Reliability and efficiency for designers.

Shaping computer intelligence to create a better world is a fundamental belief that has helped Lenovo Group become one of the world’s top computing and electronics companies. Best known by many consumers for its laptop computers, including the Yoga line, Lenovo Group also produces a wide range of computer peripherals, smart devices, servers, and other electronic devices and services used in businesses and homes worldwide.

One of the ways that Lenovo Group has become an industry leader is through its commitment to design. For Lenovo China, nearly all design is done in-house, from designing its best-selling laptops to creating the look and feel of the marketing materials that inform consumers about the company’s award-winning products.

“Our internal designers have a very deep understanding of our products and industry that is hard to match externally,” says Frank Kang, Design Manager for Consumer Laptop Team at Lenovo Group. "This level of insight enables our in-house creative team to maximize the design value of our products.”

Lenovo China’s about 80-person creative team does a wide variety of design work, but one thing that they have in common is that they all use Adobe Creative Cloud. Using Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, designers create all of the assets they need to put intelligent technology into the hands of people who need it.

Quality visuals with less time and cost

For the creative team to fully support all design projects in-house, efficiency is key. Product designers work with research and development teams from the earliest stages of development to think about how the form of each new product will contribute to better functionality for users. This stage often involves many iterations and back-and-forth communication between teams, making speed and efficiency essential. Adobe Creative Cloud allows product designers to work much faster and collaborate more efficiently. The result is more beautiful and user-friendly designs that catch the eyes of users around the world.

For example, when working on the Lenovo Yoga, designers created high-quality 3D renders that they finished in Photoshop to accurately capture all of the small details that would be sure to improve the user experience.

“We want to make sure that the color, lighting, and contrast are just right to highlight the product and make the render look realistic,” says Kang. “It’s much easier, faster, and less expensive to do the final 20% of polishing images in Photoshop. There’s simply isn’t an alternative on the market. It sets the standard.”

When bringing the designs to market, Lenovo turns to its in-house marketing team to showcase the best features of every product through hundreds of assets: from videos posted on social media to graphics used by Lenovo Group and its partners.

“We have a very high workload, so we’re grateful for anything that enables us to work faster,” says Hailong Ma, Graphic Designer, China Consumer Fans Marketing & Content Production at Lenovo Group. “Batch processing in Adobe Lightroom is a big one for us, as is the ability to work with raw camera files in Photoshop. Adobe Creative Cloud apps have so many features that allow us to deliver excellent results a lot faster.”

Improving efficiency with AI

Lenovo Group designers also take advantage of capabilities powered by artificial intelligence to improve efficiency even further. Neural Filters allow designers to make changes such as changing expressions to better capture the look and feel for what a designer wants. A designer might find a stock photo to use in a marketing image, but the expression on the model’s face doesn’t quite capture the excitement of looking at a Lenovo Yoga laptop. Using the Neural Filter sliders, the designer can fine-tune the expression in minutes.

“In the past, designers might spend all day scrolling through stock photography trying to find just the right image for a presentation, social media post, website graphic, or major promotional campaign,” says Kang. “Now designers just need to find an image that captures 75% of what they need, and they can adjust the rest in Photoshop.”

Reliable apps for an international brand

For a major brand like Lenovo, the stability and reliability of Adobe Creative Cloud is another big reason why designers rely on Adobe. Frequent updates keep apps running smoothly. Designers know that they don’t need to worry about sudden crashes that will cause them to lose hours of work, allowing them to concentrate on delivering better visuals.

Lenovo Group is currently exploring how it might expand its use of Adobe apps in its design workflows with Adobe Substance 3D Collection. Initial tests have demonstrated that working with Substance can greatly improve efficiency around both rendering and editing textures or materials.

“We know that we can rely on Adobe to deliver stable apps filled with the functionality we need to improve design speed and efficiency,” says Kang. “That’s why Adobe Creative Cloud has become the standard for our in-house design teams at Lenovo Group.”