“Shutterfly Announces Top Trends in Birth Announcements and the Names Most ... - MarketWatch (press release)” plus 1

Shutterfly Announces Top Trends in Birth Announcements and the Names Most ... - MarketWatch (press release)

Posted: 25 Feb 2010 06:06 AM PST

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REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb 25, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Shutterfly, Inc. /quotes/comstock/15*!sfly/quotes/nls/sfly (SFLY 19.22, -0.18, -0.93%) , the leading Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service, today introduced more than 100 new birth announcements designed to greet the decade's newest arrivals with style and sophistication. Shutterfly also revealed the most popular baby names among Shutterfly's stationery shoppers. To compliment the new styles, Shutterfly expanded its popular collection of personalized invitations and greeting cards with a variety of new designs to support growing demand for personalized cards and stationery occasions throughout the year. To view the new collection, visit www.shutterfly.com/stationery.

"The expansion of our popular baby stationery collection melds the most popular elements of past designs with the trends that are shaping the stationery world this year," said Stephanie Roeder, Shutterfly's Card Stylist. "Customers shopping for baby girls versus baby boys have very different preferences, and our new styles are a celebration of those differences, offering an unparalleled breadth of choices for the discerning parent."

Shutterfly's research and user data show that customers with baby girls are most interested in a light and soft look for their announcement and are also more likely to take a risk and choose a design with fresh trend color pairings -- while customers with baby boys are more interested in a classic and traditional color and patterned approach. The names gracing baby announcements this year are likely to follow similar trends with Addison and Emma topping the list of girl names, while the more traditional William and Dylan were the most popular boy names among Shutterfly customers.

According to Ms. Roeder, birth announcements in 2010 will encompass the following trends:

1. Photo is king -- Right now, "full-bleed" photos, those that span the entire size of the card, are a hit for birth announcements. Everyone is anxious to see the long-awaited bundle of joy, and parents take advantage of the birth announcement to include as many or as large a photo as possible. For a modern pop, look for cards that layer typography on top of the photo.

2. Black is the new brown -- Although chocolate brown paired with color has been the "color of choice" in sophisticated stationery designs for two years running, this year it's all about black. Black intensifies the focus on the photo and makes colors pop, all while keeping its sophisticated edge.

3. M is for monogram -- Personalization is central to any announcement, and this year, parents are adding that touch with a simple monogram. Text styles vary from bold to playful, but in every case the design flows gracefully from a single initial.

4. Color pairings send a message -- For a baby girl birth announcement, pink with lime green is the current hot trend thanks to the rebirth of preppy chic and the optimistic tone it sets. For a baby boy announcement, it's all about blue with grey hues creating a classic look while exuding sophistication at the same time.

5. Tradition, straight up with a twist -- When it comes to the core design elements within announcements, the look starts traditional but gets a modern touch from color and scale. For example, one popular look pairs a damask pattern with on-trend colors while another enlarges the classic polka dot to create a more modern feel.

Shutterfly also launched cards for new occasions this year, including Easter Cards invitations and greetings, as well as First Communion invitations. In addition to baby announcements, Shutterfly has expanded their offerings in the categories of adult birthday invitations, kids birthday invitations, baby's first birthday invitations and baptism invitations, to be the one-stop resource for all personalized stationery needs.

Shutterfly's stationery assortment is available in six sizes and offers direct mail service for Shutterfly's 5x7 folded greeting and flat stationery cards. For more information on Shutterfly's complete line of cards and stationery, please visit: www.shutterfly.com/cards.

About Shutterfly

Founded in 1999, Shutterfly, Inc. is an Internet-based social expression and personal publishing service. Shutterfly provides high quality products and world class services that make it easy, convenient and fun for consumers to preserve their digital photos in a creative and thoughtful manner. Shutterfly's flagship product is its award-winning Photo Book line, which helps consumers celebrate memories and tell their stories in professionally bound coffee table books. More information about Shutterfly /quotes/comstock/15*!sfly/quotes/nls/sfly (SFLY 19.22, -0.18, -0.93%) is available at www.shutterfly.com. Shutterfly and Shutterfly.com are trademarks of Shutterfly, Inc.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6193078&lang=en

SOURCE: Shutterfly, Inc.

  Shutterfly, Inc.  Media Relations:  Gretchen Sloan, 650-610-5276  gsloan@shutterfly.com

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Odd baby names: Not just for celebs - msnbc.com

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 09:21 AM PST

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Celebrities aren't the only ones giving their babies unusual names. Compared with decades ago, parents are choosing less common names for kids, which could suggest an emphasis on uniqueness and individualism, according to new research.

Essentially, today's kids (and later adults) will stand out from classmates. For instance, in the 1950s, the average first-grade class of 30 children would have had at least one boy named James (top name in 1950), while in 2013, six classes will be necessary to find only one Jacob, even though that was the most common boys' name in 2007.

The researchers suspect the uptick of unusual baby names could be a sign of a change in culture from one that applauded fitting in to today's emphasis on being unique and standing out. When taken too far, however, this individualism could also lead to narcissism, according to study researcher Jean Twenge, of San Diego State University.

Baby naming history
The results come from an analysis of 325 million baby names recorded by the Social Security Administration from 1880 to 2007. The research team figured out the percentage of babies given the most popular name or a name among the 10, 20, or 50 most popular for that year and sex. Since it wasn't required that people get a social security card until 1937, names before that time may not be random samples of the population, the researchers note.

Results showed parents were less likely to choose those popular names as time went on. For instance, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, about 5 percent of babies were named the top common name, while more recently that dropped to 1 percent.

About 40 percent of boys received one of the 10 most common names in the 1880s, while now fewer than 10 percent do.
For girls, the percentage with a top-10 name dropped from 25 percent in about 1945 to 8 percent in 2007.
Similar results were seen for the top-50 names. About half of girls received one of the 50 most popular names until the mid-20th century. Now, just one in four have these names.

(A list of top-10 baby names by year, and their popularity, can be found here.)

This trend in baby-naming didn't show a constant decrease. Between 1880 and 1919, fewer parents were giving their children common names, though from 1920 to the 1940s common names were used more often than before. Then, when baby boomers came on the scene, so did more unusual names.

The biggest decrease in usage of common names came in the 1990s, said Twenge, who is also an author of "The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement" (Free Press, 2009) and "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled and –More Miserable Than Ever Before" (Free Press, 2007).

Naming narcissists
The results held even when the researchers accounted for immigration rates and increasing Latino populations, which could bring relatively less common names into the mix.

"The most compelling explanation left is this idea that parents are much more focused on their children standing out," Twenge told LiveScience. "There's been this cultural shift toward focusing on the individual, toward standing out and being unique as opposed to fitting in with the group and following the rules."

The positive side of individualism, Twenge said, is that there is less prejudice and more tolerance for minority groups. But she warns that when individualism is taken too far, the result is narcissism.

"I think it is an indication of our culture becoming more narcissistic," Twenge said.

Past research has shown that back in the 1950s parents placed a lot of importance on a child being obedient, which has gone way down. "Parenting has become more permissive and more child-focused and [parents] are much more reluctant to be authority figures," Twenge said.
As for whether these unusually named kids will have personalities to match is not known.
"It remains to be seen whether having a unique name necessarily leads to narcissism later in life," Twenge said. "If that unique name is part of a parent's overall philosophy that their child is special and needs to stand out and that fitting in is a bad thing, then that could lead to those personality traits."
The research, which is detailed in the January issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, also included Emodish M. Abebe of SDSU and W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia in Athens.
© 2010 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

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