>>TRENDS - STYLE COUNCIL - S/S 2012

Designers works thru vast resources for inspirations and trend forecasting every season.  The Style Council provides full services on trend forecast or original designs in textile and graphics.  Contact them directly for full details related to the Spring/Summer 2012 trends.  They are one of the industry leaders in trend forecasting.  Also check out their site to see actual Designers in real work scenarios at Style Council's studio tour.


Fish Tattoo Designs

Fish Tattoo Designs

Tattoo Designs: The Lotus

Tattoo Designs: The Lotus

Gurita Tattoo

Gurita Tattoo

God Love Playing Guitar

God Love Playing Guitar

Dragon Tattoo

Dragon Tattoo

Google Unveils Delicious Bookmark Importer

Google has just rolled out a convenient new tool for importing your Delicious bookmarks to Google Bookmarks.
The simple importer takes your Delicious login credentials (or lets you use a one-click OAuth button) and imports all your bookmarks, preserving labels or tags.
Considering Google’s rather broad reach as a company, the importer is likely more than just a friendly bid for more Google Bookmarks users.

Bookmarks was launched in 2005, but it’s never been a huge hit — or a money maker — for the company. Last year, Google launched Lists for Bookmarks, a more social feature for bookmarking that put the product into direct competition with Yahoo’s Delicious. At the time, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter was still a Google employee. However, what makes the Delicious importer timing so interesting is Yahoo’s recent decision to “sunset,” i.e., to sell, Delicious. As more startups and other web companies have promoted their own Delicious importers, a successful sale of the once relatively popular web service grows ever more unlikely. Google’s importer may be the nail in the coffin, in fact.

This isn’t the first time Google has made overt overtures to Yahoo services users. But it’s definitely a direct stab at Yahoo’s bottom line.

But Machiavellian maneuvers aside, Google’s importer is a pleasure to use and will likely be a good fit if you’re a user of other Google apps, such as Reader or Gmail. Here are some screenshots:

Mozilla Revamps F1, Makes Firefox More Social

Mozilla has released an updated version of its F1 browsing extension. F1 is from the Mozilla Messaging team and is designed to make it easy to share links across various social services. Rather than having to rely on “share this” buttons on a web page, users can just hit F1 on their keyboards (or “function” F1 for Mac users) and select the service they want to use.
When Mozilla released the first iteration of this extension back in November, we welcomed the idea of a browser-focused sharing system. With the latest release, however, Mozilla has really upped the ante and improved the look and functionality of the extension, as well as adding support for more services.

New Look and Feel

The old version of F1 wasn’t unattractive — in fact we complemented the clean design. The problem, however, was because sharing buttons spanned the horizontal length of the browser, it could get cluttered and ungainly if used with too many services or on browser windows of odd widths.
The new interface features a vertical layout that stacks each service on top of another, displaying the sharing template only for a selected service. The content of the browser also remains unchanged in this implementation, with the overlay simply floating atop the webpage.
We like this look much better and find it effective and unobtrusive. This new video shows the plugin in action:


New Services and Features

In addition to a new UI, F1 has also added support for more services. LinkedIn joins Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Google Apps and Yahoo. Facebook and Twitter have also received additional capabilities. Users can now send a direct message to other Twitter users using F1 and they can also share with group walls on Facebook.
Finally, the Google Apps and Gmail templates have received an update to include a thumbnail of the link being shared.

The latest version of F1 isn’t just about adding new features — it’s also about taking old features away. This release will only work on the Firefox 4 beta. That means users of Firefox 3.6 will need to make the move to the Firefox 4 beta or forego the update.

Mozilla says that the decision to move to Firefox 4 only was because of some of the new UI techniques. Now in its 11th beta, Firefox 4 is stable and fast. We wouldn’t say that F1 is a reason to make the move to the new browser but it will be one of the many benefits.

What we would love to see with F1 would be an API that developers can use to plug their own services into the plugin. Having one sharing bar built into the browser is a useful concept but it gets more useful when more services are supported.

What do you think of F1? Do you use any browser extensions or bookmarklets to easily share links? Let us know.

>>COLOR TRENDS - PANTONE

Designers work ahead of the seasons to seek color trends and inspirations for their next collection. Fall 2011, color trends from Pantone, Pantone.com are one of many color trend resources.




  

>> THE TEEN VOGUE HANDBOOK

Very informative book from Teen Vogue, an insider's guide to careers in the fashion industry.  You can purchase this book online from Amazon.com . Select the following link to order now, The Teen Vogue Handbook.

>>EUROPE SHOPPING REPORT

A couple of excerpts from my trend report (pgs. 3 and 5) >> Europe 2010 - Spring shopping trip. 




First stop was Barcelona, then off to London and then finally to New York - all in a week's time and 900 photos later. My shots are collectively of store windows, instore merchandise and street fashion.  Interesting isn't it....travel to shop for work.  
   


>>DAY 1

My first day on FV >>>> and I've come equipped with all of the necessities to create....and to inspire you.




Inspirations are everywhere....so always be equipped with a sharpie, notebook and camera. Trust me they would come in very handy. It always amazes me how fashion always evolve and revolve - my inspirations on this photo are from the trend services Design Intelligence circa 1994,it speaks ECO and definitely not dated. Fashion will always have a place in our world in the past, present and future. Many of you today will make and shape the world - our future. I look forward to inspire you so......
   


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