Bringing the 2025 Acclaim All-Stars to life with Adobe Firefly

The Acclaim All-Stars initiative kicked off in 2020 as a way to spotlight the most exciting new voices in Australian hip-hop and R&B. Each year, Acclaim’s audience selects seven artists and one producer at the forefront of the scene, bringing them together from across the country for a one-day shoot that spans performance videos, photography, and interviews. The annual reveal culminates in a high-quality digital cover.

For the 2025 edition, the Acclaim team, under the creative direction of Melbourne artist and designer Joshua Space, set out to push the project further than ever before. This year, they experimented with Adobe Firefly to see how the digital cover could evolve from a static image into something that truly felt alive.

“We really wanted to switch up the Digital Cover, and Firefly seemed like the perfect way to enhance what we’d been doing — turning assets that were traditionally static into something with more life,” Joshua explained.

Finding the vision

For 2025, the challenge was clear: how do you capture the energy of eight emerging musicians and translate that into a visual identity bold enough to match their sound?

The process began in Firefly Boards, where the team developed evolving moodboards that combined sourced references, photography ideas, and early Text-to-Image experiments. Instead of relying on static presentations, Acclaim could explore different textures and motion ideas in one place and see how they fit into the overall concept.

“It gave us a way to see some of the early concepts in motion before we even stepped into the studio,” said Space.

Creativity on the move

With All-Stars being a multifaceted production spanning music, video, design, and photography, developing ideas on the go was essential. Firefly for Mobile played an important role throughout production, allowing the team to use Text-to-Image prompting to experiment with visuals between meetings, while on set, or travelling between shoots. That flexibility kept the process fluid and ensured no creative spark was lost.

From concept to motion

Once the team had landed on a visual language inspired by thermal imaging and heat maps, Joshua used Firefly Web to take the iconic All-Stars logo to new heights.

“We wanted to elevate things by bringing some animation into the whole feature, and Firefly was a really good choice to help bring that to life,” he said.

Using Image-to-Video generation, Acclaim reimagined the logo as a glowing, heat-map-style animation that pulsed with colour and movement — giving the digital cover a kinetic quality that matched the energy of the artists. What was once a static visual became a living artwork that set the tone for the entire campaign.

Elevating the output

The result was a digital cover and supporting visuals that felt more dynamic than ever. Firefly didn’t replace the creative process but rather amplified it, allowing the team to experiment, iterate, and deliver a suite of assets that resonated across web and social.

“It made the process a lot more free-flowing and fun,” said Space. “It really helped us explore new territory that would have previously been too difficult within the scope of the project.”

The 2025 Acclaim All-Stars project was about spotlighting artists pushing boundaries in their music. With Adobe Firefly, Acclaim also pushed boundaries in how culture is visually represented, proving that the right tools can elevate creative storytelling to new levels.

Bring your own creative vision to life with Adobe Firefly. Learn more about Firefly Boards or download Firefly for your mobile from the App Store and Google Play.