In honor of International Women's Day, we're spending the day with one of our favorite women, content creator Allison Cimo. She’s sharing her tips and tricks for building your own brand using Adobe Express. Allison spends her 9-5 and her 5-9 designing and writing content for work and her personal life. She’s a busy creative who loves her job and recently moved to Los Angeles with her husband and adorable pup.
We followed Allison for a day in her creative space, where she’s working on a few social media assets for Women’s History Month while creating beautiful invites for her best friend’s wedding. “This Women’s History Month, I’m inspired by all of the trailblazing women who came before me in history: The scientists, artists, and thinkers,” says Allison. “The changemakers who made contributions to our society, big and small.”
Check out Allison’s dreamy day-in-the-life video below and be inspired!
How does she bring her inspo to life? Adobe Express makes designing easy with thousands of beautiful templates, plus assets for social media content, logos, and more. “Adobe Express has been a complete game changer for me,” Allison says. “I love being able to pick out the templates that align with my aesthetic or a client's aesthetic. It is essentially a creative jumping off point and saves me so much time, especially on holidays like International Women's Day. It's so fun to scroll through all the templates and add in my own personal touches to celebrate the important women in my life."
Here are more ways Allison fuels her creativity, plus her tips and tricks for all the female creators out there!
Create A Morning Ritual. Start the day by getting into the mindset of being creative without actually being creative. “I always make coffee, eat breakfast (I'm a pour-a-bowl-of-cereal type of girl), and take my pup for a walk, which gets my creative brain going,” says Allison.
Set Goals, Long And Short Term. “I'm very free spirited. I pick up projects that I'm interested in and I'm really guided by my creative brain and heart,” says Allison. Setting goals didn’t come naturally to her as a creative person but she found that it helped her grow her career. “Setting goals gives you guardrails and guidance for where you want to go.” Adobe Express can help you visualize goals with its mood board creator that has professional tools and templates to make a custom mood board in minutes.
Don’t Reinvent The Wheel. “The concept of a blank canvas and starting from absolute scratch is kind of daunting,” says Allison. Adobe Express is like getting help from a trusted designer with thousands of pre-designed templates you can customize, plus the entire Adobe Stock royalty-free photo collection and a full library of Adobe Fonts. It’s an easy tool for editing images, videos, and documents too. “I just love how much you can really customize it,” says Allison, “so that when you're actually finished, it feels like something that you just totally created, even though it was born from a template.”
Get Organized Visually. Creatives are visual people so finding ways to organize in a way that is visually appealing could help you stay organized and save time. “I color code everything,” says Allison. “I have a lot of different types of tasks: brainstorming tasks, executional tasks where I'm actually copywriting or designing and scheduling, admin stuff like reporting, emailing, research. Visualizing what my week or day is going to look like helps me get into the right mindset.” Adobe Express' content scheduler tool also helps Allison stay organized so she can plan, schedule, preview, and publish social content across platforms — all from one place.
Draw Inspiration From Other Women. “I love designing and writing, but I find it so motivating to look at what other creators are dreaming up. I'm always looking to other female creators to inspire me and challenge me to see new perspectives,” notes Allison. "Right now it’s so empowering to be a female creator. I love to seek out other creatives and pay homage to the women who inspire me by visiting female-centered exhibits, reading books, and creating fun social posts on Adobe Express."
Give Yourself Grace. “I always try to be forgiving if I'm just not in the right headspace for being creative,” says Allison. “I think some of that is just being flexible and adaptable and being able to read your mood in the morning.” Sometimes that means leaning into more personal work. “My best friend is getting married this year and I’m so excited to celebrate the incredible, awesome, and inspiring woman that she is. With Adobe Express’ wedding invitation designs, I was able to create stunning invitations for her that I’m absolutely obsessed with. They feel like a true reflection of her.”
Need a creative spark to get the juices going on this International Women’s Day and beyond? Check out Adobe Express for loads of inspirational designs, templates, and tools to help unlock your creativity. Easily make anything you need, all in one place!
Video Direction & Editing by Allison Cimo.
