From the cute little macaroon you’re eating to the office-chic “Mad Men” clothes you’re wearing — the nostalgia trend is everywhere. Lately, I find myself perusing antique shops on weekends, filling my 1950s-era home with furnishings and home decor, enjoying the hunt and surprise of what I might find. I admit that I have fully embraced this trend and I love it!

There’s no surprise that the fad “old is new again” is huge in part because of the economy’s slow bounce back, but also due to a revival of our favorites from the past and all of the memories that go along with it. Consumers are looking for a connection to what they buy, and a link to the past is familiar and comforting. Companies are rereleasing and reimagining old favorites like the newly designed KitchenAid mixer released for the company’s 90th anniversary, or the vintage-inspired Krups coffee maker that is reminiscent of your grandmother’s shiny teapot. This bodes well for shoppers, because if they’re not repurposing old for new they can buy new products with a vintage vibe.

Homeowners are turning to their past for decorating ideas. They’re unearthing old treasures from their grandparents, unpacking family vacation trinkets and dusting off garage sale items. If they aren’t shopping at thrift shops, they’re going to Anthropologie, Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn for vintage finds. Today it’s all about telling a story. Home decor has become a visual scrapbook expressing a homeowner’s personality. You’re making a statement with the picture hanging on your wall, the lamp illuminating your room and the candle holder displayed on your coffee table.

If you’re in Minnesota and are looking to get started with this trend, I suggest shopping estate sales or local antique shops, like Hunt & Gather of Minneapolis, or heading out to Buffalo where you’ll find a slew of shops to explore, like the Buffalo Nickel. One of my favorite places to go for inspiration is the Bachman’s Ideas House on Lyndale. Bachman’s has reinvented itself as not just a garden center, but as an inspiring shopping destination as its trend-forward designers transform the historic Bachman’s home with a fusion of new and vintage decorating and entertaining ideas. Seasonally, they provide creative looks to fill your home with character and personality built on a foundation of time-tested keepsakes and tasteful reimagining.

The old saying “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” rings true. What can this mean for your personal style? Group your vintage finds with modern decor and colors to avoid looking stuffy and old. Don’t be afraid to paint. Old brass fixtures painted in a fun color or with an antiqued finish will instantly update the look.

What can this mean for your brand? Know your audience. Listen to them through social media to become familiar with their trends and interests. You’ll know you’re on the right track when your consumer no longer asks, “How does this look?” but rather, “What does it say?”

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Spring has sprung — at least in my mailbox! Last weekend I pored over 2,500 pages of spring fashion and home decor magazines, and nothing was more apparent than patterns. As trends often do, this spring’s patterns take their cues from the runway. From florals to stripes, there certainly is something for everyone. And the bigger, the brighter, the better.

I love patterns because they provide visual texture and bring personality to any wardrobe, sofa or office. But working with patterns can be tricky. So what’s the best way to approach the explosion of patterns this spring? Here are a few tricks I use to make patterns sing in my space.

• Mix patterns — just make sure each pattern has similar colors and offset them with solid-colored accessories.
• For a less formal vibe, pair a simple stripe with a floral damask.
• Animal prints never go out of style and are a great neutral. They go with everything. Be careful not to go all safari, though. Use one print, like a cheetah, and keep the look fresh with a pop of color like a bright green or an orangish red.
• To create my own pattern or graphic design, I like to color block by mixing solid colors together to make my own “stripe.” Try combining contrasting colors like blue and orange with neutrals like black and white.
• My last word of advice? Spend wisely. Don’t drop a fortune on patterned accessories. They tend to go out of style within a season or two.

Use the above images to kick-start your creative juices for spring/summer 2012, and have fun with patterns!

Credits: 1-3. J.Crew  4-5. Kate Spade  6. Serena & Lily  7. Jonathan Adler  8. Prada  9. Diane Von Furstenberg  10. West Elm

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Product design is influenced by trends coming out of Europe, fashion and home decor. Coming to a Post-it® Note, iPad case and throw pillow near you, here is a sampling of what we will see in 2011:

Garden Party
There are a few events in England that will influence the world in 2011, including the royal wedding and the premiere of the final Harry Potter film. We’ll see florals and lace with muted tones and a vintage feel. This Garden Party trend is romantic with a sense of tradition and formality, but with a playful and younger touch — think Kate Middleton.

Greige Glamour
Greige Glamour is a structured look that is a combination of grays and beiges with minimalistic shapes and patterns. There is a high sense of sophistication to this trend. The neutral tones of greige will take center stage this year.

