How Adobe Helps Launch Creative Careers

The coveted Adobe Awards trophy. Photo by Martin Hoang; 2016 Commercial — Photography Finalist.

For nearly two decades now, Adobe has helped launch the careers of the next generation of creative professionals through the Adobe Design Achievement Awards: the premier global competition for student creators.

I especially love this program because it connects professional designers with aspiring creators. Participants receive substantial critiques and career advice on projects ranging from photography to illustration to video editing to application design. The competition also serves as a showcase of Creative Cloud being used in the world’s best art and design programs. Students used everything from Photoshop (Ps) to Premiere Pro (Pr) to Adobe XD (Xd) as well as Behance (Bē) (the world’s largest creative community) to submit and showcase their work for the competition. For the first time, students accessed Adobe Spark Post templates to remix their artwork to promote their work on social media. Finally, many students also published an Adobe Portfolio to start building an audience for their work. You can check out the students’ Behance projects and portfolios on the Adobe Awards website here.

The Adobe Awards are now in their 18th year and are coming off three consecutive record breaking years for submissions, with 8,106 entries from 94 countries on 300 campuses around the globe in 2018. I am especially proud of the breadth of participation this year as students in 24 new countries entered the competition.

Lisa Temple, who manages the Adobe Awards program, believes this is all just the tip of a giant iceberg. She told me, “The students who enter this competition are hungry to put themselves and their work out there. They’re seeking feedback and guidance in transitioning from the academic world to the professional creative world — they need and want Adobe to be their guide in a transformative time. That’s what this program is really all about.”

A few of the submissions that stood out to me are: Wooyoung Kim from the School of Visual Arts who won the Commercial — Animation/Motion Graphic award for her visual essay about the power of a personal uniform, Carol Nguyen from Concordia University in Canada who won the Fine Art — Video Editing/Post Production award for her video about a grain of rice, and Tom Hegen from HTWG Konstanz in Germany who won the Social Impact — Photography/Print/Illustration/Graphic award for his aerial photography project documenting human intervention in natural spaces. I encourage you to check out all of the 2018 winning submissions.

Habitat, by Tom Hegen; Winner, Social Impact — Photography/Print/Illustration/Graphic.

For participants, the Adobe Awards offer students an opportunity to realize their creative potential and grow their career possibilities. Adobe believes in enabling creativity for all and that starts with inspiring the next generation to be lifelong creators. For all the students who have entered the Adobe Awards — they are well on their way.