After the school holidays, I had the privilege of attending the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) World Championship for 2019, this year held in New York City.

The ACA World Championship is an international competition which puts students’ design skills to the test using Adobe software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Students represent their respective countries in the competition, and I went as the New Zealand representative after winning the National Championship.

I travelled to Auckland on the 25th of July, then the next morning, we were up bright and early to board the next flight to Sydney. After a series of fights totalling around 26 hours of flight time, we arrived in the Big Apple itself. We went to the venue for the competition two days later, and after settling in, everyone congregated in the ballroom for the official welcome. Additionally, we had guests from Certiport, Adobe, and Microsoft speak to us. In the evening, an opening ceremony party was thrown for all the contestants to have some fun, get to know each other, and relax before the big day. At first, I was really nervous to talk to the other contestants, but everyone was very friendly and welcoming.

On the day of the competition, I, along with the rest of the Adobe students, met our client from the non-for-profit organisation, NABU, for whom we would be designing. You can find out more about what they do at www.nabu.org. For the competition, we were asked to design promotional material for their new campaign: #GivingTuesday. We received our brief, then got onto it!

I then spent the next eight hours in the ACA Testing Lab, working on my designs. It was a lot more intense than I expected. All you could hear in the room were people clicking away, and it wasn’t until you let go of the mouse that you realised how hard you’d been gripping it!

The ACA competitors also received the opportunity to visit the Adobe Times Square Office and meet professionals in the design industry, who looked over our work and gave us feedback.

The final day snuck up on us so quickly, and before we knew it, we were all seated in the ballroom, ready for the awards ceremony. This was a chance for students to have a look at each other’s work and honour the people who won.

Although I didn’t win anything, it was so inspiring to see the work that everyone had created, and it motivated me to keep practising and developing my own skills. It was amazing to see people’s unique styles and perspectives shining through their work.

Competing in the ACA World Championship has been a truly life-changing experience for me. I got to meet some amazing people and see some amazing sights. Of‌ ‌course, experiencing real-life designing and working with a real brief and client was a highlight. I would highly, highly recommend investigating industry certifications via www.certiport.com and looking into taking this opportunity.

A huge thank you to Mrs Budd, who entered me and the rest of my class in the competition, as well as Richard Gordon and Jonathan Jansen from Xerio who made this trip possible for me.

To find out more about this event, visit the ACA website at www.acachampionship.com