In einem kleinen Städtchen im Atlas. Marokko, 2017.
Stories with Adobe Spark
(If you only would like to see the stories, just scroll down!)
In the past, I shared some stories about the Adobe Publishing App "Spark" and also ran them under an own menu item on my website. In order to tidy things up and simplify navigation, I have now decided to put all of these stories in a blog post and to write something about Spark at the same time...
Adobe Spark is a template-based publishing app that is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. There are three categories: page ("website"), post (photo collages, graphics, typography) and video. I've only used Page so far. Spark is available on the desktop via its own website or mobile via three apps.
Experiences with Adobe Spark Page
Like everything, this app has some advantages and disadvantages. In my eyes, these are the following:
Advantages
- very nice and professional looking design thanks to various templates
- responsive design
- easy to use, fun
- Spark can access synchronized Lightroom folders directly from the Creative Cloud, so images don't need to be exported
- great if you have a small project and want to make a website about it
- the page can also be printed in Google Chrome
Disadvantages
- even after a few years, there still are the same templates that can be customized relatively little
- very long loading times
- the download of images cannot be restricted
- no possibility to switch between different languages
- Videos can only be embedded via YouTube or Vimeo
- Sparks embedded on your own website are not, as far as I understand it, read out by search engines, and "help" your own website in this sense, but a Google Analytics tracking code can be embedded
- Adobe Spark is clearly designed as a social media platform, which can be good if you want to have as many views as possible, but also unfavourable if it is still a "secret" project and you want to use it to create a mood board or similar to share with those involved (according to the terms of use, it seems that only those who have a link can access a certain page, but I'm not entirely convinced)
Conclusion
As is so often the case, it is worthwhile to think carefully about what you want to achieve with a post and which is the most suitable medium for it. I had a lot of fun every time I made a story with Adobe Spark Page because it's very playful. Since I actually want to develop more in the direction of storytelling (instead of single images) in the future and in my eyes it delivers nicer results than e.g. this website can, it would actually be an ideal tool. However, the disadvantages weigh quite heavy for me and so I am unsure whether I should still use it.
Below are three photo stories that I created with Adobe Spark Page...