Global Bazaar
Consumers will look to new color combinations from foreign lands based on their desire to escape their everyday challenges. Global Bazaar is bright with saturated hues and bold patterns inspired by nature, travel and exploration. This trend is influenced by Turkey, Africa and India with tapestry-like patterns and traditional tribal design elements and color, as well as natural materials.

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Overwhelmed by all the technology coming your way? Let us help you get a grasp on what’s happening and give you a glimpse of what’s to come:

NOOKcolor

Tablet Devices
The tablet personal computer market is exploding. In 2010, there were more than 30 new models available. This year, in addition to standard devices like the iPad 2, Playbook and HP Slate, look for full-color combo e-reader/tablets, such as the NookColor, which offers features such as built-in Wi-Fi for access to the Web and social media. (Read more about e-readers here.) With the O2 Joggler, a virtual calendar and messaging device, you can watch videos, get weather reports, check headlines, text message and listen to your favorite Internet radio station. And this year, Google will launch Honeycomb, the first mobile system software optimized for tablets that can be upgraded.

Smart Meters
Smart meters are advanced utility meters that allow you to manage the energy usage in your home, by day, season, time or appliance remotely from your kitchen countertop. With energy costs rising and more people pledging to lower their carbon footprint, smart meters are bound to gain in popularity.

Mobile Devices
The usage and selection of mobile devices is ever-expanding. Secure, fast checkouts from a mobile device will give consumers the option to purchase as they continue to shop. In the grocery store, computerized grocery carts mounted with high-tech video consoles will provide shoppers with suggestions and advice as they peruse the store. Another new mobile device-related technology is wireless charging pads, which charge devices without annoying cords or plugs.

Cost-Saving Technologies
As companies strive to save money, they will look to virtual desktop infrastructure and cloud computing. These technologies eliminate the need to purchase software licenses and hardware for new employees and locations in favor of using a service for software and server space.

Here at Go East, we use “in the cloud” Google Docs and billing software, both of which allow access from anywhere via the Internet. If you have multiple Internet-accessing devices at home, you may want to look into a personal cloud: online services and software that work together to help users access, organize and share information.

Wi-Fi Direct
Wi-Fi direct offers a new way for devices to communicate directly with each other without having to connect first to a conventional Wi-Fi access point.

If I had to pick the device I’m most interested in, it would be the tablet. I like the idea that it’s portable and larger than a smartphone, not to mention the multitude of ways it can be used: e-mail, shopping, social media, games and books. I would never be bored or out of touch.

Here’s hoping that some of this new technology will help keep us all better connected, make life simpler and perhaps save us some money in 2011!

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E-books, eReaders, ebooks, e-readers … while the jury may still be out on spelling, there’s no denying that electronic books and readers are one of the biggest trends happening in 2011.

I bought my wife a Kobo™ for Christmas and she loves it, but being more of a traditionalist, I temper my enthusiasm for new technology with a certain amount of kicking and screaming.

While I know there is some debate as to whether e-books will replace traditional printed books, I think it’s important to remember that it doesn’t have to be an “either/or” decision. Each medium has its own benefits and practicalities. Let’s look at the following five criteria to see how they compare:

1.) Common Format

The electronic book market is currently in a format war, with the Kindle (Amazon), Kobo™ (Borders) and NOOK™ (Barnes & Noble) all battling for supremacy. Who will win is anybody’s guess, but the printed paper/bound cover format gets points for longevity.

2.) Overall Reading Experience

E-books offer a vast array of features to enhance the reading experience. For example, if you are a card-carrying member of the “American Bifocal Wearers’ Society” such as I, you can enlarge the text size to whatever size is easiest for you to read.

Some higher end models such as the Nook™ offer a lending feature, allowing owners to lend their favorite e-books to family or friends.

On the other hand, a printed book is more tactile allowing the reader to engage their sense of touch as well as sight.

3.) Safety

Drop a book and it’s safe. Drop an electronic reader and … well, you’ve got a 50/50 chance.

4.) Archival Storage

Paper has definitely proven the test of time (Dead Sea Scrolls anyone?) The typical lifespan of a high-tech device is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-5 years. However, since e-books are still in their infancy, this one is hard to call at the moment. Check back with me in 2-5 years.

5.) Ownership

Once you purchase a printed book, it’s yours to keep. When you buy an electronic book, you are technically just licensing it from the publisher who could potentially take it away (rare, but at least one case has been documented).

So there you have it. I leave it to the readers (be it acoustic or electric) to choose the medium that best suits them.

