Australian start-up Canva launches online graphic design platform available for everyone
Australian startup Canva has today announced the launch of an online graphic design platform allowing everyone to create professional designs.
Canva brings together a simple drag-and-drop design tool with a library of more than 1 million photographs, graphics and fonts, and makes it easy to collaborate with others.
Says Melanie Perkins, Canva CEO: “Canva has re-imagined a world where design is simple, and every idea can be beautifully presented in print or online. Unlike traditional desktop design software, Canva is web-based and brings all the tools together in one place.”
With Canva, everyone can design for free. Canva’s library is sourced from some of the world’s most talented photographers, illustrators and designers. Users can upload their own content or pay $1AUD per premium element when they publish their design.
Canva also provides professional designers with a faster way to create layouts and collaborate with clients, removing the need for frustrating back and forth email exchanges. Designers can earn money by contributing their own graphic elements and layouts to Canva.
Canva’s vision and technology has been backed by prominent tech luminaries including Facebook director of engineering and co-founder of Google Maps Lars Rasmussen, Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman, Twitter investor Bill Tai, and funds including Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners, and 500 Startups. Canva closed a $3 million seed funding round earlier this year.
Rasmussen said he was excited by Canva’s potential to change the future of design.
Says Rasmussen: “Facebook and Twitter have created a world where anyone can instantly share experiences with friends, yet an online design tool suitable for us all to use is entirely lacking. The design market is ripe for disruption and I believe Canva has the answer.”
Canva will be rolled out to limited users in the U.S. and Australia starting from today. Users can join the waiting list to gain exclusive early access.
Key features include:
- A simple new way to design. Easily turn your ideas into designs for Web and print.
- Search and drag simplicity. Search Canva’s integrated library of stock photographs, graphic elements and cut-out images then drag-and-drop to create your design.
- It’s online and free to use. Canva is entirely online so there’s no expensive software to install.
- Choose from one million images and hundreds of fonts. Design with 1 million photos, graphics and fonts, or upload your own.
- Collaborate with anyone, anywhere. Canva lets you share and edit your designs with friends, clients and coworkers.
(Pictured L-R: Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins)
5 Comments
Forget CS….Canva all the way! Bah…
I guess I’d better start looking for a new job. Maybe I’ll go back to Uni, as my degree and 12+ years of experience are now useless, thanks to the “disruption” of design.
What a bunch of nobs. It’s glorified clip-art, but the clients will just see the price tag for designs and think they can then ask real designers with actual talent to drop their prices too.
Can’t wait till this flops and Canva staff are all out looking for new jobs.
It looks great, with 3m in funding it should.
A couple of points for the founders if they do bother to read feedback on the PR:
You’ve really got to nail down your target audience, is it ‘hobbyist home designers’ who are looking to bang out a pretty party invite cos they don’t know Photoshop? Or is it your professionals who are deeply into high end software that they’ve trained on for years, and can charge on delivering final project files to clients?
I would say your target market is the ‘hobby home designers’ -your price for stock is low and they template offerings are quiet simple… I don’t see any responsive website design templates…
Good luck with it, I guess you’re monetization is thru the stock, or maybe a model where you charge for final output or even printing partnerships?
Lastly there is an existing tool online called Moodshare.co which is pretty much the same thing except it’s more collabo / moodboards than final designs. It started off well but I believe is now winding down.
Thanks for the comments it’s been a busy week but we are certainly open to hearing feedback.
Canva is absolutely not intended to take away from the amazing work that designers do. The creativity, concepts and innovation that designers perfect is not something that could ever be achieved through technology. However, we do believe the design tools themselves can be improved with the level of technology we have available today, especially when it comes to collaboration and digital assets. We hope that Canva can help tap into some of this potential.
We have been working extensively with designers to sculpt a tool that will suit their needs for collaborating with their clients. We would love to speak with anyone who is interested, please get in touch via email designers[at]canva[dot]com
you say that you don’t want to take away from the “amazing work that designers do” but don’t you realise that that is EXACTLY what you are doing?
Over the past 18 months the amount of people coming to me to get things redesigned and/or reprinted because of sites and programs like vistaprint, phoster and now canva is insane. Customers don’t realise this is basically clip art that looks better on a screen, the printing quality is terrible and they look cheap.
I lose work because now joe and jess blow down the road think this site will replace my hard work, creativity, degree and experience. Thanks guys. Thanks for design tools technology advancement, I can tell you did it for the qualified graphic designers who are currently working, considering it’s giving us all sooooo much business. It will really help us designers in the industry.
Not to mention the amount of clients who believe designers now overcharge for things. I’ve seen the results of sites like this, and the product quality is so terrible customers are actually being ripped off. I’ve worked as a printer and designer and I know that good quality comes with a price tag, not a high one, but certainly more than $20 for 500 business cards to be designed and printed and posted.
Canva, you should honestly be ashamed of yourselves. You have taken other people’s hard work, creativity and expertise and twisted it into shitty watered down generic templates, slapped $10 on it and called “design”. It’s actually a slap in the face for someone who studied a Masters Degree in Graphic Design.