. Is this doable? Can I actually stay “with the program” and keep my wits about me? In the end, the buck stops here, with me.

Isn’t that the most important point here, me?

I work full time and am a mother of two growing boys. Business deadlines, sports practices, classes, birthday reminders and bills all need to be dealt with … before they come due. Therefore, my most prized possession is my mobile handheld unit. 

The handheld is an all-knowing one-stop-shop where I can monitor all of the developments, schedules and activities in my life. It is a necessity. Franklin Covey watch out! If planning-on-the-go is the wave of the future, you may be going out of business!

Advertisements, political agendas, community activism and corporate campaigns continually remind us to be green and sustainable. What’s better than loading up your mobile unit with content that would otherwise, quite literally, fill binders, briefcases and pockets galore?  I no longer need to print every document for later reference, which means my garbage bin isn’t filled to the brim with stuff that will later end up in a landfill somewhere, someplace, in our country. It also means my house stays clean and organized — no more stacks of papers that go untouched for months. I am able to pay my e-bills, correspond with teachers and document important conversations on an ongoing basis without cutting down another tree.

Not only that, but I’m also able to keep up with conversations in realtime and, if I have a question, the answer is just a Google, phone call, email away. Access is at my fingertips, when and if I need it.

We all have so much content to consider; some nights I hit the pillow with a head stuffed to the gils with numbers and letters. At what point does that super-saturation turn our brains mush?

Who has thought about that, as far as sustainability?

My handheld mobile unit is that form of sanity for me. This resource meets my personal, human needs and preserves my environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also in my indefinite future. This form of communication and organization also preserves my quality of life as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend and business professional.

Therefore, my culture continues to adapt with the ever-changing mobile community. I have accepted it in free will, in order to preserve and conserve my personal and business relationships, sanity and self-satisfaction.

Photo by Landform Minneapolis

Tomorrow is PARK(ing) Day, a worldwide event that claims parking spots and turns them into temporary public parks. Paul Schmelzer with Walker’s “Off Center”:

I got in touch with Shanai Matteson, who’s organizing the event locally. She says she’s asked people to look for (or ask the city to put hoods on meters, for a fee) parking spaces in downtown Minneapolis. She’ll be greening up a pavement swath on Nicollet Mall and another one outside the Community Design Group on 3rd Avenue. While it all sounds so guerrilla, each team will be responsible for plugging the meters the entire time they’re there. For maximum exposure of the parking/parks idea, most participants are keeping their spots at least through the lunch hour.

Twin Cities Streets For People has more:

From 5-8pm you are welcome to stop by the new office of Community Design Group at 212 3rd Avenue North, Suite 515. A Park(ing) Spot will be up for folks to enjoy, as well as drinks and a slide show of images from Park(ing) Days past.

Solutions Twin Cities and Community Design Group are co-sponsoring this get together, which will be a chance to learn more about Park(ing) Day and to talk with other folks who are interested in reclaiming streets for people.

An insurgency has been brewing for a few years now, made up of the inventive, the curious and the technologically restless. It’s called the Maker Movement, and it has brought the pre-1970s world of basement workshops and amateur tinkering into the digital age.

Through two magazines, Make and Craft, and an array of blogs and events called Maker Faires, participants share ideas for previously unimagined tools, toys and forms of locomotion. Their goal is to reassert creative control over technology, which is now so sophisticated and magically opaque that we are its loving hostages. Lots of people are content to lay back and let iPhone and Google tell them where and who they are — Makers are not those people.

…(the) mission is taking the Maker mentality to manufacturers, urging them to make products that consumers can easily maintain, repair, repurpose or even reinvent. Instead of churning out disposables, they end up making collector’s items, and legendary brands. They turn customers into fierce advocates.

“I really want companies to start thinking about shared innovation,” Mr. Jalopy said, “to realize that they’re not selling to customers, but to collaborators.

(Read the Excerpted from the New York Times. Read the Full Article!)