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I’m certainly not the first to write that privacy will be a trend in 2011. In the last months of 2010 it was almost impossible to avoid the huge upswing in conversations about Internet-related privacy as we recovered from the uproar over Facebook’s maddeningly complex privacy policy — which is now some 5,000 words long —  and  looked on as Julian Assange shook American diplomacy with Wikileaks revelations. Internet privacy has long been a discussion, but as the golden year of social media, 2010 seemed to be the year we consumers really realized all the ways in which we are gathered, tracked and, yes, catered to through our many connections on the Internet.

For some, that was a little freaky — as in, Ack! Does Amazon know that my Kindle went to Starbucks in Highland Village and lingered on page 152 of Pride and Prejudice for three hours … or does it know that I, Susan Pagani, went to Starbucks etc., etc.?

And there’s the rub: Considering how confounding privacy policies can be, how much do we understand about the privacy we have or don’t have? How much privacy do consumers really want?

As a writer at Go East — working on a myriad of consumer products sold on the Internet — a sometimes journalist, and a consumer, I find myself waffling on the latter question.

In a thoughtful blog post on the Stanford Center for Internet and Society website, Ryan Calo, Director of the Consumer Privacy Project, draws a parallel between Wikileaks and consumer privacy.  He writes, among other things, that consumer candor — like diplomatic — is based on trust, on the “well-earned comfort with revealing to a business who you are and what you want.”

“Companies do not earn trust by using every interaction with a consumer to profile them, much less by storing that information in a database that can, and often does, leak out.”

Put that way, it does make me anxious. However, it seems to me that lack of understanding feeds lack of trust. So, the 2011 privacy trend will likely have to include the creation of strong, transparent privacy policies that are easier to understand and opt in or out of  — policies that will provide greater protection for the consumers who want it and better results for those who choose to opt into profiling.

Yet, on the opt-in side, the communications writer in me finds the potential power of well-aimed online advertising well-nigh irresistible.

I enjoyed a humorous, yet pointed blog post by Robert Wright on the New York Times website, in which he posited that if Google, Bing and other search engines can figure out how to use consumers’ personal information to better target their needs and wants — as he says, targeting the individual, not the audience bucket — they could actually save journalism. If targeted ads actually worked, consumers would click and buy, more companies would advertise, online news would finally have a revenue source, journalists would be paid a livable wage and their research and interviews would be funded — a supportable outcome as each year more folding newspapers continue to go the way of the curlew. Win, win, win!

For that — and the assurance of neither being bombarded with useless ads nor having my identity stolen or misappropriated — I might give up a little privacy. How about you?

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Who isn’t predicting a trend for social media in 2011? Instead of creating my own list, I checked out what the various bloggers on the Web had to say and found a lot of good and relevant thoughts on what will be hot in social media marketing for 2011, such as:

1. Finding meaningful ways to measure ROI in social media (more than how many fans you have)
2. Less emphasis on new technology (and more on strengthening the existing)
3. Innovation in location-based marketing (Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places)

While these are great forecasts for 2011, there is really only one consistent trend that is percolating to the top among most social media trend forecasters: strategy. To date, there are very few big brands that have thought holistically about their marketing communication efforts. In-depth integration is more than having a presence in social media. Even a good presence is not enough. And true integration requires serious strategy and planning.

Whether you reach out to your agency for help or you do it yourself, building social media into your 2011 integrated communication plan needs to be done. Because the bottom line is your customers are using social media to talk about your brand whether you know it or not. If you’re not in the right places/spaces, you can’t influence those conversations. And that’s lost opportunity.

What do you think about strategy being the #1 2011 social media trend?

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By examining current color trends and popular shades used in communications, we can determine what puts specific customers in a buying mood and whether it’s appropriate to deliver a message in black or white or use a hint of color to reach the intended audience.

For the past few years, business has been mostly dire, with depressing financial forecasts and record job losses. Now, as the economy recovers, we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Consumers are trying to maintain a brighter outlook and companies are beginning to change their marketing collateral, messaging and tone to provide confidence and optimism.

Last year, Pantone® selected Mimosa as the color of 2009. Described as embodying hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change, the warm yellow tone garners attention, yet also creates a sense of relaxation. Yellow is seen before any other color and appeals to both men and women, making it the perfect shade for point-of-purchase displays and direct mail.

In 2010, Pantone® chose Turquoise as the color of the year. Inspired by water and the sky and considered a color of deep compassion, healing and truth, turquoise is a color most people respond to positively. It is universally flattering, appeals to both men and women, and translates easily to fashion, interior design and point-of-purchase displays.

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