Meet the Residents.
Find out about the creative passions that drive them and the unique projects they’re developing during their residency year.
Hallease Navraez
Videographer
San Antonio, Texas
Hallease is a digital storyteller and video producer who explores the complexity of the human experience in her short films and videos. Through her YouTube channel and Instagram, she uses her own life to dissect the multitude of identities we each hold. Her residency year will be focused on creating a comedy web series. Hallease will produce, co-write and star in the series, bringing people along for the ride behind the scenes. In conjunction, ‘Tryna Be Somebody’ is a video podcast that interviews different BIPOC artists on their creative careers to offer encouragement and advice to others.
PAST PROJECT
Beleaf in Fatherhood Opener
Beleaf in Fatherhood is a YouTube channel and brand featuring Glen Henry and his family. Glen is also a rap artist and often incorporates his music and lyrics into the content produced on the channel. We used his song to create an engaging motion graphics opener.
PAST PROJECT
Tanya is a multimedia artist, mixed reality (XR) engineer and entrepreneur. In early 2020, she began creating and sharing her work on Instagram in a series titled “#QuarantineArt”, inviting friends and followers to submit their smartphone selfies to turn into surreal works of art. Tanya is now exploring how to transform the human experience by combining art with augmented reality, artificial intelligence and technologies that don’t even exist yet. During her residency, she will be pursuing a series of augmented reality projects that aim to empower people to use their entire left-brain and right-brain skillset to create and consume art.
PAST PROJECT
#QuarantineArt
As a fun way to get better at Photoshop, I randomly chose some of my followers’ submitted selfies and used them to practise different Photoshop techniques like layering, masking, gradient mapping and colourising.
PAST PROJECT
Juan José Egúsquiza
2019 Resident
New York, New York
Juan José’s Impossible Stories project is a series of images from daily life that are manipulated to create a fictional reality. His residency is enabling him to share his creative process, get feedback from the community and expand his storytelling tools and techniques. In a few years, he’d like to be a creative director whose focus is on making ideas visually tangible.
ADOBE CREATE MAGAZINE
Reality-Defying Photo Composites Master the Impossible
Juan José Egúsquiza is based in Brooklyn, New York, but he spends much of his time as a man of the world. From Paris to San Francisco to Barcelona to Lucerne and beyond, the Lima, Peru-born multimedia artist and Adobe Creative Resident makes his way across the globe with his camera in hand. While exploring, he captures ordinary moments with a click and these images become the basis for what he calls “Impossible Stories”: brain-bending composites that challenge the way we relate to and interpret our surroundings.
Takuma Nakata
2019 Resident
Kyoto, Japan
Takuma is spending his residency developing self-made hardware and software systems to achieve new visual experiences. By collaborating with artists from different fields, he hopes to achieve his creative goal of applying digital aspects to physical spaces and to light up the world with visuals that people have never before experienced.
THE NEW INDIA EXPRESS
On the go: Bengaluru’s crowd is the subject for this Japanese designer
Inspired by the crowd in the subway, Takuma Nakata rightfully named his installation as Walk, at DesignUp, a festival that explores the integration of technology and design, which ended on Saturday. In the city for the festival, Nakata came up with this installation in collaboration with Patricia Reiners, a user interface designer whom he met during the Adobe Creative Resident programme.
Temi Coker
2018 Resident
Dallas, Texas
Multi-disciplinary artist Temi Coker was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria and now resides in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Afritina Coker. His mix of vibrant colours and textures come from his upbringing in Nigeria as well as his love for the African Diaspora. His style focuses on evoking emotion through colour, patterns and storytelling. Merging both photography and design has allowed him to find a new way of expression with endless possibilities.
SKILLSHARE
Digital Poster Design: Combining Images & Type for Powerful Visuals
The prompt is inspired by Temi’s own “Poster-a-Day” project, where he created nearly two dozen posters to celebrate beauty and individuals he admired, uniquely bringing together photography, imagery and words in striking designs.
Nadine Kolodziey
2018 Resident
Berlin, Germany
Nadine is a visual artist and illustrator based in Frankfurt and Berlin. She works at the intersection of digital and analogue with the goal of creating visual experiences rather than images. During her residency, she combined materials such as plastic and pixels to create work that was hand-cut, melted or transformed into walkable augmented reality environments and she invited the community to participate and engage with her artwork. She’s interested in new challenges, deep-diving in AR and doing big-scale installations as well as projects in Japan in the future.
