Adobe helps people and businesses interact and communicate in more effective and compelling ways. The Adobe platform of innovative technologies helps their customers create compelling content by digitally integrating ideas, information and images.
For the groundbreaking introduction of its Creative Suite, Adobe wanted to emotionally reconnect with its visually astute audience of creative professionals. MetaDesign developed a design system employing natural forms as a metaphor for the creative process, extending from the product packaging to software icons. The success of this project spawned an ongoing relationship, which included the packaging and icon design for Adobe Creative Suite 2, Adobe Acrobat, and for the redesign of the company’s corporate communications.
MetaDesign crafted a style framework that distills the attributes of precision, beauty, and aspiration of Adobe’s Creative Professional products.
The framework later proved useful in the comprehensive redesign of Adobe’s corporate communications, including its annual report and corporate brochure. These communications were grounded in the strategic direction MetaDesign helped to define for the company, based on the themes of communicating ideas, exchanging information, and sharing memories.
MetaDesign was retained to reconsider the overall look, feel and tone in Adobe’s other business segments, including Enterprise and Consumer, in order to unify the company’s visual commu- nications through a single voice.
The style framework differentiated Adobe brand attributes and messages by audience, providing a lens through which all design activities could be evaluated.
The Adobe annual report was the first piece to codify the company’s new positioning across its three primary markets. The annual report was selected as one of the year’s best by the Black Book AR 100, and was a finalist for the London International Advertising & Design Awards.
“MetaDesign understood that our new product packaging had to speak to creative people in a visual language that inspires them, and shows that Adobe is passionate about design.”
Jane Willis, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Adobe Systems Inc.
The strategy framework that informed the Creative Suite package design substantially contributed to the increase in brand valuation over three years, and provided a solid foundation for design extension.
MetaDesign created an online version of the Adobe annual report to further expand upon Adobe’s new strategic direction.
The Creative Suite 2 packaging continued the theme of nature as a metaphor for the creative process, which had been established by the strategic framework for the original packaging. Creative Suite 2 used X-ray photography to represent the unseen creative process. An icon system was designed to extend the motifs from the packaging to the user interface.
