Adobe unveils Spark tool suite for small/medium businesses

Some projects created in Adobe Spark.

Small and medium-sized businesses have more free ways to present their stories to customers, with Adobe’s recent announcement of its Spark suite of tools.

They are intended for the creation of visually based marketing material for the Web and social networks, provided as four applications. Three of them are rebranded, existing iOS apps, and one is new.

In addition to web pages and social posts, the tools enable the creation of company event announcements, newsletters, lessons, flyers, brochures, small catalogs and explainer videos.

The renamed iOS apps are Spark Post (formerly Adobe Post, released last year), a tool for creating and posting text and graphics to social networks. Spark Page (Adobe Slate from last year) is for generating web pages. Spark Video, called Adobe Voice at its birth in 2014, enables the creation of moving icons, photos, text and graphics, which Adobe calls “animated videos.”

For this release, Page adds iPhone to its previous support of iPad, while Post adds iPad to its previous iPhone. Adobe Director of Product Management Brian Nemhauser told me that Android versions are being planned.

The new app is the browser-based Adobe Spark itself, which covers the creation and posts of all of the above: social posts, web stories and animated videos.

Businesses can add a button that leads to more content, although there’s no ability to, say, readily add an email signup or a “buy now” e-commerce capability. The tools are free, but Nemhauser said the company will eventually add premium, paid levels.

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About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.