Tackling and tracing tricky trends

Trends are tricky. Everyone wants to be a trend setter but it’s not optimal to be always be chasing them. But, staying on top of trends is vital.

How do we do it? Other than always embracing curiosity, and making a point to walk through creative spaces and venues like the to find inspiration, there are many sources for trends and trending information.

These ways are easy:

Explore what’s trending on Twitter, or through a service like Trends24. A dive into Google Trends is always fascinating, too.

I enjoy and learn from WSJ’s “The Future of Everything” and make it a point, at least weekly, to look at the top iTunes songs, iBooks and Amazon sales.

Also, I make a concerted effort to read Reddit and sites that I regularly don’t. Random visits to fashion sites, niche sites, political sites, etc. Out of my comfort zone stuff — zig when they zag.

Feedly and DailyDot also are good stops. For greater Milwaukee needs, the MMAC publishes economic trends.

There’s a lot more than just the above ideas, of course, but adding these trends tricks will help to open your world. How you process and use them … well, that’s up to you!