Adobe Express
Adobe
Experience Designer
Adobe Express is part of Adobe’s broader ecosystem, aimed at making design accessible to non-designers. It offers a range of tools, from templates and quick-edit options like background removal or video tools to AI-powered features such as image resizing and automatic text-to-image generation.
As part of the growth design team, I focused on acquisition. Acquisition includes all the places you can learn about Express before trying it—Adobe.com, SEO pages, App store, and partnerships.
The challenge was to elevate the experience of these top-of-the-funnel pages in a systematic manner that worked for all stakeholders, while maintaining strong brand recognition and user experience. To achieve this, we prioritized motion design to bring Adobe Express’s capabilities to life.
As previously mentioned, motion was a priority, with prior experimentation confirming that animation outperformed still imagery in engagement. Since these animations are among the first touchpoints users encounter before using Express, it was critical to ensure the content aligned with their original intent—in this case, removing the background from an image. The animations were designed with three intentional phases: hook, reinforcement, and resolution. The goal was to grab attention and convey the feature’s purpose within the first 3 seconds, reinforce the value in the following moments, and conclude with a seamless resolution—all crafted in one seamless loop
By pulling elements from a flat 2D space into 3D, we breathe life into the design, making the content feel more realistic and connected to a physical environment. This approach introduces depth, establishes information hierarchy, and creates moments of focus, rather than presenting the entire story in a single flat asset.We avoid overloading the animation with multiple features, instead honing in on the specific aspect we’re highlighting to tell a clearer, more impactful story. For example, when showcasing the “Resize for IG” feature, the animation will focus solely on resizing for the optimal IG dimensions.In addition to the animation, all content is designed to meaningfully connect back to its core intent, while staying true to the visual aesthetic of the Express brand.
Stay focused on the intent we avoid adding unnecessary or irrelevant details. Each animation highlights a single feature, drilling into its specifics to tell a clear, focused story. For example, if showcasing “Resize" the should center on resizing for relevant socials and dimensions without introducing unrelated features. This principle applies to more specific Resizes, whether Image or Video for IG, Tik Tok aswell as the system as a whole
While we’re not building Disney level animations, we guided by a number of the principles documented in The Illusion of Life: Secondary actions, Arcs, Staging and many more while keeping things true to express brand.By prioritizing design systems over guidelines, we’ve ensured scalability and flexibility for future needs. The result is a seamless, functional motion system that elevates interaction design while staying true to the brand’s ethos: simple, effective, and user-focused.
This motion system redefines how we communicate space and interaction, proving that motion should add value, not distract. With over 40 thoughtfully crafted animations, we focused on simplicity, guided by design principles like anticipation, easing, and staging to create intuitive, impactful experiences
CreDITS //
Sean Kelley
Ibra Balogun
Senior Expeince designer
Experience Designer
