Announcing the MAX 2025 Creativity Awards Winners

This submit initially appeared on the Adobe weblog on November 5, 2025.Be a part of us in congratulating this yr’s winners for excellence of their respective fields.DesignProfessional DesignMaria Vioque NguyenCastilMaria Vioque Niguyen, multidisciplinary designer and co-founder of HONDO, works by exploring the intersection of analog and digital design. Her work is pushed by a love of poetic visible language and considerate storytelling. At HONDO Studio, her crew reimagined the id of Castil, an Italian model with a wealthy heritage in metallic craftsmanship and modern furnishings design. The objective was to create a visible language that displays the power and flexibility of Castil’s steel-bending course of. Working in shut collaboration with kind designer Ignacio Casco, they developed the bespoke Castil Mono typeface and a brand new brand, each core parts that seize the model’s precision and adaptableness.The ensuing design system is clear and versatile, celebrating Castil’s customizable merchandise whereas supporting expressive and practical purposes throughout all touchpoints. This rebrand embodies HONDO’s dedication to collaborative and considerate design, giving Castil a flexible platform to share its distinctive strategy to fashionable craftsmanship.Skilled DesignMoh Febri AdiawarjaForkettaMoh Febri Adiawarja is the artistic director of WOBL Inventive, a studio based mostly in Malang and Bali, Indonesia. With over eight years of expertise within the artistic business, Adiawarja makes a speciality of illustration and graphic design, mixing vibrant concepts with aesthetics that resonate with audiences. His work balances creativity and readability, making certain each design not solely speaks but in addition connects.Adiawarja reimagined Forketta as a approach to reintroduce pasta to a youthful viewers — not simply as a consolation meals, however as a playful, artistic expertise. With 1000’s of pasta recipes circulating on-line, the choices are each limitless, overwhelming, and forgotten. Forketta flips that behavior by encouraging younger folks to not simply save recipes for later, however to really dive in and take a look at them.Working alongside Bimo Finca Azvy, his Inventive/Artwork Director, Adiawarja introduced Forketta to life with daring illustrations, colourful packaging, and a tone that speaks on to Gen Z and younger Millennials. The objective: be the pasta that sparks pleasure, experimentation, and on a regular basis pleasure. It’s not nearly consuming pasta however about making it an journey in taste and creativity.Younger CreatorEstrella Gracia“Cruda”Estrella Gracia is a multidisciplinary designer based mostly in Valencia, Spain. She just lately graduated in Design and Inventive Applied sciences from the Polytechnic College of Valencia and is now working as a digital designer at Gusta. Her work focuses on experimenting with totally different design codecs and fields — together with editorial, packaging, lettering, digital, net, movement, and 3D — to find new, artistic methods to strategy each private {and professional} initiatives. She is captivated with mixing expertise and human-centered design to create significant person experiences.Gracia can also be lively within the Spanish design group and creates academic and way of life movies on her YouTube channel. Her intention is to proceed rising in UX/UI design whereas additionally connecting with extra creatives who worth experimentation and considerate design.“Cruda” (translated to “uncooked” in Spanish) is an unbiased editorial venture born as a response to the fixed media bombardment of retouched photos, completed initiatives, and the “lack of erratic references in our collective creativeness,” as Gracia describes it. The venture is the journal: all 71 pages, three covers for a doable yearly assortment, artwork route of the pictures for the covers, and the design of the header. It was additionally printed as a real-life prototype, together with particular paper inventory, transparencies, and inserts so as to add rhythm and true imperfection to the ultimate end result.Picture MakingProfessional Picture MakingHugo Cuellar“The Misplaced Keepers of Flannan Isles”Born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Hugo Cuellar is a London-based manufacturing artist, designer, animator, and illustrator. Spanning a number of artistic disciplines, his work combines a watch for design, a powerful sense of narrative, and a collaborative strategy, serving to manufacturers, studios, and companies translate ideas into placing visible