Adobe Creative Types
Creative Types is a playful personality test to grow the reach of Adobe Create, grounded in psychology and brought to life by collaborating with some of the world’s best creative talent. We worked with Adobe Create on the project from ideation to execution.
Made for sharing. Personality tests exist in various forms, and people are inevitably drawn to taking them to find out more about themselves. The problem we found was the majority aren't very fun or visually exciting, and there is not much tailored to the creative industries.
The test gives the world a tool to learn more about their creative selves - how to maximise their natural gifts and overcome their challenges. Building shareability in from the beginning helped the test go viral, enabling over 3 million people to take it worldwide within the first few weeks of launch.
Collaboration. We brought together incredible talent to bring Creative Types to life, from set building to sound design, 3D Design and more. We brought collaborators together to ensure every physical and digital detail felt unified and cohesive.
Test design. To give the test purpose and integrity, and ensure it was tailored to the creative industries, we worked with Carolyn Gregoire (co-author of Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind) to research, design and write the questions in a way that felt relevant and real.
Carolyn’s extensive research gave us three defined personality tendencies to look for. To assess the three tendencies, we wrote five questions with binary choices. For example, the question ‘My door is usually: open or closed’ tests the balance of introversion vs extroversion. With each possible path through the test, there are eight potential types as outcomes, each with a description to signpost users towards their full creative potential.
Bringing each personality to life. The personality traits formed the brief for each character to be designed. Certain phrases sparked conceptual ideas that we briefed in to 3D artist, Anton Hjertstedt. For example, 'The Innovator' was described as being able to 'balance logic and creativity’, so that became a brief for a character made of malleble, fluid shapes within a rigid frame structure, to bring the concept to life.
Each character is informed by intimate decisions and individual ways of thinking, so we wanted them to feel like personal mascots that are relatable and shareable.
Scene creation. Throughout the quiz, you’ll notice scenes that play after each question, depending on the answer you choose. To set Creative Types apart from all the existing tests out there, we brought in set designers Isabel + Helen to create two tactile sets for each question, meaning almost everybody who takes the test will take a bespoke visual route.
Merging physical & digital. We wanted to create a playful dialogue between digital and physical design, which felt like a nice parallel with the breadth of work that Adobe products help to facilitate. It made sense to take a physical approach to one half of the test (the question scenes), and a digital approach to other half (the characters), creating a dialogue between the two. To bring each set to life within the test, we brought in videographers Baker & Evans to direct and film each scene, and Sounds Like These to bring in sound to enrich the user experience. To bring everything together, we worked with web designer Dan Powell to create mycreativetype.com, allowing creatives to take the test from all corners of the world.
3 million users. Within the first few weeks of going live, Creative Types had been taken by over 3 million people worldwide, often more than once each! Creative Types was covered by industry press and design titles globally, including It’s Nice That, PetaPixel, Creative Bloq, Design Taxi, Digital Arts, PopPhoto, Digital Synopsis and The Dots.
#mycreativetype Hundreds of users flooded social media with their own takes on their Creative Type. We’re enjoying seeing the memes and personal interpretations that are popping up daily on Twitter and Instagram, on #mycreativetype.
"In the words of Creative Types, you are a brilliant Team! It’s amazing to see how many people have embraced Creative Types, and it’s all because of you! The thing I appreciate the most is how you held true to your vision throughout. You’re a special group of creatives. Thank you for this roaring success."
Content Director, Adobe Create