– Your Bright Brothers Team
David Romako / Josh Yeager /  Brandi Walsh

It’s always rewarding when a client lets you know precisely how you helped them improve. We were thrilled when a representative from the City of Tempe recently shared a win that Bright Brothers helped make happen! We assisted the city with overhauling its email communications program with modernized templates, visual representation, and trained dozens on the new system. All the effort lead to award-winning work and the team being lauded with the coveted “Judge’s Award” by the Phoenix chapter of PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) for Tempe’s “COVID-19 Update” series, which the judges felt “best defined public relations excellence”. Kudos and congrats to Comms Team at the City of Tempe!

Photo credit:  phoenixprsa.org

From sculptures and murals, to street art and painted utility boxes, to experiencing entire cities as “open-air art galleries”; Travel and Leisure magazine used data from a recent city survey by Money to curate their list of the top 11 cities with must-see pieces of public art. While the Money survey had some interesting results of its own, the eleven cities selected by T&L certainly make us want to start packing for our travel bucket lists right now!

Photo credit:  George Pagan III, Unsplash

Predictions, predictions, predictions! It’s the time of year when many publications put together round-ups of trends, predictions and plenty of prognosticating — and we just love it!  Here are a few that caught our eye.

• From e-bikes to curbside efficiencies, libraries to IT and infrastructure, SmartCitiesDIVE tallied up “12 predictions about the trends that will shape smart cities in 2022”.
• WIRED portends that, “The Pandemic Might Have Redesigned Cities Forever” and that changes small and large, from parklets, outdoor restaurants and bike lanes, could remake our relationship to cities (and help fix climate change).
• Fast Company notes that COVID forced cities to redesign their streets, and now some of their changes are permanent.
• And for you design-minded masters of visual engagement, Creative Boom rounded up top design trends for 2022, while Pantone placed a periwinkle crown atop the head of its 2022 potentate “Very Peri” (aka Pantone 17-3938) as their “Color of the Year”, along with a cadre of colorful choices by season, as seen here with their Fashion Color Trend Report for Spring/Summer 22.

It all adds up to some interesting plays to track in the year to come!

Photo credit: Jack Kolpitcke, Unsplash

From microwaves to master leases, the 350,000 person town of Bakersfield, CA announced that they had effectively resolved homelessness for its residents. By taking a “people-first” approach, Bakersfield brought their population of people experiencing homelessness from 72 to two, effectively ending the issue locally. Bakersfield is one of five cities to have “functionally ended chronic homelessness” so far, according to the Built for Zero campaign, that proposes that any city can implement these processes with “good data and a sustained effort”.  To learn how they did this, check out this illuminating piece from Next City. But story didn’t end there. Within a week of the city announcement, a citizen called them in a letter to the editor. So what does it really mean to “effectively end homelessness”?  Find out in this follow up piece by the same author.
 
Photo credit: David Seibold / CC BY-NC 2.0

Just like every new tech start-up is dubbed “the new Uber”, trendy towns and cities to watch get called “Brooklyn”.  We loved this Realtor.com round-up of the “10 Trendiest Cities in America Where You Can Still Afford To Buy a Home”. With housing costs and associated expenses continuing to explode, along with our current 30-year high inflation, finding an affordable place to make your castle comes with a hefty price-tag, but bargain shoppers should consider these ten U.S. cities that are trendy, on-brand and ripe for relocation.
 
Photo credit: Realtor.com