Branding Decisions Sans Designer
From social influencers and social media managers to students and small business owners, practically everyone needs graphics to support their messages. These individuals have many drag-and-drop image creators to turn to including Canva, Pagemodo and Adobe Spark. Users of the latter are poised to self-serve in a more intelligent manner thanks to some updates to the online tool and mobile app.
Adobe announced this week that it has added premium features to Spark to enable users to create and share branded stories in the service's three formats (Post for graphics, Page for Web pages and Video for video stories). While Spark will remain free, Spark Premium is $9.99/month.
What upgraded users get is essentially access to artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (Adobe's Sensei platform) that will aid in graphic development. In a few steps, Adobe Spark will guide users toward branding decisions (pairing fonts, colors, templates and more that is personalized for the user) to help ensure cohesiveness and to follow basic design best practices they may be blind to.
To take advantage of the branding capabilities, users need to follow three steps: upload their logo (or having Spark automatically create a simple one), choose brand colors (Spark automatically pulls the colors from the logo but users can customize) and select fonts (Spark allows users to browse by style and pairs appropriate typography).
With this information, Adobe Spark Premium generates branded themes and templates to use across marketing collateral - even making suggestions where to add elements like calls-to-action and logo. Users can then save their brand so that those pre-defined logos, colors and fonts are applied to any template.
While Spark is no match for an experienced graphic designer, it does help those without in-house design help or those who need to publish graphics quicker than their resources allow, to make smarter decisions based on the branding elements they've established.
Adobe announced this week that it has added premium features to Spark to enable users to create and share branded stories in the service's three formats (Post for graphics, Page for Web pages and Video for video stories). While Spark will remain free, Spark Premium is $9.99/month.
What upgraded users get is essentially access to artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (Adobe's Sensei platform) that will aid in graphic development. In a few steps, Adobe Spark will guide users toward branding decisions (pairing fonts, colors, templates and more that is personalized for the user) to help ensure cohesiveness and to follow basic design best practices they may be blind to.
To take advantage of the branding capabilities, users need to follow three steps: upload their logo (or having Spark automatically create a simple one), choose brand colors (Spark automatically pulls the colors from the logo but users can customize) and select fonts (Spark allows users to browse by style and pairs appropriate typography).
With this information, Adobe Spark Premium generates branded themes and templates to use across marketing collateral - even making suggestions where to add elements like calls-to-action and logo. Users can then save their brand so that those pre-defined logos, colors and fonts are applied to any template.
While Spark is no match for an experienced graphic designer, it does help those without in-house design help or those who need to publish graphics quicker than their resources allow, to make smarter decisions based on the branding elements they've established.
