Bringing Ideas to Life with Adobe Stock

Stock can be an invaluable resource for designers and agencies. But don’t take it from us, take it from the team at Submersive Media, an agency catering to Hollywood clients and international brands.

“Adobe Stock helps us take our ideas that are sort of up in the ether and breathe life into them,” says Alex Dubin, co-owner of Submersive. “It helps us fill in around the edges, and it’s the difference between an idea that works in theory and an idea that actual works in practice.”

Communicating with clients

Pitching is a quotidian part of agency life, and Submersive incorporates stock assets into mockups and mood boards that match the look and feel of the project at hand. By finding visuals that are relevant and resonant, they can demonstrate that they have an innate understanding of the project and how to take it to market. “With Adobe Stock, we’re really able to make our ideas into something tangible and coherent that clients can relate to,” explains Alex.

Filling in the gaps

Stock can also be practical and economic for designers. Alex recalls a pitch for a film about electricity, where his team had to match the look and feel of the movie without any assets to work with. They had to find tons of light bulbs. But not just any ordinary halogen bulbs. They needed vintage bulbs from the 1800s, as well as newspapers and photographs from the time. Rather than scour the web to find archaic bulbs and then orchestrate a photo shoot, they found dozens of suitable images from Adobe Stock, and their designers were able to incorporate them into the pitch. The client recognized that the Submersive team understood the aesthetic of the film, and they won the business.

Collaborating around-the-clock

Being a full-service shop, efficiency and collaboration are key within the team. “Collaboration is very important,” says designer Elias Paulson. “No project, nothing that I’m making is mine. Everyone has eyes on it at all stages of the project, and we’re always communicating, sending mocks back and forth.” This involves not just pulling in stock assets, but also fonts, color palettes, logos, and more.

Thankfully there are Creative Cloud Libraries, and the Submersive team uses them to organize and share files effortlessly, “Having that all saved in the Cloud makes it accessible to everyone who’s collaborating,” explains Elias.

Challenging the status quo

“We work in an industry where people do the same things over and over again and it’s hard to blame them because it works,” shares Alex. At the same time, in today’s digital age, it’s getting increasingly hard to break through all the noise. At Submersive, the team is constantly challenging themselves to tackle the new and undiscovered: “We really think about whether something has been done before and how we can make it into something no one has ever seen. We’re trying to come up with ways to make people stop and look,” says Alex.

See more of Submersive Media’s work on their website.