My journey / Brad Soroka

Always
becoming.

From making things
to helping others create.

From the archives / 1999
Brad’s first Photoshop collage combining hip-hop artists, city streets, and a dramatic orange sky
My first PSD. Big ideas. Questionable technique.

Before the shortcuts,
there was an X-Acto knife.

011999 / The first experiments

Make something.
Figure it out along the way.

My first Photoshop piece was a hip-hop collage. I was so bad at the pen tool that I cut the rappers out of magazines by hand with an X-Acto blade.

Not exactly the workflow Adobe had in mind. But I had an idea, and I found a way to make it.

That mix of curiosity, resourcefulness, and a little stubbornness has stayed with me. The tools have changed. The urge to make something hasn’t.

A selection of Brad’s BFA graphic design work, including posters, print layouts, illustration, and packaging
The foundations.
Learning the craft

Type. Image.
Story. Feeling.

Graphic design gave that instinct a foundation. I explored print, identity, illustration, and the ways an idea could take shape on a page.

Then the canvas became interactive.

Early web experiments

A “masters”
in microsites.

Not an actual degree. Just a lot of early websites, and a lot of learning by doing.

Nine examples of early microsite and website designs
Early web work · A different era of the internet.
02Learning to lead

Start by
giving back.

One of my earliest lessons in leadership came from helping bring a struggling design club back to life.

Events, portfolio reviews, and student work gave people reasons to participate. It wasn’t just about what I could make anymore. It was about what we could make happen together.

The work gets bigger when you make room for other people.

Design club events, student auction posters, and a résumé and portfolio review
Building community · The design club, back in motion.
03Modea / Agency energy

From doing the work
to growing the team.

At Modea, I helped grow a team and a startup. The work moved across brands, mobile, social, and increasingly connected customer experiences.

I was learning to care about two things at once: the quality of what we made, and how we worked together to make it.

That meant getting organized, bringing people along, and keeping the scrappy energy that made an agency exciting in the first place.

The colorful Modea office with its name handwritten on the entrance
Modea · A team and a startup taking shape.
A little scrappy goes a long way.
Selected work / Modea

Big brands. Many canvases.

Modea work including Chiquita social experiences, HTC mobile campaigns, and Disney Movie Club interfaces
Modea · Brand experiences across mobile, social, and the web, including Disney, HTC, and Chiquita.
Something I kept

Ambitious work.
A practical plan.
A sense of fun.

04Moving west / Telepathy

New places.
Good people.
Bigger puzzles.

I moved west and found Telepathy, a new team, new friendships, and another chapter in the work.

The projects grew more complex: connecting brands and fans, simplifying marketing tools, and designing experiences for enterprise scale.

The challenge was no longer just a screen. It was understanding how the parts connected, and helping a team make the whole thing feel clear.

Selected work / Telepathy

From music discovery
to enterprise complexity.

Slyde music marketplace screens showing artist discovery, listener preferences, and connections between brands and artists
Connecting brands and fans · A music marketplace spanning mobile and web.
Mobile digital asset management screens for finding, sharing, and collaborating on marketing content
Simplifying marketing tools · Digital asset management on mobile.
Telepathy enterprise interfaces for an SMS platform, cloud migration, and chatbot creation
Designing for scale · SMS, cloud migration, and chatbots.
A collage of the Telepathy team at gatherings and events
Telepathy · The people were as much a part of the journey as the projects.
The thread running through it all

First, I wanted
to make things.
Then, I wanted to make
more things possible.

05ServiceNow / Tools for creators

Help other people
build their ideas.

At ServiceNow, that thread became the work itself: making a powerful enterprise platform more approachable for the people creating on it.

With App Engine Studio, I led design work that brought tools, guidance, and teams together around a more accessible way to build apps.

It connected two things I care about deeply: making complex things feel possible, and helping people find the confidence to create.

Read the ServiceNow story ↗
App Engine Studio vision screens for guided app creation, templates, and editing
App Engine Studio.
06Joining Adobe / A new chapter

From learning
the tools.
To shaping what’s next.

Joining Adobe brought the story full circle. My first Photoshop collage was an exercise in figuring things out. Years later, I joined the company whose tools had helped turn that curiosity into a career.

As Director of Design, I lead teams shaping Adobe Express, advancing AI-powered creativity, collaboration, and on-brand content creation.

The ambition feels familiar: help more people bring their ideas to life. The canvas is bigger now, and so is the opportunity to make creating feel possible.

Adobe Express creative examples combining video clips, AI-generated illustrations, branded designs, and animation for a coffee brand
Adobe MAX session card featuring Claude Piché and Brad Soroka presenting Empower Your Team: Creative Workflows Across Adobe Apps
Sharing the work at Adobe MAX.
Brad sitting in a large red Adobe photo installation outdoors
A little full-circle moment.
Creativity for all

From a first visit to a shared team workflow, my work connects the pieces that help people create: onboarding, creative systems, interoperability, brand creation, and collaboration.

It’s still about the moment an idea becomes real. Now I get to help teams make that moment possible for others.

1999

Learning the tools.

Today

Helping shape them.

And somewhere between all of that

Still drawing.
Still playing.
Still figuring it out.

The doodles, music, skateboarding, writing, and experiments aren’t separate from the story. They’re part of what keeps it moving.

I’m still making things to see what happens. Still looking for ways to simplify life and leave more room for family, fun, and whatever I haven’t tried yet.

A collection of Brad’s hand-drawn creature characters
Creatures with Features · There’s always another one to draw.
This story is still being made

Always
making.

Let’s make something ↗Back to the beginning ↑