(All of this, of course, is codified in a design system within XD itself, as well as in a Creative Cloud Library that brings together work and collaborators from Photoshop, Illustrator and more apps.) The hope is to shine a spotlight on the craft of product design and elevate the work that designers do. In these cases, we developed a secondary vocabulary: economical “spot illustrations” made up of uncomplicated primitive shapes and simplified interface elements, all dressed up in the same signature color palette. Just as often it’s necessary to demonstrate or teach key features or important concepts. These hero illustrations are what you’ll see when XD is trying to grab your attention or showcase its wares, but of course they’re not right for every instance where we might need imagery. The grid pattern is used only as an under-layer, though, rarely ever in the foreground, because the hero images of our new look are the work product of UX/UI everywhere: buttons, cards, toolbars, search fields, catalog views and more, all shown as enlarged, dimensional close-ups. That color palette drives a unique grid pattern, which itself is a visual representation of the kind of expressive systems that XD excels at. First, we established a distinctive color palette that expands on the color scheme of the XD identity as defined by the Creative Cloud ecosystem, filling it out with rich reds, steel greys and a dark blue and an electric blue-plus a carefully calibrated gradient. You can see this in the core elements of this new look. What resulted was an outcome that would have been impossible otherwise: a new, highly individualized aesthetic that drafts off of Adobe’s new brand direction, and that, we believe, will help XD resonate even more strongly and unmistakably with audiences than ever before. The deep insight that our marketing team brought to bear was invaluable, and it also helped us to dovetail this effort with the major refresh of the Adobe brand that launched earlier this year. For a still young product in today’s crowded design tooling category, it’s more important than ever to be sure that what’s being designed (and built) is in sync with what’s happening in the marketplace. We certainly did all of those things, but the real first step was forging a new kind of collaborative design between design and marketing. You might expect the process for developing this new look would start with careful research or even an intuitive design exploration. A long time! Now we’re doing something about it. Today, how XD presents itself might look, feel or even behave differently depending on where you encounter it.įor a design team that’s all about helping other designers create expressive, systemic and consistent design solutions, you can imagine that this inconsistency across surfaces is something we’ve wanted to address for a long time. But as XD has skyrocketed, the sheer volume of these surfaces and the number of people involved in their upkeep has only made this more challenging. Now, in addition to the desktop, mobile and web apps, XD manifests itself in demo videos and tutorials, in emails and display ads, in community events and social media posts, and everywhere from YouTube to Slack, and much more.Ĭolloquially we refer to any place where people come into contact with any form of XD as a “surface.” Maintaining consistency and cohesion across surfaces is always hard work. That state of constant refinement and expansion has resulted in a much broader canvas than anyone anticipated back when XD was just a pilot project in the halls of Adobe.
And we’re constantly tweaking existing patterns and behaviors across Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and web, all based on what we hear and learn from the wonderful community of designers, clients and stakeholders who use the product. With each of our monthly releases we add new features large and small, which further evolve and improve the experience of the app. In a way, XD is constantly being redesigned.