experiences.Cuellar was tapped by Fable Whisky, an unbiased model of Scottish whisky makers that makes use of a singular storytelling strategy to immerse their shoppers in a world of distant tales, thriller, and, in fact, conventional, well-crafted spirits. They requested Cuellar to carry their model to life, each in animation and packaging illustration.Cuellar created “The Misplaced Keepers of Flannan Isles,” a real-life story in regards to the dramatic disappearance of the lighthouse keepers within the Flannan Isles, firmly set within the lore of Scotland. The venture consisted of an animated movie describing the story in a poetic and highly effective style, in addition to a sequence of illustrations that characteristic necessary moments within the story, every being displayed within the several types of whisky containers within the sequence.Private Picture MakingThomas DuboisKeshiki: Echoes of ColoradoThomas Dubois is a filmmaker and inventive director with a basis in structure. Skilled to assume in house, sequence, and construction, he applies core ideas from structure to each body he shoots — creating a visible language that’s restrained but evocative. His work spans movies, visible creations, pitch supplies, and visible growth for narrative IP, all unified by a meticulous, design-driven course of that conveys his distinctive sensibilities into mesmerizing narratives.“Keshiki: Echoes of Colorado” is a sequence of digital artworks that views Colorado’s rugged topographies by way of the lens of Japanese panorama traditions. Dubois used restrained palettes and deliberate strokes to translate early morning fog, the golden silence that follows a thunderstorm, and that stress between huge scale and intimate element. The intention is to let gesture and restraint do the speaking, to mix conventional types with fashionable instruments and discover a new visible emotion in a well-known terrain.In Japanese, keshiki (景色) means “surroundings,” however it additionally carries the temper, reminiscence, and soul of a spot. That’s the center of this work: Dubois seeks to reimagine this place by way of the poetics of brushwork, textures, and lightweight.In a visible tradition that rewards velocity and certainty, this venture invitations the viewer to decelerate and have interaction, to expertise a spot by way of its temper, colours, and the in-between.Younger Creator Picture MakingClément Berneron“Melcos in Metropolis”Clément Berneron is an illustrator and graphic designer based mostly in Bordeaux, France. Initially skilled at GOBELINS Paris, he based his studio MelcGraphic, the place he makes a speciality of creating dense universes through which the viewer can get misplaced and luxuriate in looking for hidden particulars. His work attracts as a lot from observing actuality as from the will to remodel it into fiction. The objective is easy: to share a way of surprise by inviting everybody to dream like a baby.“Melcos in Metropolis” is an illustrated fresco that reimagines New York Metropolis by creating a singular ecosystem inhabited by characters referred to as Melcos. The digital paintings blends remark and fiction, inviting everybody to discover, play, and lose themselves within the particulars. Extra than simply a picture, it’s an ecosystem the place the attention wanders, guided by curiosity and surprise.MotionProfessional MotionMardo El-NoorMcDonald’s, “Make it Click on!”Mardo El-Noor is a New Zealand-based mixed-media director-designer, acknowledged for merging reside motion with animation and movement graphics. With a background in graphic design, he brings a design-led strategy to each venture, drawing on UI and poster aesthetics to form fashion frames, visible analysis, and idea pitches. A self-described fashion chameleon, Mardo focuses on artistic options over a set aesthetic, a philosophy that has established him as New Zealand’s go-to director for mixed-media work.McDonald’s tapped artistic company DDB for assist bringing consideration to seatbelt utilization throughout New Zealand’s summer time highway journey season. DDB partnered with El-Noor to revisit the enduring “Make It Click on” marketing campaign, first launched in New Zealand within the Nineteen Eighties to spur seatbelt use. They introduced in Kiwi DJ Jess Rhodes to provide a contemporary remix of the traditional Kiwi anthem, with a contemporary DnB combine — now reminding a brand new era of drivers to buckle up and change on Do Not Disturb to remain targeted behind the wheel.Private MotionAbraham Egbobawaye“Noodlz”Abraham Egbobawaye is captivated by summary, graphical, and playful approaches of visible communication in each mediums, the place he can problem himself to speak advanced subjects in easier, graphic, and significant methods. He at all times hopes to study and collaborate with groups on initiatives which might be significant, enjoyable, and pleasant.