CoCreate: MAX

Settle in for the story of how I became a job creator.

The scene is summer 2020. Adobe MAX (The creativity conference) is now scheduled to be online and completely free. Because it was 2020, we pitched taking the production budget and giving it to the creative community that makes Adobe, Adobe. Creators got real paid jobs on our team to make MAX happen. (Editor’s note: Adobe loved this idea so much they did it again in 2021.)

Watch the sizzle for an overview, and keep scrolling for the steak.

We started by calling for all creators to apply, no matter who they were or where they were from, using art commissioned from our community (Barry Lee). Check out the blog I wrote.

We had almost 2,000 people from around the world apply to jobs we invented like Adobe MAX Poster Designer, Social Content Creator, Spotify Playlist Curator, T-Shirt Designer, Coloring Book Artist, Zoom Background Designer, MAX Session Reviewer, and Meme Master. After endless sifting we selected 57 creators from 19 countries.

I wrote and updated the CoCreate: MAX website, all of our email templates, briefed and gave feedback to our creators as they worked, and so much more (🥵).

Here’s a few posts showing our creators’ process as we saw it, swipe through! 👇

It was a massive amount of work to guide them through the process and get it live before, during, and after Adobe MAX, but the final output was incredible.

Here’s some posts showing the work in its context 👇

Get a full recap at Adobe.com, our Behance project, and my favorite pieces below.

The Team

CDs: Dan Rozier, John McLaughlin III

AD: Katrina Lee

CW: Daniel Palau

Design: Kristy Lawrence, Elizabeth Kenney, Felipe Avila, Billie Heitzman, Walid Bukhari