SCHRIN MAGAZINE
Studio Visit: Magical Illustrations in 3D and AR
Her place is just as colourful as the world of images that she creates here. There is a shelf, the legs of which are modelled on coloured pencils. Pink Crocs stand under the desk.
Aiko Fukuda
2019 Resident
Tokyo, Japan
During her residency year, Aiko is creating a pop-up book that brings together analogue and digital illustrations with augmented reality (AR). She’s also offering design workshops and online tutorials to engage with the creative community. Ultimately, she hopes to publish her magical book and she’d also like to work with luxury brands and innovative companies that align with her aesthetic approach.
WIRED JAPAN
IT Giant Adobe Releases New App and the Whole Truth of Adobe Fresco
Aiko Fukuda, an artist who is expanding her career worldwide, will be a representative for the creators of Photoshop and Illustrator. She says new Adobe Fresco is full of new possibilities, even for creative pros. “It’s appealing that you can make combinations that are impossible, like oil paintings and watercolour paintings. Because the app’s Live brush lets you combine multiple layers, it’s possible to express things in a mixed way.”
Craig Winslow
2016 Resident
Portland, Oregon
Craig spent his residency creating a large series of light installations around the world called Light Capsules. He worked on improving his technique and optimising his process for projection-mapping while simultaneously going deeper into the details of sign painting and typography. He says the residency challenged him to get out of his comfort zone, tackle bigger projects and explore new concepts — and he gained confidence in himself and his work.
CRAIG WINSLOW STUDIO
The trickiest design limitation was time. This needed to set up within seconds, play for 90 seconds and then clear within seconds, properly clearing the court for tip-off. One concept quickly became a frontrunning idea: quickly deploy a cylinder to become a massive centrepiece canvas, augment it with 360º projection, then drop it.
Kelli Anderson
2015 Resident
Brooklyn, New York
Kelli spent her residency exploring the question, “What can paper do?” She tinkered with the material’s capacity to amplify sound, tell time and work as a camera. She even took a few everyday tech objects and stripped them down to the bare minimum, rebuilding them in paper pop-up book form. ze text of the book explains how simple structures can tap into the physical world’s invisible forces to make surprisingly sophisticated things happen.
KELLIANDERSON.COM
Adrienne Rich’s poetry is best known for its impassioned critique of oppressive systems (typically: capitalism or the patriarchy.) Her poem, Hubble Photographs: After Sappho, showcases conflicted feelings regarding scientific enlightenment vs. technology’s destructive potential. It begins as a celebration of the sheer ecstasy experienced when gazing upon a photo of another galaxy. However, there is something almost… deliberately off in her suggestion that this impossibly-distant view is superior to that of her lover’s gaze.
Aiko Fukuda
2019 Resident
Tokyo, Japan
During her residency year, Aiko is creating a pop-up book that brings together analogue and digital illustrations with augmented reality (AR). She’s also offering design workshops and online tutorials to engage with the creative community. Ultimately, she hopes to publish her magical book and she’d also like to work with luxury brands and innovative companies that align with her aesthetic approach.
WIRED JAPAN
IT Giant Adobe Releases New App and the Whole Truth of Adobe Fresco
Aiko Fukuda, an artist who is expanding her career worldwide, will be a representative for the creators of Photoshop and Illustrator. She says new Adobe Fresco is full of new possibilities, even for creative pros. “It’s appealing that you can make combinations that are impossible, like oil paintings and watercolour paintings. Because the app’s Live brush lets you combine multiple layers, it’s possible to express things in a mixed way.”
Octavia Bromell
2019 Resident
Sherborne, UK
Octavia is spending her year creating illustrations related to the theme of The Joyful Everyday — the idea that happiness can be found in the minutiae of daily life. She’s sharing her progress via process videos, blog posts and social media updates. In the future, she’d like to turn her obsession with stationery into an illustrated journal. She also hopes to do more international editorial work and build a beautiful, honest brand that connects with people.
CREATIVE REBELS
Can Creativity Cure Depression?