“Noodlz” is a sequence of sketches, 3D renders, and animations with a concentrate on dynamic, summary compositions and motion. His easy hope is that the works make somebody, aside from him, smile. Egbobawaye introduced it to life by way of play and tons of iteration, discovering that making this sequence of paintings was significantly better than daydreaming about it.Younger Creator MotionAnastasia Rykova“The Story of Two Merciless Rulers”Anastasia Rykova is a visible developer and 3D artist working within the animation business. Coming from a Nice Arts background, she views animation as probably the most highly effective instruments for self-expression.With a level in Laptop Animation from Ringling Faculty of Artwork and Design {and professional} expertise as a VisDev artist and 3D designer, she usually acts as a bridge between the 2D and 3D departments. Her portfolio contains roles as an affiliate artwork director/VisDev artist at Gasket Studios, 3D artist and cinematics designer at Air A Med, a workshop with Disney Stay Leisure, and mentorships with Girls in Animation and CTN.“The Story of Two Merciless Rulers” is a 3D animated brief movie that serves as an anti-war assertion offered as a cautionary story. The story follows two rulers who, after inflicting a lethal warfare, battle over their peasants’ bones to determine who will rule a dull kingdom. It is a private reflection on grief, warfare, and the absurdity of power-seeking.PhotographyProfessional PhotographyMaria Louceiro“Music in Berlin”Maria Louceiro is a contract photographer and artwork director based mostly in Berlin, Germany. She studied Mining and Geo-Environmental Engineering, however discovered that she beloved drawing and photographing the mines rather more than truly working in them. Then she studied Communication Design and has been working with each analog and digital pictures, bringing a dreamy strategy to her photos, collaborating with purchasers reminiscent of Adobe, Polaroid, Common Music, amongst others.“Music in Berlin” is a sequence of photos of the Pitchfork Berlin Pageant, meant to supply a report of the occasion that immerses folks within the competition’s particular ambiance. This sequence tries to realize dynamic compositions and expressions of sunshine to discover the connection between music, gentle, and shade. Her hope is to seize the magic of the performances and the ambiance of the totally different live shows in a vibrant and emotional method.Private PhotographyIzaskun Valmaseda“An Act of Turning into”Izaskun Valmaseda is a self-taught visible artist based mostly in Madrid, Spain. Her work lies on the intersection of Nice Artwork and conceptual pictures, combining meticulous aesthetics with robust emotional symbolism. This multidisciplinary background formed her visible, technical, and narrative strategy from the very starting. Her work has been exhibited in Spain, Italy, Austria, and the Netherlands, and she or he has collaborated as a featured artist with worldwide manufacturers reminiscent of ViewSonic ColorPro. She is presently increasing her observe into video artwork and digital media, incorporating rising instruments whereas sustaining honesty and full artistic management.“An Act of Turning into” is a self-portrait that portrays a girl caught in a suspended second of self-redefinition. Whereas the pose echoes classical portraiture, the digitally constructed setting — created with generative instruments — unfolds as an internal panorama moderately than a bodily house. She inhabits a threshold: between costume and pores and skin, previous and turning into, custom and self-authorship. Her gaze resists spectacle, charged with each vulnerability and power.Younger Creator PhotographyBeatriz SimasThe First Supper 1995/ The First Supper 2024Beatriz Simas is a Toronto, Canada-based artist and present graduate scholar within the Grasp of Artwork Historical past program on the College of Toronto. Simas explores notions of id, cultural connections, and belonging by way of the medium of pictures in addition to the contextualization of artwork historical past. By performing self-portraiture, Simas touches on notions of individuality and totally different personalities by way of the cautious curation of clothes, wigs, make-up, and props. Utilizing herself as a dwelling canvas, she embodies given characters — both bigger than life archetypes or small, intimate and private realities — as a way to discover cultural contexts and dismantle conventional methods of viewing. A driving query in her observe is: What does it imply to be a first-generation Canadian with a powerful cultural background, inside a visible realm? Via a theatrical/character-based photographic observe, she completely analyzes and creates absolutely realized characters, present process a bodily transformation, caught on digital camera.