Visual Identity Toolkit Adobe Express

Adobe Express is a cloud-based design platform that is available to all College faculty, staff, and students as part of their Adobe Creative Cloud account. It allows you to quickly and easily create a range of designs, from social graphics to posters and flyers.

Learn more about your Amherst College Adobe Creative Cloud license. If you have any issues with your license, please contact AskIT@amherst.edu.

If you have questions about using Adobe Express or best practices for creating designs after you’ve logged in, please contact commassets@amherst.edu.

Go to express.adobe.com and click Sign In.

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On the next screen, use the Google sign-in option that appears in the top-right corner of the screen. Type your full Amherst email address (yourname@amherst.edu) in the Google box and you will be redirected to Amherst’s login screen.

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Note: If you are using Google Chrome and are already logged into the browser with your amherst.edu credentials, you will be automatically logged in after clicking “Continue.”

To create a design in Adobe Express, you can select a template from the list of templates available on the homepage, including creating a custom size.

You can rename a design by simply clicking on the name. You will then be able to type in new name. (All new designs are called “My project” by default.)

Adobe offers lots of tutorials for all aspects of creating designs. See quick video tutorials and the AE User Guide.

To gain access to the Amherst College brand kit within Adobe Express, email commassets@amherst.edu. 

Once you have accepted the invitation to the Amherst brand kit, you will have easy access to our color palette and fonts when creating designs in AE. The primary fonts available are Setimo, Gelasio, and Lato (learn about Amherst’s fonts). 

Choose a color:

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Choose a font:

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Go to Projects in the left column. (If you don’t see Projects in the left column, click Home. It should be the second icon from the top.)

Create a Folder

Create a folder by clicking the 

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icon on the far right of the toolbar.

Create a subfolder by going into a folder and creating a new folder within it. You can then move a design into a folder by clicking the design’s 3-dot menu and “Move.”

Share Designs

Share a design by clicking the design’s 3-dot menu and selecting “Share” and “Invite.”

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When you share a design with another AE user, you are both working on the same design (i.e., changes that one user makes to the design will be seen by all shared users). You can find designs shared with you under the “Shared with you” tab.

A few things to note about shared designs:

• Only one person at a time can work on a shared design. AE will notify you if you try to edit the design while the other person is working on it.
• The person who owns the design is the only one who can publish a design to social media, email the design, or create a shared link to the design.
• All shared users can download the design or share the design with another Adobe Express user.

AE doesn’t have the ability to share a whole folder with someone. Have the person share their designs with you, and then you can move the designs into your folders.

Make Your Own Copy of a Shared Design

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To keep a design PERMANENTLY, save a DUPLICATE of it.

You can duplicate a design by clicking the design’s 3-dot menu and selecting “Duplicate.” When you duplicate a shared design, a copy of the design will be created in the "Yours" tab.

You can edit a PDF’s text fields in Adobe Express, though you cannot make changes to the file’s images.

Upload a PDF to the Edit Text in a PDF tool.

Note that AE doesn’t save PDFs online, so be sure to keep your PDFs on your computer or in a Google folder, so that you can edit them again if you need to.