In this podcast episode, Octavia Bromell shares her creative journey and discusses how she started making art and illustrations when struggling with anxiety and depression. Discover how she used creativity to stay positive and focused.
Anna Daviscourt
2018 Resident
Portland, Oregon
An illustrator from Portland, Oregon, Anna speaks to younger generations through her positive stories. As a Creative Resident, she wrote and illustrated her debut picture book, gained representation at Shannon Associates and built an award-winning portfolio full of fun and diverse subjects. She also presented at events such as Adobe MAX, Lightbox Expo and Adobe Live. She continues to explore the world of children’s publishing and share her knowledge through online education.
ADOBE MAX
Creating Your Best Work: Training Your Eyes to Edit
Anna Daviscourt shares her insights, trade secrets and processes as part of the Drawing & Digital Painting speaker sessions at Adobe MAX 2019.
Nadine Kolodziey
2018 Resident
Berlin, Germany
Nadine is a visual artist and illustrator based in Frankfurt and Berlin. She works at the intersection of digital and analogue with the goal of creating visual experiences rather than images. During her residency, she combined materials such as plastic and pixels to create work that was hand-cut, melted or transformed into walkable augmented reality environments and she invited the community to participate and engage with her artwork. She’s interested in new challenges, deep-diving in AR and doing big-scale installations as well as projects in Japan in the future.
SCHRIN MAGAZINE
Studio Visit: Magical Illustrations in 3D and AR
Her place is just as colourful as the world of images that she creates here. There is a shelf, the legs of which are modelled on coloured pencils. Pink Crocs stand under the desk.
Chelsea Burton
2017 Resident
Lakewood, Ohio
A graphic designer from Erie, Pennsylvania, with passions for street art, skateboard-smithing and design, Chelsea spent her residency developing a line of longboards showcasing her artwork. She explored subjects including the public perception of female strength, individuality, sustainability, product quality and the functional and accessible application of art and she shared the stages of her process all the way through the production of her wood decks.
ADOBE CREATE MAGAZINE
On Deck: The Art of Making Skateboards
Skateboarding didn’t come naturally to Chelsea Burton. “I always wanted to do it but totally sucked,” the graphic designer says of early days trying to find her balance. Learning to snowboard in high school helped and when she discovered longboards not long after, she fell in love with the way they mimicked the movement of gliding down frozen mountains.
Rosa Kammermeier
2017 Resident
Munich, Germany
A graphic designer and lettering artist from Munich, Germany, Rosa used her residency to create a project called Walk of Happiness. She lettered messages of positivity on retail windows to create a city-wide treasure hunt. Her messages caught consumers’ attention and made them stop, smile and think while discovering new aspects and areas of their city. She challenged herself to improve her own skills while thinking and driving impact on a bigger scale.
2019 International Women’s Day Google Doodle
Rosa Kammermeier’s graphic is one of 13 that can be seen around the world. According to Google, they revolve around the topic “Women who empower women.”
Syd Weiler
2016 Resident
Columbus, Ohio
Syd used their residency to build a creative community around their work where others could learn, share and work alongside them. They explored the digital sticker store trend and created the now-Facebook-infamous Trash Doves. They also took the time to figure out what kind of work they wanted to be making and say they came away equipped to achieve their goals, maintain a productive career doing what they love and contribute positivity and knowledge to the online creative community.
MEDIUM
In early 2017, the flailing purple bird named ‘Trash Dived’ briefly and violently overtook the Internet in a case of extreme social media meme virality. Trash Doves are my creation and this nearly ruined my life.
Becky Simpson
2015 Resident
Nashville, Tennessee
Becky used her residency to build and launch her online store, Chipper Things, a lifestyle and paper brand that celebrates play and delights in the ordinary. She began the year with her #100DaysOfGettingStarted project, in which she illustrated something new every day for three months. Much of that art can be found in Chipper Things and in dozens of shops across the U.S. and Canada. She also finished her second book, The Flatmate Book, an illustrated guide to flatmate life that was published by Andrews McMeel.
THE GREAT DISCONTENT
When it came time to choose a career path for college, I was torn between fashion design and graphic design. Then my mum asked me, “Do you like designing the clothes or drawing the clothes?” Game over. From that point on, I pursued graphic design and never looked back.
