Is Canva Killing Design?

A colleague once said to me that Marketing is one of the few parts of a business where everyone knows how to do it better than the professionals. No-one goes up to the CFO and tries to tell them how to use Excel (I’ve actually worked with a CFO that didn’t know how to use Excel!), but they’re more than happy to tell a marketer how to market a product. Why the assumption that there’s no skill involved? Because it’s creative?

I’m not the biggest fan of Canva. Well, the idea of Canva if not the actual platform.

With a huge slice of arrogance this is not because I’ve used it and don’t like it. I just don’t like it, and I’ve recently been asking myself “why?“

Many moons ago I was a designer. I used to love creating things from nothing, using Photoshop, Freehand, Cinema 4D and Illustrator to get my ideas onto digital paper. I’ve never been particularly good at drawing - I mean, I’ve done life drawing and stuff at Art College, but I was never that good. I knew what good looked like, though, and could recognise very quickly an exciting idea and creative direction. Computers gave me access to tools that helped me get my creative ideas down - and I could rely less on charcoal or pencil and fall back on the toolsets I was being provided that allowed a more granular control over a line’s direction and curve. I made a 3D animation of a cup of tea making itself at Art College in 1990 which, had I attempted to do using clay stop-motion, would have resembled a pile of clay moving around a surface. Don’t get me started on rotoscoping pencil drawings…

I was quick to jump on digital art production, using tools that supported my attempts at creativity.I was keen enough to invest the time in learning the skills needed to produce work that was good enough to get me a job as a designer. So why do I have a problem with Canva? Surely it’s another tool that empowers even more people to get their creative stuff out? That, I think, is kind of the point.

For me it feels like a few steps too far down a path which homogenises creative output. Designers and artists (more especially artists) are good at what they do because they have a natural ability. The tools that they pick, whether a camera, a paintbrush, a trowel, a BB pencil or Photoshop, simply allow them to get their ideas down onto that digital paper. Canva does the opposite - it provides people with a tool that allows them to abdicate ideas and creativity. It provides templates and tools (and AI now) to give the user the ability to turn around something in a fraction of the time it would take a designer with their box of tools. This disenfranchises the designer of the value of their ability and their financial value.

In our world, where the bottom line and the cost to sale drives the heart of the business, this is considered a good thing - heck, we can make the most design-illiterate individual a competent graphics producer. Canva gives them the tools, right? So we don’t need to pay for the skills and ability that a designer has. Excellent (Mr Burns style). We can completely remove the need to know anything about the rule of thirds, or the golden ratio or, even, how to draw.

And that brings me full-circle. Do I dislike the idea of Canva because it makes skills I’ve taken years to develop utterly redundant, or do I dislike it because it gives others the ability to deliver what would have taken me (as a designer) significantly more time? Ultimately a skilled designer or artist can always produce something un-thought of, something new. Canva is just the current iteration of a templating product. My concern is that, especially with AI attached, it could well be good enough to do a lot of people out of work, and discourage design talent from developing in a market driven by costs.