“The First Supper 2024” is Simas’ recreation of “The First Supper 1995,” a household {photograph} taken by her mom almost thirty years prior. Suffering from the unique {photograph}’s quasi-religious composition, the artist locations herself within the footwear of her household, and subsumes herself in costume, together with wigs, garments, jewellery, and make-up, as a way to enter the interior psyche of these she portrays. This piece serves as an introspective take a look at the immigrant expertise, reflecting on cultural dilution over time, and variations between being a first-generation Canadian versus current Portuguese-Brazilian Immigrants.VideoProfessional VideoSaul Knight“Discipline Journey”Saul Knight is a London-based cinematographer, digital camera operator and editor. He was born and raised within the countryside of Nottingham, England the place he created brief movies along with his college buddies earlier than shifting to Bristol to review filmmaking and concentrate on Cinematography. After shifting to London, he labored as artistic video lead for a number one style model, and he’s now a full-time freelancer engaged on social adverts, style campaigns, documentaries, brief movies, and music movies. Knight has led massive, multi-cam shoots and designed advanced studio lighting set-ups — however he additionally enjoys solo capturing on location if the venture requires.“Discipline Journey” is a brief, branded documentary movie that follows six runners competing in “The Pace Challenge,” an ultra-relay race by way of Chile’s Atacama Desert — the driest, non-polar desert on Earth. Simply grit, teamwork, and 500 kilometers of unforgiving terrain. From being chased by wild canine within the opening kilometer to climbing from 250m to three,700m elevation over 88km, this race examined every little thing for each runners and Knight: bodily endurance, psychological resilience, and the power of the crew.Private VideoHoward William Mitsakos“Spin Cycle”Howard “Howey” William Mitsakos is a filmmaker and inventive director based mostly in upstate New York. With over twenty years of expertise in business cinematography and storytelling, he leads Novel Studios, producing award-winning commercials, movies, music movies, and branded content material for regional and nationwide purchasers. His private work explores surreal, psychological, and emotional themes of the human situation.“Spin Cycle” is a brief movie that explores the emotional limbo folks expertise after they’re caught between the lives they lead and the lives they quietly lengthy for. The laundromat serves as a metaphor for that suspended state — a liminal house of ready, repetition, and quiet reflection. The objective was to construct a surreal-yet-grounded ambiance that captured this “in-between” feeling, mixing realism with psychological metaphor.Younger Creator VideoUnai CanelaAlone in GreenlandUnai Canela is a filmmaker, environmentalist, and anthropology scholar at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain. He has contributed to documentaries, movies, and varied media productions as a director, narrator, cinematographer, and editor. After spending a yr in Greenland, Canela is presently engaged on a TV sequence about Iberian wildlife in Spain.“Alone in Greenland” is a documentary movie born immediately from Canela’s childhood. As a teen, he accompanied his dad on an task to Greenland to {photograph} the melting glaciers. The journey caught Canela’s creativeness. Six years later, he took a detour from his research to embark on a formidable solo trek throughout Greenland’s Arctic tundra. “Alone in Greenland” paperwork his journey: monitoring muskoxen, tenting in entrance of glaciers, strolling throughout frozen lakes, huddling on the shores of a frozen ocean, looking for polar bears, and sleeping underneath the Aurora Borealis. Within the course of, Canela grew to become conscious of the fragility of this ecosystem — studying in regards to the melting ice cap, which has an important impact on our planet’s altering local weather.Learn extra on this yr’s winners right here.