Creative Types
- Brand
- Adobe
- Year
- 2019
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Quiz & Trivia
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Adobe Create
Objective
Adobe Create wanted to understand its readers better and reach new ones, so it needed something that gave creative people a clear, sharable way to describe their own strengths and working style — deepening their tie to the Adobe brand in the process. Rather than a standard content-page quiz, Adobe pushed its partner agency to make something that looked nothing like the typical online personality test.
Solution
The quiz lives on its own site, away from the magazine, and opens straight into the first of 15 questions, each offering two answers phrased in deliberately abstract, imagistic language rather than plain statements. Tapping an answer triggers a short filmed scene — shot on physical, built sets with its own sound design — that plays out the choice just made, with a skip link tucked in the bottom right for anyone in a hurry. After the 15th choice, the player lands on one of eight creative types — Artist, Thinker, Adventurer, Maker, Producer, Dreamer, Innovator, or Visionary — each rendered as its own animated 3D character, along with a read on their strengths, their biggest challenge, and who they work best with. The result comes with a personal PDF to save or share, and the seven other types stay browsable afterward for anyone curious how they compare.
Results
More than 7 million people have completed the quiz (an earlier count put it at over 3 million), generating 56 million page views and 425,000 hours spent on the site.
- 1
The player opens a standalone microsite separate from Adobe's main site, which frames the experience as a study of the many faces of creative personality, grounded in psychological research into how people think, act, and see the world, and previews a short, registration-free test of 15 questions.
- 2
After starting, the player answers a series of binary questions, each forcing a choice between two poles rather than a rating on a scale; the phrasing is abstract and metaphorical rather than survey-like, such as choosing between systems or stories, or between being a ruler or a spring.
- 3
Each answer triggers a short live-action film shot on physical sets with original sound design, dramatizing the option just chosen as a reward before the next question; a skip link in the bottom right lets the player bypass the film and move on immediately.
- 4
The question-choice-film cycle repeats until all 15 questions are answered.
- 5
The test concludes by assigning the player one of eight creative types — Artist, Thinker, Adventurer, Maker, Producer, Dreamer, Innovator, or Visionary — represented by its own 3D character.
- 6
The player then reads a breakdown of their type: its character and strengths, its central challenge and unrealized potential, and the type that makes an ideal creative collaborator.
- 7
The player can take the result away as a personal, shareable PDF summarizing strengths, potential, and ideal collaborators, and can email it to themselves.
- 8
From their result, the player can browse the remaining seven types on separate pages, each with its own character and description.