Christina Poku
2020 Resident
London, UK
Christina creates staged scenes that fuse realities with colourful abstracted motifs. Her work utilises a cross-disciplinary skillset with an unapologetic colour palette to create impactful images and cinemagraphs. During her residency year, Christina shared her journey with fellow creatives via Instagram, TikTok and more. Her long-term goal is to run a full-service photography studio and multi-disciplinary practice that merges physical and virtual elements in digital images and she looks forward to collaborating with 3D artists, set designers and motion designers.
It's Nice That article
Christina Poku on how the Adobe Creative Residency programme is aiding her photography practice
A chat with the London-based photographer and art director Christina Poku on how the programme has benefitted her.
Laura Zalenga
2018 Resident
Berlin, Germany
Laura is a conceptual portrait photographer from Germany who’s based in Rotterdam. She spent her residency year exploring a different genre of photography. For her documentary project “Beauty of Age,” she interviewed and took portraits of 35 elderly people. Her goal was to show that there is so much more to age than what society sees, including beauty, life wisdom and first-hand knowledge of our history. Laura’s residency motivated her to give more talks and workshops and she plans to create more documentary series as well as conceptual work that includes socially important issues and social taboo topics.
FUBIZ MEDIA
Outstanding Portraits and Self-Portraits with Laura Zalenga
Between delicate fiction, dramatic surrealism and visual poetry, German-based artist Laura Zalenga’s photographs dissect human emotions with boldness. It’s sometimes gentle, sometimes raw or mysterious.
Aaron Bernstein
2018 Resident
New York City, New York
Passionate about reflecting facets of contemporary culture through photography-driven projects, New York City -based photographer Aaron Bernstein spent his residency exploring the intersection of food, art and style under the digital guise of Hungry Boy. He’s now maintaining Hungry Boy as a creative plug socket while collaborating with like-minded brands and continuing to focus on food as an effective tool to navigate art and design.
6SQST
The Urban Lens: ‘Manhattan Meltdown’ photo series aims to preserve and celebrate food of NYC
Photographer Aaron Bernstein was overwhelmed when he first moved to New York City for his career in fashion. One way to adjust to his new home was through different food experiences.
Julia Nimke
2017 Resident
Berlin, Germany
A German photographer based in Berlin, Julia is passionate about nature, travelling and unique types of cultural storytelling. She spent her residency exploring and documenting places and cultures in Europe that are tied to folk tales and she tried out different photography styles, combined photos and videos into compelling stories and shared what she learnt with the community. Her goal was to inspire people to stay curious and open-minded when they experience unknown places and cultures.
YOUTUBE
The perfect spot for van enthusiasts, van life and van lifestyle. Explore stories and reportages that spotlight extraordinary people and professionals.
Aundre Larrow
2017 Resident
Brooklyn, New York
A photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, Aundre spent his residency working on projects that explored the daily lives, challenges and perspectives of a diverse range of people throughout the U.S. His main project, Stories from Here, was a snapshot of America through the eyes of its residents. He captured photographs, made video content for the first time and shared his process — all with the goal of making longer-form storytelling about unheard voices his primary work.
TEEN VOGUE
“Recognise That This Is a Cage”: Two Formerly Incarcerated Women Recall Life on the Inside
“I’m from New York City, born and raised. From sun up to sunset and back to sun up is always something to do. Always something to get into. There’s always some kind of scam or something going on.
Sara Dietschy
2016 Resident
Brooklyn, New York
Sara came to the residency with the goal of amplifying her work across the spectrum of social media and pursuing a bigger medium for her YouTube-based series, Creative SpacesTV. She spoke at events like Adobe MAX and SXSW and took on collaborations and partnerships that led her to become a Sony Alpha Collective member, the Director of Photography for the documentary Internet Kids and a nominee for Vlogger of the Year at the 2017 Shorty Awards.
YOUTUBE
Two teams battle it out to cross the USA using the lowest CO2 emissions possible in the ultimate efficiency challenge. Hosted by Big Bang Theory star Kaley Cuoco and monitored by Mission Control a team of Shell engineers and student scientists watching behind the scenes — this isn’t a race about travelling faster, it’s about travelling cleaner.
