In December 2018, the designers at Adobe Bangalore got a chance to paint a mural on campus. Here is a glimpse into our process.
The mural started off as an idea for a group activity to kick off the holiday season. What it morphed into was a full-on production that involved going through multiple design iterations, picking out the right colours, and rolling up our sleeves (literally). We wanted to create a vibrant space in an otherwise very minimalistic office. After we measured the wall and made our final decision, we started the process of tackling an 8 ft x 40 ft mural.
Some of us started sketching out initial concepts to depict the vastness of #adobelife on our tangible canvas. Creative inputs poured in with abstract shapes, deep meaningful sketches, quirky illustrations and everything else under the sun.
We ended up selecting the above design because it reflected the essence of Adobe Life. It's playful and dynamic, with its bold lines and vivid colours. Just imagining this on our wall was pure joy. We played with bold shapes and even bolder colour choices to bring a full spectrum of fun to life on the wall. It breathed how we work and play in the diverse Adobe universe united in a common wave: where thought, art and heart come together to transcend the landscape of creativity, interspersed with the spark of an idea. The depiction of people, gigantic and small, working together to create something beautiful, symbolises how our teams come together to weave a colourful big picture in reality.
Juggling time between regular work and the mural, it took around a month of planning and conceptualisation. Post conceptualisation, the manual work started. Our talented designers turned into architects, carpenters, electricians, painters and colour experts overnight. The mural started with measuring the space and dividing it into smaller drawable sections. Over a week's time, the mural was divided into pieces and projected onto the wall and traced using pencils.
It was intimidating to think of the mural's proportion but we kept reminding ourselves to just enjoy the process. We planned the entire painting activity to span over a week which gave us enough time to understand each part of the process in its entirety. One of the most interesting experiences was when we went colour shopping; we spent hours looking through Pantone shade cards and truly enjoyed this part.
The entire experience was a party!
The final painting of the mural was done over a weekend. We kicked it off on a Friday evening with the first coat and over the next two days worked on the subsequent coats and detailing. As the mural kept growing, we kept falling in love with it even more. By the end of it, everyone was a wall painting expert. There was so much to learn, both from the joy of exploring a new medium and interacting with your team members in a different environment. Along the way, we laughed, pulled pranks, clashed over colour shades, learned from each other's painting techniques, ate a lot of pizza and spent a lot of time discussing the beauty we created in traffic jams. It was a weekend well spent.
Made with love by Adobe Design
