From Pixels to Purpose: Canva's Creative Revolution

Watched the Canva Create: Work Design presentation yesterday, and it was absolutely WOW!!!!! In its 11th year, Canva boasts 25 billion designs created, and there are 185 million users per month! What impressive numbers! I love their motto of “making complex things simple,” a philosophy that all of us should apply. I have no doubt this is the right thinking for all types of business.

So many exciting new announcements were made, including the acquisition of the creative software platform Affinity, which provides award-winning professional design editing as well as complex graphic and vector design. This is such an important step given the world’s increasing need for effective and compelling visual communication! Canva also unveiled their new "Enterprise" offering, designed to meet the needs of large organizations with advanced collaboration tools, brand management features, and enhanced security, making it easier than ever for teams to maintain brand consistency and work efficiently at scale. Expedia was showcased, illustrating the incredible impact Canva has had on its rebranding. Expedia, a company of 16,000 worldwide, has doubled its output after implementing Canva.

Aside from empowering the entire world to design, what I admire even more is Canva’s commitment to making the world a better place, embodied in their value of “being a force for good.” They donate Canva free to students and teachers (70 million) and nonprofit organizations (640,000), partner with Give Directly (a nonprofit that provides cash transfers directly to people living in poverty), and have a program to plant a tree for every item printed through Canva (thus far planting 6.2 million trees!).

I found it tremendously impactful when one of the last scenes of the presentation had Cliff Obrecht (COO), Melanie Perkins (CEO), and Cameron Adams (Co-Founder) standing in front of a massive screen with the following words on it: Step 1: Build one of the world's most valuable companies, Step 2: Do the most good we can. A simple graphic in-between the two illustrated that one step fuels the other. I hope they inspire other companies to follow suit with these steps!!!!! What is there not to love about this organization? I am totally invested in learning more about Canva daily and supercharging my creativity!