Digital design with purpose.

Hugo & Marie amplifies the creative process with Adobe Creative Cloud for teams, including Adobe XD.

Established

2008

Employees: 20, plus 20 people in the talent division

New York, New York

www.hugoandmarie.com

Rapidly built and edited hundreds of web pages

Products:

Adobe Creative Cloud for teams ›

Objectives

Support increasingly iterative web design process

Accelerate workflow for designing and prototyping in a variety of formats

Simplify collaboration and review for designers and clients

Manage software for growing team

Results

Rapidly built and edited hundreds of web pages

Efficiently handled large assets

Faster exchange of files and feedback

Simplified license management

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Artful collaborators

Few companies can boast that one of their first clients was a famous fashion designer, who also happens to be the daughter of a world-renowned musician. But Hugo & Marie can. Shortly after launching in 2008, the multi-disciplinary creative agency designed its first e-commerce website for Stella McCartney.

Founded by the husband and wife team of Jennifer Marie Gonzalez and Mario Hugo, Hugo & Marie has gone on to work with and represent some of the biggest, most well-respected brands and creative studios in the music, fashion, and art industry—including Hermès, Rihanna, artist Deanne Cheuk, and Hourglass Cosmetics — to create packaging and digital experiences such as record sleeves, e-commerce sites, video games, and film projects.

“Clients come to us for a particular sensibility or an ethos, as opposed to a specific capability,” explains Co-founder and Creative Director Mario Hugo. “We become close collaborators, and develop a deep creative rapport with clients that lets us act as an extension of their businesses.”

To help foster this connection, Hugo & Marie relies on the latest technologies to create experiences that are genuine to the brand. The company has grown alongside Adobe creative products, and now uses Adobe Creative Cloud for teams across its studio.

“As our team was growing and scaling, Adobe Creative Cloud for teams offered us a centralized way to manage assets, subscriptions, and software,” says Jennifer Marie Gonzalez, Co-founder and Business Director. “The arrival of Adobe XD presented another opportunity to increase our team’s efficiency.”

Zooming in on a simplified workflow

In addition to the talent division, Hugo & Marie has a dedicated team of designers, art directors, and producers who provide full-service creative capabilities to clients. Once a client is onboard, Hugo & Marie receives an extensive briefing to fully understand the client’s needs before starting on the creative. From there, the team leverages client content to create initial designs using Adobe XD.

“The ability to handle large assets without compromising performance is one of the best attributes of Adobe XD,” says Pedro Gonçalves, Senior Designer at Hugo & Marie. “Adobe XD allows us to work with high-resolution images that can be scaled easily, so that we can present something real to the client instead of a design with placeholders. Features such as zooming in and panning out are smooth and seamless.”

Within a single Adobe XD file, Hugo & Marie can design, sketch, preview, and publish directly to the web. From there, the team can send a link to the client for review. This has streamlined the workflow significantly, especially on projects that contain several hundred web pages that must adapt to a multitude of sizes and devices.

“One of the great things about Adobe XD is that it consolidates every single aspect of the process into a single platform — from sketching to production, refining, publishing, commenting, and feedback from the client,” explains Gonçalves. “We no longer need to upload images, sync fonts, or make sure we are using the most up-to-date link, because Adobe XD does it all.”

“The introduction of Adobe XD has increased efficiency and visibility across the board. In design, details matter. Adobe XD enhances our ability to ensure accuracy in our work.”

Jennifer Marie Gonzalez

Co-founder and Business Director, Hugo & Marie

Keeping designers on the same page

Hugo & Marie relies on tools that help — not hinder — the creative process. “The best technology is transparent, and doesn’t get in the way,” says Hugo.

Adobe Creative Cloud for teams helps Hugo & Marie foster the kind of collaboration that yields engaging digital experiences. While working in Adobe Creative Cloud, designers can easily leverage assets directly from other Adobe creative apps and services such as Adobe Typekit, Photoshop, and Illustrator, among others. Team members can share assets and collaborate from any device or location, at any time. Updates are pushed automatically across the board, so everyone is working from the same version.

For example, when a new typeface is licensed from Adobe Typekit, designers can sync it to their devices, which are then updated and synced as changes to a design are made. “The introduction of Adobe XD has increased efficiency and visibility across the board,” says Gonzalez. “In design, details matter. Adobe XD enhances our ability to ensure accuracy in our work.”

Working from a single platform accelerates both the creative and the review processes, leaving more time for the art itself. “By speeding up the feedback process, we have more time to focus on designing the kinds of experiences our clients are after,” says Fanny Nordmark, Senior UX Designer at Hugo & Marie. “Adobe XD lets us spend more time on the creative, and less time on file preparation.”

The same holds true for freelancers who are brought into the mix. “There is no steep learning curve with Adobe XD,” explains Nordmark. “It’s very user friendly, so someone can be up and running quickly, contributing to a project almost immediately.” Licenses are managed centrally using the Adobe Admin Console, allowing Hugo & Marie to toggle access as needed for freelancers in and out of the studio.

Bridging the gap between technology and design

Hugo & Marie uses Adobe XD to create grids and rescale them for the different break points the team must design for. Using the preview function, designers and clients can view artboards in the different sizes that mirror the devices. Likewise, prototyping capabilities help the team visualize how the different pages will interact. For example, designers can create clickable links on a page, and then preview the path for a visual representation of the site’s flow — and its ultimate impact on the user experience.

“With responsive web design, it is now the norm to create previews for different screen and device sizes, which was not the case a few years ago,” says Nordmark. “Adobe XD helps us keep up with the rapid pace of change in both design and development.”

Once designs are approved and signed off by the client, Hugo & Marie submits wireframes and final designs in Adobe XD to its developers for coding. The ability to work within the same file has mitigated the increased demand on designers, who are now expected to showcase a lot more to clients.

“It can be difficult to understand how people process information, and what makes them frustrated,” explains Nordmark. “With Adobe XD, we can experience the user’s journey in a very visual way, which helps us to make the right changes in the right places.”