Canva’s role as a design tool
Introduction
Canva is a graphic design tool aimed at bringing design to the masses. Its birth came from a need for teachers to create simple yearbooks for their students and it has grown into a tool making life easier for millions of customers all around the world.
Canva’s scope is truly impressive. It has gone – in a short space of time – from being a basic design tool for Instagram posts and basic logo creation (although I know the rest of the design team at Launch Studio will shudder at that), to offering social media post publishing, planning across teams and sophisticated design tricks such as background removal that used to be the preserve of the most talented and technically minded graphic designers.
Should graphic designers be scared? We don’t think so.
Should graphic designers be scared?
We know some graphic designers can fluctuate between looking down on Canva as a bit amateurish and then being worried that the software will do them out of a job, but I think that designers should embrace Canva for the following reasons:
Canva shows people how graphic designers are worth their weight in gold!
Canva gets the cheap stuff out of the way so that people really understand the value of what they are paying for.
Canva allows your clients to play with brand guidelines in a way that shows the continued value of their investment with you.
As a team, we’re still heavily reliant on Adobe, Sketch and other specialised design tools. That said we’re increasingly embracing the opportunity to use Canva to save time amongst different members of the team and we encourage our clients to do the same.
The opportunity
Here’s an example which can help explain. Giles, one of our superstar designers, will create assets from scratch using the Adobe suite of tools. This could be animations, logos, brand guidelines…he needs the power of these tools to be able to give the creative freedom he needs.
This is how Lour brand mascot came to be!
However, when our Creative Assistant Louise wants to add one of these assets to a social media post going into the Canva app from her phone is the fastest way of doing this.
We believe that increasingly, that with the right design foundations in place, Canva can help extend a brand in a way.
Canva presents more opportunities than problems.
So do Launch Studio recommend Canva?
You can’t shortcut design expertise. However increasingly, with the right design support (we can help with those brand guidelines), it’s a great place to design a menu, create a presentation or even schedule your next LinkedIn post.
There are still some big gaps between what can be done in Canva and what can be done in Adobe products, such as Illustrator, InDesign and XD. Professional graphic designers will still need to use these more advanced tools.
However, there is a growing role for Canva, not only amongst the small business community but also as an extension of professional design to create a bridge between design teams and support marketing and clients.
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If you’d like to speak to us about how to dovetail our professional design services into Canva for your brand then get in touch today.