“We enjoyed the collaboration between design, motion and develop­ment,” says EVB’s director of design, Sean O’Brien. “Adobe design ap­plications allow us the freedom to create anything we can imagine by breaking down the walls between disciplines.” Users can explore new ways to create, produce and deliver engaging content in web, video, print or mobile, thanks to interactive demonstrations of each product and helpful videos showing Adobe customers putting CS3 to innovative uses.

“In the broader sense,” says Alex Amado, director of editorial and multimedia development for Adobe, “this project was influenced by the overall Adobe brand, in that we wanted to demonstrate our continuing commitment to the design community by offering an engaging, interactive experience.” Working closely with EVB, Amado and his team designed the new site to communicate the key features of the newly launched CS3 product lines with a special emphasis on integration across applications. According to O’Brien, the central influence on the site design was the suite’s fluid work­flow and the freedom it allows users to move seamlessly from one application to the other. “That was the storyline,” he says, “and the foundation upon which we built the user experience.”

The target audience for the site is of two types: current Cre­ative Suite users and potential new users, both of whom come looking for an engaging demonstration of the creative applications rather than just a chart listing different product features. “We wanted to create a ‘sandbox’ in which users could apply specific tools from within key applications … to baseline images that had a bit of whimsy and fun to them,” Amado says. “We also wanted to include outside perspectives by having Adobe customers speak to the power of Creative Suite 3 and discuss their use of the applica­tions in a specific project.” Built with a combination of Adobe CS2, Adobe Studio 8 and beta versions of CS3 Master Collection soft­ware, the site is unique in what it offers, demonstrating the newest applications in ways simple enough for any user to understand and enjoy. “Where else can you apply ‘virtual CSS’ style sheets to change photographs, or drag-and-drop comic book-style sound effects onto a kung-fu movie track?”

Launching the site simultaneously in six languages presented some logistical hurdles given the short development time the team had, but as Amado puts it, you can’t be too ambitious or too creative. Coming up with so many exciting ways to represent CS3’s extraordinary features in a virtual playground setting was chal­lenging and rewarding at the same time. R. Ashby