Adobe’s Hovering Art Director campaign wins two Red Dot Awards

What’s the best possible outcome for an Art Director? Winning awards for their work, of course.

And it’s not only art directors who love winning awards, we do too. That’s why we are excited to announce that our recent Hovering Art Director campaign – which included a viral video and awesome action figure – has been awarded Red Dots for ‘Best of the Best for Outstanding Design Quality’ and ‘High Design Quality’. This is praise indeed as of the around 8,000 entries, less than 1% received a ‘Best of the Best’ Red Dot award.

These awards are one of the industry’s most sought-after; with recognition being given for both amazing design quality and creative performance. The Red Dot panel rewards outstanding work in the design field, following the motto ‘in search of good design and creativity’. It’s a collective of international experts, appraising each piece live and in situ, without comparing to other entries.

Who or What is a Hovering Art Director?

Most designers will have experienced this at one point or another in their careers. You’re in the flow of creating a stellar piece of work (maybe even your best yet), when suddenly you see a blur of flamboyant colour in the corner of your eye and you brace yourself for some ‘innovative guidance’. The Hovering Art Director has found their place in many offices around the world; continuously checking in on progress and adding their own creative flair to whatever is being designed.

We worked with agency, mcgarrybowen Amsterdam, to create a spot to promote the integration between Creative Cloud and Adobe Stock – the saviour to all the doting designers out there who may or may not work with a hovering art director of their own.

However, the video was just one part of a global campaign that comes with its very own action figure. Ideal for when the boss is out of town and you feel like your work is lacking that ever-helpful creative advice (move over Barbie, there’s a new rival in town and he comes with his very own limited-edition sneakers and essential take-away cup of coffee).

The insight to the campaign followed a report showing that productivity increases by 10x with Adobe Stock and Photoshop – with both products being able to work in unison to bring a project together and reduce the amount of time it takes to get to a final edit. For example, by cutting out a number of steps, licensing an image can go from a 3-minute job to just 16 seconds. There’s a great need in the industry to stay relevant in a fast-paced environment, and Adobe found an uncannily relatable way of showing this with the fictional ‘WolfBear’ client which was featured in the spot.

When seeing red is a good thing

Being awarded a Red Dot of any kind is high praise in the design world, and shows appreciation for top quality design (not to mention a lot of hard work). We are really proud that our Hovering Art Director was recognised among other amazing campaigns which set the design world alight. But there is really only one person we need to thank, and that is the art director.