And so we called it ‘Portfolio’, which soon became ‘Adobe Portfolio’ to fit with Adobe’s suite of products.The overall sentiment of these big-money traders is split between 41% bullish and 58%, bearish. The simplicity and boldness of the name married up well to the design and values of the product.
It’s a website creator/editor designed specifically for creating a portfolio. So after some thought, I concluded: ‘Why not?!’ - it does exactly what it says on the tin. The natural progression of all these kept coming back to “Portfolio”. I went back to my sketchbook, and went through a word association exercise of writing down everything this product did, and also what language every similar product on the market was using. That was important to convey - and that starts with the name. We were building an exciting new product from the ground up, and retiring ProSite. Besides their connection with Behance, they were very different products and had no 1:1 correlation. The ProSite product served its time, but its successor had grown into a different beast. When I first joined Behance, this project was somewhat jokingly being called “Prosite 2.0” internally. What is this product? How do you get started using it? It needed a voice. Months in now, with the product (editor) designed and being built, I re-focussed my attention to marketing, onboarding and brand.
#Adobe portfolio pdf
These allowed developers (and other stakeholders) to critique and/or understand all functionality and the user flow - so they knew what was to be built, and also identify any potential flaws in the UI/UX, prior to the build and testing.īelow is (a video of) one example of these PDF walkthroughs:
#Adobe portfolio series
But what I did do was to create a series of PDF walkthroughs using Layer Comps in Photoshop, showing the mouse cursor move around the screen, demonstrating every interaction, feature and user flow within the product.
There simply wasn’t time to build any complex prototypes. We were working to pretty intense timeframes on this project. A fresh perspective always helps, especially for a product of this complexity.
For example: One particular idea came from me discussing an early (product) design with an MFA illustration student at SVA. It’s good to chat through ideas with other designers and developers, and even the target audience when possible. You can see that my sketch is close to what I ultimately designed.Īll of these ideas and designs are informed and evolved by concepting, prototyping and discussing with the team. Some relate to the product (editor), some to the marketing site and brand:Īn interesting image to point out above is the last one (bottom-right). But time was tight on this project, so I went straight into Photoshop.īelow are some scans from my sketchbook. In the past I’ve used Adobe Illustrator or Omnigraffle for this, to wireframe. There’s always a point when you know you have enough to take it that step further, and actually start fleshing out these ideas. Perhaps most importantly, you don’t get distracted by pixel perfection, fonts, colour, grids, guides etc… like you do while using computer software. It’s a quick way of purely and simply just designing and exploring ideas. Sometimes I’ll sketch a feature, or a small UI detail, or a new approach to the UI entirely. This sketchbook work naturally evolves into UI sketches. It helps to un-clutter the mind and focus on what’s important.
Sometimes I simply write words I associate with the product, or list what it needs to do, just to get it out of my head. Writing and sketching really helps me to focus, and ideas flow from there. I always start with a pencil and a sketchbook. There you can gain invaluable exposure for your work on a creative platform used by millions of creatives, and people recruiting creatives! But you don’t have to use Behance if you don’t want to - you can use Portfolio on its own and choose not to sync with Behance. The idea being that you create a beautiful custom website with Portfolio, and sync your projects to your Behance profile. The thing that makes Portfolio most unique is that it syncs with Behance.
#Adobe portfolio free
It’s FREE with all Adobe Creative Cloud plans.Meaning it does what you need it to do, simply and quickly. It’s designed specifically for creatives to showcase their portfolio.It’s not a new concept, there are dozens of products out there that do just that. Basically it’s a product that allows you to quickly and simply create a website to showcase your work, and customise it to suit your style and needs.