Introducing the 2019-2020 Adobe Creative Residents

One of my favourite programmes is the Adobe Creative Residency, which offers creative professionals starting their career the ability to experiment and pursue a creative project for an entire year. The programme provides residents access to mentors, experts, Adobe’s latest creative technologies, as well as the opportunity to foster creativity within their own communities.

I am delighted we are extending the programme to Japan to support the emergence of experiential design and their long-established illustration discipline. Our two Japanese residents will push the boundaries in design by incorporating augmented reality into their workstreams.

This year’s residents make up our largest and most diverse class yet, with projects in Experience Design, Digital Drawing and Painting, Videography and Photography.

I am excited to share the work and passion of the 2019-2020 residents with you.

Within the field of Experience Design we have three residents from around the world whose diverse work showcases the depth and breadth of the XD field.

Julie Sanduski, a Seattle-based artist, is blending her passions for food, sustainability, and UI/UX to explore how human-centred design solutions can inspire a sustainable food system. Her work involves researching the food waste landscape and engaging with thought leaders to create a design series focused on preventing, repurposing and redirecting waste in our global food system.

Patricia Reiners is exploring the city of the future and how new technologies like AI, voice control and augmented reality will change our interfaces and design decisions. She’s focusing on the areas of new work, living, and mobility, and she’s sharing every step of her design process to get people excited about the possibilities of UX design. Patricia will be working from Berlin and London during her residency year.

Takuma Nakata is developing interactive and experiential installations. He’s showcasing the possibilities of using Adobe tools, such as XD, Premiere Pro, and Rush, and After Effects to develop new experiences. Takuma is sharing his ideas and design processes with the creative community. He’d like his work to enhance people’s imaginations so that, one day, he can take part in developing world-changing experiences.

In the UK, Octavia Bromell is creating illustrations related to the theme of The Joyful Everyday — the idea that happiness can be found in the minutiae of daily life. She’s sharing her progress via studio vlogs, blog posts and social media updates. In the future, she’d like to turn her obsession with stationery into an original line of illustrated greeting cards.

Aiko Fukuda is creating a pop-up book that brings together analogue and digital illustrations with augmented reality (AR). She’s also offering design workshops and online tutorials to engage with the creative community in and beyond Tokyo. Ultimately, she hopes to publish her magical book, and work with luxury brands and innovative companies that align with her aesthetic approach.

Passionate about storytelling, Tyler Babin is creating a video series that shares his experiences as an emerging artist alongside the experiences of established artists. He’s posting on Instagram and YouTube each day to bring the community into his creative process. In the future, he hopes to keep telling stories that help people feel less intimidated at the prospect of following their dreams. Tyler is based in Manhattan, NY.

For her project, Seeing Music, Amelie Satzger is working with musicians in and around Germany to visualise their lyrics in the form of surreal artistic scenes. As she builds backgrounds and props, poses the musicians and creates her artwork, she’s sharing her creative process from start to finish on social media.

Miami-based artist Cyn Lagos is working to help aspiring artists understand the mindset and practice of visual storytelling. She’s creating a visual methodology that will cultivate one-on-one learning experiences and empower artists in the realms of photography, graphic design and videography. She hopes to create an educational movement within social media to enrich the content we absorb, and she’d like to create an academic resource as well.

Juan José Egusquiza’s Impossible Stories project is a series of images from daily life that are manipulated to create a fictional reality. His residency is enabling him to share his creative process, get feedback from the community, and expand his storytelling tools and techniques. In a few years, he’d like to be a creative director whose focus is on making ideas visually tangible. Juan José is working out of Brooklyn, NY.

Getting your creative career launched is an overwhelming task. We are excited to highlight the steps our residents take to turn their creative passions into a full-fledged profession this year and hope others will consider following in their footsteps. As always, I am looking forward to being blown away by what our residents create this year – and in particular I am excited about the work some of them are doing for social good to impact our environment and society.

For more information about the Creative Residency programme, please visit our programme website.