Transcripts
1. Introduction: In this walk through, we'll focus on getting
comfortable with the Adobe Express
interface while creating a simple
social media graphic. We'll build a design
using just four colors, one image, and a logo, so you can concentrate
on how the tools and panels work rather than
getting lost in complexity. As we go, you'll learn where
key features are located, how to navigate the workspace, and how to quickly assemble and edit elements to produce
a clean, branded post. Before we start anything, here's a look at what
we're working towards. It's a fairly generic
social media graphic by design, but
that's intentional. The focus of this walk through isn't the creative
concept itself, but how to use Adobe
express effectively. By keeping the layout simple, we can concentrate
on the core skills you'll need in real projects, applying precise brand colors, importing and placing images, and working with logos in a
clean and structured way.
2. Create the graphic: When you first open
Adobe Express, you're taken to the home screen, which acts as your
starting point for everything you create. At the top, you'll usually
see a search or prompt bar where you can quickly start a new project or
choose from templates. You can also click any of
these for how you'd like to start or click the plus here and choose one
of the options. For this walk through, we're going to choose social media and ads and choose this
Instagram portrait post. This gives us a correctly
sized Canvas from the start, so we don't need to
worry about dimensions or cropping later on. Now we've opened a project. We're into our main editor. We have our Canvas in the middle and various options
down the left. First, we'll upload our assets, which in this case, is
an image and a logo. So we'll go to add
content, media, upload from device,
photo, or downshift. Click on the logo as
well, and click Open. When you first upload them, they will automatically be
placed onto your Canvas, but they can also be
accessed later by clicking on your stuff and
going to uploads. Next, we'll color
the background. We'll make sure
we're on Edit page and we'll choose the
background color on the left. There are some preset colors in here and some preset gradients, but I already know the
colors I want to use, so I'll go to custom
and I'll paste them in. I'm going to choose
this mid blue. I'm going to select
linear gradient. And for the second blue, I'm going to choose a
darker version. I'm also going to
rotate the gradient. So the dark blue is at the top. Each time you click on this
option, it will rotate it. And if you want to invert it, you can click this option. Next, I'll resize
the image until it snaps to the left and
right side of the canvas. So I can click on the image, snap it to the left and resize it so it
snaps to the right. Now I will choose
the text option, add text, click Add here. I'll be adding my
text around here. I can position it in a minute. You'll see a list
of available fonts inside of Adobe Express, and you can choose any
of these that you like, and you can even upload your own if you've got
a premium plan. So for this, I'm going to
select Josephine sons, bold, and then we'll
color the text. I'm going to choose
a custom color. Paste it in here. We can
make this a bit bigger. I'm going to move this down very slightly by clicking
on it and holding Shift. That looks good. Now I can add my body text, so I'll click text, add text. Click and Drag this
into position. I'm going to move the
logo out the way for now. Make this white. I'm also going to go to Effex
and choose a shadow option. I'm going to choose Smooth, and now align the text
with this text up here. To do that. We can
simply hold down Shift, drag it to the right
until you see it snap. Now we want to call
to action button. For this, I'm going to Control
D to duplicate this text, drag it down to here,
type my call to action. And for that, I want to go to Effex and then under
this shape option here, choose to have a shape,
and I also want to color that shape so we
can click again on it. Change the shape color to
the color I have in use. This is the same color
I chose for the text. I Now I can click and drag
this into position again until it snaps
with the text above. I'm also going to make
these a little bit smaller. I can make sure they're both
selected by clicking one, then holding down shift
and clicking the second one and clicking and dragging from the corner
to make it smaller. Finally, I'm going to
position the logo here, which can either be in the
center or in the left. I'm going to align it to
the left where this text starts and make it a little bigger hold down shift and drag it down
slightly. That looks good. To download a single
image of this, we can go to the
Download option in the black bar at the
top of the interface. That by default,
chooses the option PNG, which I would use for
an image such as this, but you have other options
as well if you choose. Click Download, and it will create and
download your image, ready to be uploaded
to social media.
3. Add animations: If you want to add
animations and turn it into an
animated Jif or video, you can go to the
animations panel. First of all, click on an
element, then go to animation. We can say animate
all in one click, and we can choose
anything we want. I'm going to choose popping this adds a staggered
animation to each element, and you can press the
space bar to play. If you want to change
those animations, make sure anything is selected. Animate all and select
anything that you want, such as Bloom, which
fades each element in. Whenever you click on these, it will give you a preview. Now when you go to Download, it will give you
the option MP four, which is best for video,
audio, and animations. This will now render a video, which you can upload
to Instagram or any other social media platform that uses the same format. Now we've created our
social media graphic. We can name it by either
going up to File and clicking the pencil next to Untitled or clicking Untitled
next to the Cloud icon. If you want to change
any of the animations, you can click Edit
page, Edit timeline. You can scroll across
this timeline. I set them to reveal
all at the same time. Pressing space will
play the animation. If, for example, you want a couple of these
to start later, you can just click on any
layer of the timeline. And if I go to the start and hover over this
small vertical line, I can click and drag left after 3 seconds and the save hours to reveal after about 2 seconds. So now if we play this
from the start, y. You can see how you can
make any adjustments for whatever times you want
the animations to happen. And if you wish to
change the animations to a different effect, make
sure it's selected. Make sure you're
editing the page. Click on animation, and then
you can choose any of these. For example, I could click
on Fade for this one, and it would fade up
each letter at a time. You can click on the settings and change that
whatever you want, so I could change it by
the word or the line. So that would fade
up a line at a time, and then play from the start. Adobe Express provides
a quick and easy way to make these social
media graphics, and it's very quick to make
changes to your content.
4. Starting from a template: A So in this version, we created this
graphic from scratch. But with Adobe Express, it's always very easy to
start with a template. So we could go to templates,
L under Instagram. I'm just going to pick
any template here. This one will do and
say start New file. From here, we can easily change our image
by clicking on it. Replace from your stuff, as I've already previously
added this photo, images, and select it here. I can change this text. Change this logo
by clicking on it, click Replace, replace it
with upload, choose my logo. I can expand this by
holding down the Olt key, clicking on the
corner and dragging. I don't want these,
so I can click on the outside and click Delete. Click and Drag over these two, hold down Shift and move
this down slightly. I can duplicate this
text by pressing Control D. Type in my text. Click and Drag while holding
Shift to lock the position. I can then select these three, again, holding down
Shift and dragging up. Type in our text at the top. Then we'll change the font. I'm going to make
this pop ins semi bold and make it white. Again, you can hold down t, drag from the corner to
make it a bit bigger, then hold down
Shift and drag up. This is looking pretty
good. Well, now just change the colors so we can
click on the background. I'm going to make this the same linear gradient
though I made the other Make sure linear gradient is selected and we'll select the second color over the
right hand side here, which will be a darker blue. You can click these two arrows
to invert the gradient, and you can click
this to rotate it. We'll now change the color of this panel and the
color of these panels. For this one, because we've
already chosen the color, we can pick recent colors. Now, we have our
social media graphic. Again, that's easily editable and easy to make
variations from. So you can either start
from scratch and make a completely custom design or start from a template
and easily modify that.
5. Make your own project: For a short project, create
your own social media graphic in Adobe Express using the techniques shown
in the course. You can design about
any topic you like, a quote, a promotion, a personal post, or
even a fictional brand. Use your own brand colors
and fonts or simply choose combinations that look clean and visually appealing. Once you've finished,
send me your results. I'll take a look and
give you feedback.
Alan Lomer, POWERPOINT DESIGNER AND TEACHER
