When we re-launched our Adobe Stories site with the question ‘why do you create?’, we had no idea what kinds of tales we’d get or how “global” the stories would be. Well this one, from Martin Ngugi (artist mchoraji) got our attention immediately. He is from Nairobi, Kenya and born without forearms. For me, his work jumps off the screen and has a spark of “aliveness” that makes me want to see more…and we can! Check out more digital drawings on Facebook. Below is an image from the stories site, as well as part 1 of a local news piece on Martin.

Interested in writing your own story? We’d love to read it (or watch) it, and maybe we can promote it too. Martin’s story is just the first of the stories we’ll share with the community on this blog, on Twitter and Facebook. So keep checking back!

Creative Cloud is here! As the way we work evolves, so has Adobe’s offerings. You can now get your Creative Cloud membership, which starts with the complete Creative Suite 6, as well as Adobe Muse, our new visual web design tool, and Edge, the HTML5 animation app. Add in Business Catalyst for web hosting, Typekit for fonts, and up to 20 gigabytes of cloud storage for syncing and sharing your files. Why is Creative Cloud so transformative and what does its future hold? Get the story from Jeffrey Veen, senior director of products.

The launch of Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6 has us all thinking about — creativity of course! Where do the creative juices flow from, when you’re designing a web page, making a movie, writing a song and even building out an entire ad campaign? Our Adobe & Stories site just re-launched and we’d love to read yours, see images about it or even “watch” it if you have a video.

And for all of you in North America and Canada, we’re giving away tablets to 6 lucky storytellers! A tablet of your choice – just check out the site for full terms and conditions.

We’ve had a few stories come in already that we think are pretty great:

• “Having developed an international reputation for creating altered photographs with ecological concerns, in Antarctica I became interested in creating an editorial (relatively unaltered) body of work to compare and contrast these two modes of perception and expression…A simple project initially, it continues to grow. A single exhibit and book has become multiple exhibits and books, lectures, a website and Antarctic workshop program…I started using Photoshop 1 as an artist in residence at Kodak’s Center for Creative Imaging. I beta-tested Lightroom 1…” — Read more about the project from the story’s author John Paul Caponigro

• “I’ve been looking for ways to make the color images from my Sony a850 pop a little bit more. I love shooting the camera in B&W mode and find that a simple conversion to grayscale in Photoshop and then some tweaking of the curves usually results in fantastic images. The same has not always been so with the different color modes on the camera. I usually shoot in vivid mode with the contrast and saturation bumped up a couple of steps, however differing light and weather sometimes still left the images looking a little bit flat. After reviewing many tutorials online about maximizing the look and feel of color images with Photoshop I came up with this simple method…” — Read more about Peter Ellenby’s method in his story

Now it’s your turn: Why do you create?

Are people living up to their creative potential? In a word, no.

This week, Adobe released global research in a State of Create report to uncover how people feel about their own creativity as well as its role in the economy, society, the workplace and our educational institutions.  The findings were enlightening.  A few highlights from the data:

• 8 in 10 feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth
• Only 1 in 4 believe they are living up to their own creative potential
• 75% said they are under growing pressure to be productive rather than creative at work
• More than half feel creativity is being stifled by the education system – and that feeling rises to 70% in the US
• Only about half of Americans would describe themselves as creative (global average is even lower at 39%)

We call this separation between the importance and the day-to-day reality of creativity the “creativity gap.”  That gap is pretty sobering.

So, what can we do to close the creativity gap?  First, we need to make time for creativity as well as provide the necessary technology tools and training.   Productivity and creativity should not be mutually exclusive – we all need to find ways to create at work, rather than considering it a weekend hobby or luxury for those with more time.  As for our educational institutions, they need to foster the growth of the entire child, with more opportunities to participate in arts programs and foster “out of the box” creative thinking.  Most importantly, we all need to think of creativity more broadly – it’s not just the domain of professional designers or artists.  It’s a critical capability in a successful society and one that is in all of us.

Please check out the full report online, and let me know what you think either in the comments section or on Twitter (@alewnes).

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say Monday, April 23 was a banner day for Adobe customers. Starting with the Creative Cloud and Creative Suite 6 news, which will usher in an entirely new way to work, share and collaborate for designers, filmmakers, developers, artists and really anyone else who calls themselves “a creative.” The team demo’d the new offerings publicly at our launch event in the de Young Museum, San Francisco, and it was the first time many of us (that includes me) saw it all in action. Did you get a chance to watch it? If not, catch it below.

The Games were Afoot!