Isabel Lea
2018 Resident
London, UK
Co-founder of the creative studio ATYPICAL, Isabel works at the intersection of typography, design and art direction. For her residency project, she explored using typography and design to visualise language in more playful and experimental ways. She brought language to life through type-led product collections, interactive installations, typefaces and photography essays that celebrated aspects of culture that felt untranslatable. She continues to work with clients, create commissions and do talks and essays on these themes.
ADOBE CREATE MAGAZINE
If you haven’t spent much time on that particular corner, you may not be familiar with the variable font format. It can reduce web font file sizes and give you loads of typographic variations.
Jessica Bellamy
2017 Resident
Louisville, Kentucky
A designer from Louisville, Kentucky, Jessica uses data and personal narratives to create compelling visual stories that break down complex information for policy change. With a goal of driving social change, she partners with non-profits and community groups to co-create infographics around social initiatives. She spent her residency working on new approaches to her creative process and design execution and she taught the creative community how to equitably work with affected communities and non-profits.
COMMARTS
I’ve been an avid reader of research studies, news publications and social literature for most of my adult life, so I’m no stranger to dry, long reports and articles.
Rosa Kammermeier
2017 Resident
Munich, Germany
A graphic designer and lettering artist from Munich, Germany, Rosa used her residency to create a project called Walk of Happiness. She lettered messages of positivity on retail windows to create a city-wide treasure hunt. Her messages caught consumers’ attention and made them stop, smile and think while discovering new aspects and areas of their city. She challenged herself to improve her own skills while thinking and driving impact on a bigger scale.
2019 International Women’s Day Google Doodle
Rosa Kammermeier’s graphic is one of 13 that can be seen around the world. According to Google, they revolve around the topic “Women who empower women.”
Christine Herrin
2016 Resident
Berkeley, California
Christine spent her residency thinking of ways to use graphic design to encourage people to document their lives in creative and meaningful ways. She launched her first product, the Everyday Explorers Travel Journal kit and used it to test ideas and share her vision. She learnt how to balance new ideas with the financial and practical limitations of building and growing a creative business. From that first journal, Christine built Everyday Explorers into a successful brand of paper products that inspire documentation and creativity.
EVERYDAY EXPLORERS
We believe in endless exploration, constant curiosity and taking the time to pause and document the details of our daily life.
Maddy Beard
2020 Resident
Denver, Colorado
Maddy Beard is a strategic designer with a focus in mindful product design. Empathy, cognitive psychology and digital wellbeing are all driving forces behind her work. After “graduating” from the Creative Residency, Maddy joined a tech startup as the Design Lead where she’s helping to launch a video layering tool for content creators. On the side, she loves sharing her process and learnings with the creative community on Instagram, YouTube and Skillshare.
Skillshare
Intro to UX/UI for Graphic Designers
Whether you want to expand the services you can offer as a designer or transition into a new job entirely, UI/UX and product design skills are extremely advantageous. Many creatives like you know this, but have no idea where to start. Strategic designer, Maddy Beard, helps you to start on your path towards honing these skills.
Andrea Hock
2018 Resident
Saint Louis, Missouri
An U/AN UI/UX designer from St. Louis, Missouri, Andrea spent her residency designing apps that focused on automation and showed how Internet-connected objects can improve the human experience. She also shared her design process and best practices on her YouTube channel, in workshops and in digital resources to excite others about experience design and its role in our society and culture. She now works as an independent UI/UX Designer with a mix of small startups and large corporate clients.
ADOBE CREATE MAGAZINE
Andrea Hock Shares Her App-Design Process
UX/UI designer and Adobe Creative Resident Andrea Hock talks us through the steps she took to create a tongue-scanning meal-automation app — from the initial idea and the refining of that idea, through research and making visual choices and then on to wireframes and creating the final prototype.
Natalie Lew
2017 Resident
Brooklyn, New York
An interaction designer based in Brooklyn, New York, Natalie is passionate about the intersections of design and philosophy. As a resident, she created digital solutions in the spaces of professional networking, charitable giving (with DonorsChoose.org), public resource access and educational news (with Newsela.com). She also created a notebook detailing her creative process to help make UX design more accessible to the creative community. She plans to work in interaction design for civic and urban planning in the future.
ADOBE BLOG
Passion, Timelines and Curiosity: Design Insights
“Rather than tackle a single topic over the course of this year, I’m planning to approach a series of projects, testing out different research methodologies throughout,” she says.
