Throughout this class, I have spent a bunch of time talking about being observant and pinpointing patterns as a method for tracking trends. But there are also a ton of outlets out there specifically designed as trends, tracking tools, some are better than others, and some will apply to your industry better than others as well. So today, I'm going to walk you through the platforms that I currently use for tracking and understanding trends. Google Trends is an insanely powerful tool. I mean, that's pretty understandable since it harnesses all the data from the biggest search engine on Earth. Here's how it works.

You can see what searches are currently trending on Google then dig into a specific topic for more information. For example, I'm searching digital nomad, I picked that term because that's pretty much what I am. I travel the world full time working off my laptop as I go. Scrolling down, you can see how popular this phrase was over time, plus interest by region, you can see related topics as well as related searches. I'm going to do one more. Let's try Halloween.

Cool. That makes sense. It's really only trending during October. It's fairly evenly spread and popularity across the US. And it has related topics that also makes sense. If you stick to the front page of Google Trends, you can scroll down to see the most popular search engine inquiries.

At this very moment. Google Trends is awesome for overarching trends. But what about trends specifically related to creative industries, enter trend hunter trend hunter proclaims itself to be the world's largest most popular trends community. They leverage Big Data human researchers and AI to identify consumer insights and deep dive opportunities for the world's most innovative companies. But do take note trend hunter primarily operates as a paid subscription service, their clients, Samsung Kellogg's Crayola are all paying for their premium customized So I don't pay for their subscription. I just browse through their free content and so far it's suited me just fine.

Trent hunter categorizes pretty efficiently. So you can filter by design specific trends as well. It covers interiors, architecture, products, design and more. Some other platforms that are pretty similar to trend hunter cool hunting, Topsy ends trend watching. These large trend tracking platforms span multiple industries, from finance and tech developments to culture and education. They're great for keying into large scale change.

But a lot of the time I'm simply looking for design inspiration that I can incorporate into my artwork. And for that I get trend reports right from the source. It's becoming more and more common for companies that sell art like societies likes to send out frequent trend reports to their contributing artists. It's in everyone's best interest. Society six wants to have relevant and on trend designs to sell to their customers and artists want to create work that has to Purchasing potential because we want to make money. So here's how it works.

For example, with society six, they have an entire section of their blog dedicated to artist education. It's a fantastic resource all around for a lot of different reasons. Every month or so, they publish their findings and predictions for what types of artwork and designs their customers will be heavily demanding in the months to follow. It's fantastic. They show you examples of motifs that are on the rise, high demands, color palettes, and themes that are likely to really take off in the coming months and more. And as an artist who sells a lot of products through society six, this is an insanely valuable resource.

And this is just one example of a print on demand company that sends out trend reports to their licensees. I also receive trend reports from red bubble, as well as the brands that I work with, like creative Co Op targets, modcloth, Home Goods and more. I love receiving these because not only does it give me a heads up of what my life answers are looking for. But it also informs me of what I can expect to see kind of expanding out across the entire industry. industry leaders also publish their own trend forecasts, usually in January when everyone is searching for what the upcoming trends are going to be for the year stock companies like Shutterstock, Adobe, Getty, I stock, and dreamtime all prophesize, which they believe will take over in the year to come. And you've got to give it to them.

Their data is based off of hundreds of thousands of individual downloads and interactions. So if their algorithm is solid, and it usually is for these big players, then these guys absolutely know what they're talking about. Let's take a peek at Shutterstock since they're arguably one of the largest stock photo companies with over 70 million assets. Every year they announced the upcoming years color trends to discover exactly what colors are on the rise. They sort through their customer downloads and analyze hundreds of billions of pixel data from these images, the maps pixels to the closest named hex code. And from that, they deduce which colors have the greatest growth between last year and this year.

It's a pretty technical system. And it's not quite the same as pan tones approach to trend forecasting, which is a little bit more subjective. Remember, they send out teams to comb the globe for color influences and pop culture, film, art, design, fashion and more. But it's always good to get your information from more than one source, Pantone maybe the color industry leader but other companies all have things to offer as well, especially a brand as influential as Shutterstock. Okay, a couple more tricks and tools I use to predict trends. I prioritize identifying trends in my industry, aka arts, licensing and surface design.

One of the platforms that I sell my artwork through is society six and I do quite well there I'm among their top 1% earners. And one of the coolest things about society six, you can filter all their artwork by popular and this little feature is absolute gold. It allows me an artist and content creator to see what designs are absolutely killing it on society sex. And because my audience doesn't just align with society sexes, it is society sixes audience This is insanely valuable information so I can use these same methods for picking up repetition and patterns and apply it to the new artwork that I'm producing now. All right, next up, I'm going to dive into the blogs and brands that I personally follow for trend tracking inspiration