To support the launch, the social media team did something that -as far as I know- we hadn’t done before: hosted a scavenger hunt in San Francisco, for the locals, and one online, for the world. There was $10,000 up for grabs and free memberships to Creative Cloud. For the #HuntSF all you had to do (besides be in the City) was run around to Creative Cloud and Creative Suite-imaged balloons downtown, pick up a puzzle piece and get back to Adobe SF office before 6pm.

For the online scavenger, you had to keep your eyes peeled to the Creative Layer blog for clues like this one, Facebook pages, Twitter and Pinterest, and be one of the first of three people to get to the finish line.

We thought it all was pretty fun! I guess we weren’t the only ones, as over 600 people played (and this person even documented his #HuntSF journey on YouTube). The Creative Layer blog will have a full recap of the scavenger hunts later today so stay tuned for that.

Create Now

Adobe is also embarking on a new initiative to get students creating, by committing $1 million to a new Adobe Foundation Creativity Scholarship fund. This will be offered to high-school seniors across the world who participate in the Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) program, which includes more than 800 sites in 52 countries. The scholarship will keep students in school, helping them as they pursue creative careers and find innovative ways to improve their communities.

There’s immeasurable power in personal expression.  It’s the reason that, since its inception, Adobe Youth Voices has worked to encourage personal expression and creativity in students around the world and – along the way – empower them with 21^st century digital communication skills.

Adobe is especially passionate about this mission, not only because creativity is our business, but because we know that outlets for creativity and expression for students aren’t a given.  In fact, according to a new “State of Creativity” benchmark study just released by Adobe, nearly 60% of those surveyed globally feel that creativity is actually being stifled by their education systems.

This statistic has to change.

So today, the Adobe Foundation proudly announced the creation of a $1 million Adobe Foundation Creativity Scholarship initiative, giving select Adobe Youth Voices students the chance to go to college and pursue a creative arts field.  We hope our scholarship recipients will be ambassadors for a more creative culture, finding creative ways to improve their communities, and becoming role models for the next generation of the creative workforce. We plan to announce more details on the scholarship application process later in the year.

Now more than ever, this investment in young people and in creativity is critical.  We’re honored to play a part.

It’s less than a week since we debuted the beta of Photoshop CS6 and already there have been more than half a million downloads of the software.  See what the cool kids over in Photoshop-land are saying about this milestone release of the industry-standard in digital imaging, here.

Last week was full of exciting news for Adobe in Europe.  We were named to the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to work for list in the UK and ranked as the 10th best workplace in Germany by the Great Place to Work Institute. These two prestigious employer recognitions really capture the essence of what makes Adobe an exceptional place to work – our people, values and culture. It gives me great pride to know that wherever in the world our employees work, the unique qualities that make us Adobe are the same.

As our teams celebrated this recognition, many blogged about why they enjoy working for Adobe – and they also raised a champagne glass or two. If Adobe seems like an environment where you’d like to work, we invite you to learn more and contact us.

It’s a huge compliment when your colleagues say the business is a great place to work. It’s even better when a panel of independent judges agrees with them.

So when we found out Adobe had been voted the 33^rd best place to work in the ‘Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For’ awards, we were absolutely delighted.

To be named the second best technology company to work for, given this is the first time the Adobe team has entered the competition and the number and quality of the companies we are up against, makes it that much more special. We see it as a reflection of our incredible team and the enthusiasm everyone brings to work here every day.

So much has happened since Adobe was founded in the US nearly 30 years ago – and our brand in the UK has gone from strength to strength to become hugely successful and widely recognised. But our values have remained the same and our commitment to creating a great place to work, wherever we are in the world, makes us really proud. Just take a look at what some of our team have to say about working here.

At Adobe, we work really hard to create a vibrant, dynamic working environment. We’ve always said that great ideas can come from everywhere, and that the next big idea could be yours. We thrive on being innovative and involved while striving for excellence – but remembering we’ve got to keep our feet on the ground by being genuine.

If you’d like to find out more about working for Adobe, check out our career opportunities page and follow @AdobeCareersEUR and @AdobeUK. We’re hiring in the UK right now – you never know, the perfect position may just have come up!

You can get involved with the conversation with #bestcompanies and find out more by logging onto www.bestcompanies.co.uk. You can also read about the awards on The Sunday Times website if you are a subscriber.

As part of the annual Social Media Week, we were excited to host a day dedicated to social data and analytics. The jam-packed agenda was all about how to take social media measurement to the next step by leveraging social data to impact business strategy. We had a great lineup of speakers, including our very own SVP of Global Marketing, Ann Lewnes, Jeremiah Owyang and Susan Etlinger from Altimeter Group, John Yi from Facebook, and social practitioners from SAP, Cisco, eBay, and Intel.

Watch some of our favorite highlights in the video below. You can catch all the recordings from the sessions here.