Adobe today launched updates to Spectrum, the design system the company has used as the foundation for all its apps and web experiences for the past decade. This new design system, called Spectrum 2 (unsurprisingly), steps back a bit from the rigor of the current Spectrum design, adds even more color, and, in the company’s words, “makes Adobe tools even more intuitive. “We want to make sure that the information is relevant and inclusive.” It’s fun to use on a variety of platforms, supporting our mission of enabling creativity on all platforms. Parts of Spectrum 2 can already be found in recent Adobe web apps, including Firefly-generated AI services, Adobe Express, and parts of the new Adobe Acrobat web experience.
Adobe says the team focused on three areas when designing Spectrum 2: dynamic contrast and brightness, more accessible colors, and an attention hierarchy to prioritize certain visual elements.
Ahead of today’s release, I spoke to Eric Snowden, Adobe’s VP of Design, about the motivation behind this update and how the company plans to implement it. I did.
“At the highest level, several changes are happening simultaneously,” he told me. “One is that Adobe is catering to a very new user compared to his 10 years ago, when Spectrum 1 was created. Spectrum 1 is his 2013[…]. Adobe now targets a much wider audience than it did back then. We build accessibility and inclusivity into our products from day one. Accessibility means not only true accessibility, including colorblindness, WCAG standards, and everything built into the platform, but also familiarity that ensures new people can get on board. And be successful. ”
He also noted that Adobe now offers products for many more platforms than it did a decade ago, including tools that support VR. Fundamentally, while the “old” Adobe was aimed almost exclusively at professional users (and hobbyists with an incentive to learn its tools), today’s Adobe is aimed at students, social content creators, We want to address a much wider market, including small business owners and others. In many ways, this has been the core of Adobe’s strategy for the past few years.
Snowden pointed out that when the company designed the original Spectrum design system, it had a very austere, gray, and serious look. Part of that is because the company values creators’ creative work and wants to get out of their way. “We’re not trying to run away from that, but we’re involved in many areas of Adobe, which is a creative company, and we want to bring approachability, brightness, fun, white space. And I We’re looking at it in a different way now. ”
Adobe will begin rolling out Spectrum 2 to web and iOS apps first, starting with the first set of updates to web apps in early 2024. Over time, it will also be applied to the company’s flagship desktop tools such as Photoshop and Lightroom. And Premier Pro.
In total, Adobe plans to introduce the new design language to more than 100 apps. Deploying a new design system to so many applications is no small task. Look at how long it took Google to bring its Material Design system to most of its services. Still, Adobe expects to be able to deploy Spectrum 2 in a significant number of applications in 2024.
Snowden said Adobe will continue to provide professional users with the same flexibility to use the tools as they have in the past, while also providing a great out-of-the-box experience for users who haven’t yet learned how to use a particular tool. He emphasized that he wanted to. “We take that responsibility seriously. But we also want to make sure we keep things up to date and move forward as much as possible and make things easier for people. “Accelerating creativity is one of our most important principles, especially on the Creative Cloud side,” Snowden said, adding that if friends mess too much with the tools they rely on to do their work, they will He added that he would receive a lot of angry phone calls. Day after day.
However, various product teams are using this change as an opportunity to highlight some of the new tools they’ve added over the past few years, to highlight some of the more modern ways for new users to do things. He added that it could be exploited. The current design is a bit hidden, so you may not be immediately drawn to it.