In the dynamic world of visual communication, Canva has consistently been a game-changer. As someone who relies on Canva to create event posters, logos, and all sorts of visuals, I'm excited to share the latest developments from Canva's first international Canva Create event in Los Angeles.
Canva’s New Era
Canva, the world's only all-in-one visual communication platform, unveiled its most significant update in a decade. It introduces new workplace products and services that promise to redefine how millions of people work. This is not just an update but a glimpse into the future of visual communication, filled with potential and endless possibilities.
Melanie Perkins, Canva's co-founder and CEO, expressed the company's vision: "We are excited to introduce a revamped Canva experience and a suite of new products to empower every organization to design. As demand for visual content soars, navigating organizational complexity is more challenging than ever. We democratized the design ecosystem in our first decade and now look forward to unifying the fragmented ecosystems of design, AI, and workflow tools for every organization in our second decade."
Empowering Non-Designers
In the latest Visual Economy Report conducted by Canva, it was highlighted that 92% of business leaders now expect employees in non-design roles to possess design skills. Addressing this need, Canva's new products put the power of design in the hands of 99% of employees who need professional design training. With over 180 million monthly active users and over $2.3 billion in annualized revenue, Canva's impact is undeniable. This empowerment is not just a statistic but a tangible shift in the professional landscape, making everyone feel more capable and creative.
In the 18 months since Canva introduced its workplace-focused Visual Suite, more than 95 million new users have joined the platform. It took the company almost nine years to accomplish such a figure. With 95% of Fortune 500 companies using the platform, the latest addition to Canva's workplace solutions is a significant leap toward the company's position as a leader in visual communication.
Introducing Canva Enterprise
Visual communication is essential for enhancing engagement, productivity, and brand scaling. Canva Enterprise is designed for large organizations with complex security, reporting, administration, and brand management needs. This subscription service enables organizations to create vast visual content and effortlessly scale internal collaboration. Key features include scalable growth, IP and cost consolidation, advanced brand controls, and enterprise-level security.
A Redesigned Canva Experience
For the first time in a decade, Canva unveiled a complete redesign of its core product experience to fuel creativity and productivity. The new UI includes a streamlined editing experience, a customizable homepage, and more straightforward, faster collaboration tools. The first one million users who discover the secret portal on their Canva homepage will get early access, with general availability starting in August. Here are some of the standout features:
- Streamlined editing experience: A new contextual editing toolbar enhances focus and space. At the same time, popular features like the one-click background remover and Canva's Magic Studio AI tools are now prominently accessible.
- A new, customizable homepage: Customize workspaces to prioritize favorite designs and brand templates, with enhanced search capabilities for efficient content creation.
- Simpler and faster collaboration: Streamlined navigation enables teams to effortlessly switch between projects, access essential assets, and adhere to brand guidelines. Teams can also efficiently manage comments through filtering, sorting, and toggling visibility.
Customized Tools for Every Team
Canva introduced tailored tools for the Marketing, HR, Sales, and Creative departments. Canva Work Kits offer industry-curated collections of templates, and Canva Courses provide a platform for workplace learning, enabling users to turn designs into interactive courses for onboarding and development.
The initial Work Kits offer specialized resources for various departments: Human Resources, including onboarding decks, company newsletters, and job advertisements; Sales, featuring pitch decks, sales reports, and sales proposals; Marketing, encompassing campaign content calendars, social media posts, and campaign reports; and Creative, providing creative briefs, production request forms, and brand strategy templates.
Accelerating AI with Magic Studio
Canva's Magic Studio received significant upgrades. New features include Magic Media for text-to-graphic generation, Magic Design for AI-enhanced presentations, and advanced photo and video editing tools. These upgrades enhance productivity and creativity, making complex design tasks accessible.
Supercharged Products for Teams
Canva's Visual Suite now includes top-requested features such as suggested editing, apps from Amazon Ads, Google, and Meta, data autofill, and Bulk Create. These features streamline workflows, improve collaboration, and enable organizations to create custom assets at scale. This saves time and reduces the stress of managing multiple tasks, allowing you to focus on what really matters.
Canva's Magic Studio features include Magic Media, which generates graphics, icons, and illustrations from text prompts in various styles; Magic Design, enhancing presentations with three times higher quality through advanced AI technology; Resize & Magic Switch, allowing conversion of designs into custom documents like video scripts or LinkedIn posts; Styles & Layouts for applying brand colors and templates effortlessly; Supercharged Photo Editing for seamless manipulation of objects in images using AI; and Video Upgrades, including AI-powered Highlights for compelling video clips and Enhance Voice for clearer audio by reducing background noise.
Extending Affinity's Reach
Canva's acquisition of Affinity creates more possibilities for professional graphic designers, illustrators, and typographers. Affinity's latest version includes new advanced editing options and optimized support for ARM64 chips, enhancing its performance on the latest Windows PCs.
Canva continues to innovate with features like Suggested Editing, which has facilitated the creation of 375 million Canva Docs since its 2022 launch, now offering enhanced collaboration through tracked changes. Additionally, integrating apps from major ad platforms like Amazon Ads, Google, and Meta provides users instant feedback and access to approved asset libraries and templates. Data Autofill capabilities further streamline workflow by importing business data from sources such as Salesforce and MLS, enabling the automatic creation of customized designs with text and images at scale. Moreover, the Bulk Create functionality accelerates marketing tasks by allowing users to upload CSV or Excel files to efficiently update multiple designs with new images, text, and graphics.
Supporting Schools and Nonprofits
Canva’s acquisition of Affinity creates more possibilities for designers and typographers. Affinity's latest version, v2.5, introduces advanced editing features that enhance its professional editing capabilities, including support for variable fonts, a stroke width tool for on-document curve editing, and optimization for ARM64 chips on Windows PCs, making it the first creative software with full native ARM support. Additionally, Canva has announced that schools and nonprofits can join a waitlist to access Affinity for free, expanding its commitment to providing free tools to educational and charitable organizations worldwide. Over 60 million students and teachers and 600,000 nonprofits currently benefit from Canva's free offerings each month, with free licenses set to be distributed to waitlisted users in the near future.
Canva Revolutionizes the Industry
As a frequent Canva user, I am thrilled by these updates and innovations. Canva continues to revolutionize visual communication, making it easier for everyone, from non-designers to professionals, to create stunning visuals that drive engagement and productivity.
Whether you're part of a large organization or an individual creator, Canva's new era of innovation offers tools and features that will elevate your visual content to new heights.