Celebrating a special milestone: 10 things you might not know about Adobe’s 40 years of innovation

Over the past four decades, our innovations have touched billions of people across the globe and empowered them to be inspired, create, and share their stories with the world. As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, we have the incredible opportunity to reflect on some of the most seminal moments of the company, customers and community over this time.

We could not be prouder of the impact our technologies have on every aspect of society. From investing in desktop publishing to revolutionizing imaging and design to pioneering electronic documents to advancing animation, gaming and video to leading 3D, digital marketing and commerce and now with Adobe Express, everyone from small businesses to solopreneurs to students can easily and quickly design anything. We have continued to empower everyone, everywhere to imagine, create and bring any digital experience to life.

At Adobe, we believe that it is not just what you do, but how you do it that matters. Over the years, we are proud to have served a breadth of customers all around the world — from students, to consumers, communicators, creative professionals, small business owners and the world’s largest enterprises — to help them further their mission and make an impact. It’s through partnerships like Florida A&M University, who have utilized our software to transform their curriculum to teach creative and digital literacy skills across disciplines, or through our work with the National Center for Missing Exploited Children (NCMEC) in forensic analysis on imagery and videos, and through our dedicated efforts with Save the Children UK, helping to fuel its digital content creation, marketing and donor experiences — we are proud to have played a pivotal role supporting our customers and communities.

Our founders, John Warnock and Charles Geschke maintained that “great ideas come from everywhere in the company.” This philosophy still rings true. Through our innovation we have empowered billions of people to change the world in big and small ways, inside and outside the company.

Join us as we reflect on 40 years, as we go down memory lane to celebrate some of the special moments that made Adobe who we are today.

Did you know?

• Adobe was named after the Adobe Creek that ran behind John Warnock’s home.
• Our logo, the stylized ‘A’ was designed by John Warnock’s wife Marva.
• Adobe’s very first system was PostScript, a programming language that describes the appearance of a printed page and has become an industry standard for printing and imaging. It was a breakthrough product because of how it handled fonts — able to generate fonts of any size and shape from mathematical descriptions and do so automatically on the fly. Today, everywhere you look — from magazines to billboards — you see a PostScript font in use.
• Designed as the first Adobe Originals typeface by Robert Slimbach in 1989, Adobe Garamond is based upon the typefaces first created by the famed French printer Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century.
• The Adobe Digital Index, which leverages trillions of data points from Adobe Analytics, remains the bellwether on the health of the digital economy. 85 percent of the top 100 internet retailers in the U.S. rely upon Adobe Analytics to deliver, measure and personalize shopping experiences online.
• Every 1 million Adobe Acrobat Sign transactions save 105 million liters of water, 31,000 trees, and the equivalent of taking 2,300 cars off the road for a year.
• Adobe has been loved by celebrities over the last several decades, including references from Taylor Swift talking about making a massive PDF file to keep track of all her Easter eggs, or Devin Booker repping Adobe Illustrator in his favorite hoodie and the iconic moment from Chris Pratt asking fans to use Photoshop to create a new header image for his social page.

• Adobe's Premiere Pro has been used by top music video editors in the business for videos and music films including "BLACK IS KING", a film by Beyonce, "Madame X" concert film starring Madonna, "7 Rings" and "Thank U, Next" by Arianna Grande, "Panini" by Lil Nas X, Lizzo's "Juice", and Childish Gambino's "This is America".
• Adobe was mentioned as a ‘pivotal moment in video editing’ in episode 5 Disney+ ‘Light & Magic’, a documentary surrounding the founding and history of the motion picture and visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic.
• Adobe software was the first piece of technology purchased to start making Avatar, the 2009 film directed by James Cameron, which was the first highest-grossing film of all time. Adobe Photoshop was used to create the concept designs for the movie as well as the textures for the characters and the creatures that were seen in the film, and Adobe After Effects was used throughout the film for real-time compositing.
• Adobe hit the runway of Paris Fashion Week in 2021 when designer Iris van Herpen collaborated with Adobe to create a custom dress in her own unique style and voice that speaks to how creativity and Adobe are helping shape the fashion industry.

• 2022 marked the 22^nd year Adobe has been included on Fortune’s prestigious list of “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, recognizing how Adobe fosters a culture of inclusion, purpose, genuineness, caring and empathy.
• Adobe Digital Insights, which analyzes over a trillion web visits via Adobe Analytics, has become the de-facto authority on the digital economy. It is the leading voice on e-commerce trends and the holiday shopping season, as well as online inflation via the Digital Price Index. Adobe Analytics is part of Adobe Experience Cloud, which over 85 percent of the top 100 internet retailers in the U.S. rely upon to deliver, measure and personalize shopping experiences online.*

*Well, maybe that’s 11 things you may not have known about us before today. The more you know.

Igniting the next generation of technology and digital experiences

At Adobe, our experience and success doesn’t define us, it only encourages us to continue to innovate in the face of an unpredictable and ever-changing world.

We have always been committed to building a company that does the right thing by focusing on people, purpose and community. These core set of values and tremendous global impacts are what has guided our evolution and growth and what continues to inspire our over 27,000 employees around the world to focus on having more impact and inventing the future.

Our 40 years of experience makes us more qualified to help those who are changing the world through digital experiences. We’re so honored to have been on this journey and look forward to what the next 40 have in store — happy birthday Adobe!