Designing for Adobe Express: Part 2

Client feedback, learning Adobe Express, and final deliverables

Nov 21, 2022

This is the second installment of a 2-part series taking a behind the scenes look at a client graphic design project for Adobe. In Part 1, I shared an overview and the beginning stages of the project. In Part 2, I cover feedback, revisions, and final deliverables.

Getting Feedback from Adobe

Picking up where I left off in Part 1. With the deadline looming, I had just sent over my concept sketches for the Adobe team to review.

Despite 10+ years of being a professional designer, I still get nervous when I send off designs for client review. This project was no different. Throw in a name like “Adobe”… and cue the impostor syndrome spiral.

But, as I hinted at in Part 1, the feedback from the Adobe team was very encouraging. They loved all 3 concepts for my Adobe Express template designs and gave me the green light to proceed and develop the visuals.

Here are some snippets of the written feedback from the Adobe team. I wanted to share them as examples of clear, effective client feedback that is not prescriptive.

“The team loved how cohesive your series of layouts were, and felt it gives the audience lots of versatile uses for these templates to evolve and shine”
“The team also adored the hierarchy and application of your font choices”
“The only note was if you could include 1-2 more vibrant colors within this palette to really make the template layout shine even more.”

While getting “positive” feedback is not the goal of being a designer, it sure doesn’t hurt!

Learning Adobe Express

The project required that I deliver the final templates via Adobe Express. Which meant… I had to learn how to use Adobe Express. Had I used Adobe Express before this project? Nope! Was I confident I could learn it? Yep!

Before I sent over my initial concepts, I did poke around on the platform so that I had a rough understanding of its capabilities and limitations. Once my concept sketches were approved, the next step was to create fully fleshed out designs in Adobe Express. This meant taking my concept sketches, translating them into Adobe Express with color and typeface selections.

While I presented 3 initial concepts, I only had to deliver 2, and the Adobe team left it to me to decide which ones I wanted to move forward with.

My concept sketches approved by the Adobe team

I knew I wanted to develop “Concept 1: Bold Shapes” for sure, but the other? I couldn’t choose based on the concept sketches alone. So, I went ahead and fleshed them all out on Adobe Express which gave me some clarity.

While I really wanted “Concept 2: Soireé Sketch” to work, it just wasn’t as strong when evaluating in the context of template designs. It’s hard to put my finger on what it is exactly, but I think it’s because while the illustrations are super cute, they are very specific, and the specificity makes the design less flexible. Since this project called for template designs made for the general public, I thought that flexibility was of utmost importance, so decided to move forward with Concepts “Concept 1: Bold Shapes” and “Concept 3: Cottage Garden”, both of which have more abstract, and flexible, visual components.

In terms of learning and using Adobe Express, it was super easy to pick up. It is pretty self-explanatory and much simpler than the “standard” design programs out there. While it wouldn’t replace professional design tools such as Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc for most design tasks, Adobe Express would be a great tool for someone looking for an easy-to-use tool to create simple visual graphics.

It could also be a convenient platform for designers to consider using to pass off certain branded templates & assets to clients. It is very similar to Canva with the convenience of it being part of the Adobe suite.

While Adobe express is an easy program, there were a couple of things that bothered me that I think would be amiss to leave out:

Lags and delays: Given that I was making very simple graphics, I would expect things to load pretty much instantaneously. This was not my experience, and I wished that the performance were better.
Small, limited library of open-source fonts in the Free plan: Adobe Express has a Free plan as well as a paid Premium plan (Premium is included w/ a Creative Cloud subscription). In the Free plan, you can access a limited library of open-source fonts and do not get access to most Adobe Fonts. While I happen to be very familiar with open-source fonts and made them work just fine for this project, I do wish that the Free plan had a bigger library of fonts to choose from.

Having said this, I want to acknowledge that it is a new program for Adobe and I’m sure it’ll see many improvements over time. Overall, Adobe Express is an accessible design tool with low barrier to entry and I see it as a welcome addition to the Adobe creative suite!

Refinement & Final Designs

Ok, so back to the design process and what it was like working with Adobe.

The project scope called for 1 round of concepts, and 2 rounds design revisions.

For each round of design, I built out and edited the templates in Adobe Express and sent along a PDF overview along with a short video walkthrough. The Adobe team would send their feedback by email within 1-2 days.

Honestly, the process was very smooth and positive, with the Adobe team requesting minimal changes. We used our 2 rounds revisions to make small adjustments to the color palette and the designs were good to go!

Here are the final, approved template designs that were built out on Adobe Express:

In addition to the template designs, I created social media graphics that both the Adobe Express team and I could use to publicize my new template designs as they were launched on Adobe Express.

Overall, this was a really fun project. God knows not all projects go this smoothly and rarely do I get the chance to have visual creative freedom. This project also gave me the opportunity to write and share a bit about my design process, something I’d like to do more often. Thank you for being here and witnessing this post that I spent way too long writing!

Oh, and these templates are now live and public. Anyone can now find and use these Adobe Express templates I designed. Just search “Dohee” on Adobe Express and you’ll find them there. Use them as is or treat them as a starting point and change colors, fonts, move things around — have at it 🤠 💛

Best,
Do-Hee

PS: Thank you Adobe and Laundry Service team for bringing me onto this project and being such a pleasure to work with. I hope I get to work with you all again!