Introducing the Adobe Digital Index report ‘New Creatives Mashup’

The work of the incoming cohort of creatives on Behance shows how mobile and on-the-go devices are enabling these creatives to push the envelope wherever their inspiration strikes and create on their own terms.

Who are the New Creatives?

Last week, Adobe unveiled its first in a new series of research on the creative economy that analyses the current pulse of creativity and highlights industry trends from around the globe.

Drawing data points and findings from the public projects of nearly 5 million creatives on Behance, this new Adobe Digital Index research focuses on ‘New Creatives’— placing a lens on some of the most formative years in a creative’s career. With a new generation paving innovative career paths, the ‘New Creatives Mashup’ research provides insights into what younger creatives across various age groups, and around the world, are thinking, working on and aspiring to.

Curious to see what we found, and how their design interests and passions will impact the next generation of the creative economy? See below for the first in our ongoing creative data deep dive from Adobe Digital Index.

Stretching the canvas: Mobilising creativity

New creatives, new rules. With the continuous introduction of new technology and cutting-edge platforms that allow creatives to stretch their ‘canvas’ and innovate on mobile devices, the second-screen experience has become more tightly integrated than ever before into the new creatives’ workflow. The work of the incoming cohort of creatives on Behance – 18-22 year olds – shows how mobile and on-the-go devices are enabling these creatives to push the envelope wherever their inspiration strikes and create on their own terms.

The nearly 1 million 18-22-year-olds who share their work on Behance are surging ahead on mobile. With a 36 percent increase in mobile logins in the last year, these new creatives are more than twice as likely to be engaged on mobile design work than the total population. New project work on mobile for this age group ranges from branding to typography to comics and more. We expect the engagement and creation of design work from mobile platforms to continue to rise – unleashing innovation and pushing boundaries for all creatives.

Creativity strikes in unexpected places

The world is producing more creative work than ever before. Most interestingly, we’re seeing new geographic hotbeds of ideation and project creation, beyond the urban staples like Brooklyn, Hamburg, London or San Francisco. The following graphics give an idea of where the creatives of today are most heavily concentrated, including growth in Brazil, China, UK, India, Mexico, Russia and Canada. Beyond these powerhouses, certain countries are emerging as leaders in specific age segments, such as Germany, France, Indonesia and Egypt. Check out the heat map below for which regions each age group is surging ahead.

Back to the future?

What’s next on the horizon? Adobe Digital Index is pointing to a renaissance of the appearance of analog and raw elements in design work. New creatives on Behance have started to balance the design themes and elements common for previous generations of creatives (‘digital’, ‘apps’, ‘branding’, ‘web’ and ‘logo’) with the inspiration provided by the physical and tactile elements of design. These new creatives are surging ahead in drawing and typography, creating more portraits and sketches, and – somewhat amazingly – using ink and pencil more frequently than older age groups. That said, this interest in exploring the basic elements of design creation is not limited to this younger age group; in fact, we pulled the top three most appreciated projects for each of the age groups and examples of handmade lettering projects were represented across all of them visualised in the below image.

Given this sudden surge of analog-inspired work, along with the new creatives’ rapidly expanding interest in fields like freehand drawing, we can expect to see a wider adoption of this mindset and a continued shift to tactile-based creation, even in this new connected era.

Where will the creative economy steer us next? Adobe has been a catalyst in the creative industry for years and now with the considerable amount of insights available from Creative Cloud, Behance, Fotolia‘s stock image service and more, we plan to share ongoing research in the coming months to further illustrate and predict current and upcoming creative trends, as well as help us determine how to best empower and support the next generation of creatives. Stay tuned here for the next Adobe Digital Index in the coming months. And stay tuned for a major update to Creative Cloud in the next couple of months that delivers on stretching our creative canvas even further on mobile.

About the ‘New Creatives Mashup’

This first creative-focused report from Adobe Digital Index was mined from data associated with nearly 5 million creatives who are currently members of Behance. The data includes information on tags, project fields, project topic, engagement activity, location and more. This data illustrates and predicts creativity trends and the pulse of the creative economy across industries.