It was 2-3 years ago when I first mentioned Canva in the graphic design section of my best digital marketing skills article.
Apparently, they were following brand mentions, and it wasn’t long before the company outreached and asked for a backlink.
Since then, I have felt that the company is not only ambitious about product development but also brand management, marketing and communications.
As 2021 ends, Canva has reached 75 million users from 190 countries. What a success story!
For details, see the article Reflecting On A Huge Year: 2021 By The Numbers.
Canva Rolled Up Its Sleeves for the Turkish Market!
Canva continues to grow globally, and for me, it’s not a surprise.
They started a vast localization project to enter the Turkish market as well.
A few weeks ago, something caught my eye in their Facebook ads, and I made a LinkedIn post about it tagging Canva.
The company’s reaction to a simple LinkedIn post was genuinely mind-blowing.
Canva executives, including Co-Founder / COO Cliff Obrecht, commented on the post.
How many companies on this scale monitor and react to social posts at this level?
The first ones that come to mind are Canva, Grammarly, and LinkedIn.
These companies make it clear that the secret sauce in business is direct communication with customers!
This is truly a game-changing tactic only a bunch of next-level companies follow.
Canva took things one step further, and I ended up meeting with Canva’s Strategy Manager, Kağan Şen as well.
We had a brilliant one on one with Kağan where we discussed in detail their product, growth plans, and the company culture at Canva.
I was impressed, and here are some of the highlights:
✤ User experience comes first in Canva. For example, no changes that might confuse users are prioritized in the panel, and ease of use is always preserved.
✤ They have an army of developers, but instead of developing some features from scratch, they can even buy a whole startup company for a single feature. This is how Canvas background remover is integrated, and it gets better and better with use, thanks to machine learning.
✤ The Canva team is growing! Employees (2500 people) call themselves Canvanauts and work in perfect harmony to grow the brand. You genuinely feel this energy because everybody looks pretty responsive.
✤ They care about localization when entering new markets, and when they kick off marketing, they want to take the market by storm. Users in Turkey might have noticed how quickly Turkish came into the design templates.
✤ Canva spends most of its income on charity. That’s heartwarming. This is part of Canva’s two-step plan, which Melanie Perkins, the CEO of Canva, also mentioned in this article!
Canva’s first goal is to become one of the most valuable companies in the world; they define their second goal as doing the most good they can.
Hats off to the company’s active aid to poor people, its support to non-profit organizations, and its steps to protect nature, such as print one and plant one!
Why Is Canva So Successful?
I am a marketing professional who is not very far from entrepreneurship.
There are plenty of teachers, marketers, graphic designers, and business owners around me.
I can say with comfort that Canva is a godsend that came to save us all.
Today, we all have a common problem; tell our stories better. However, in the digitalized world, our words are often insufficient.
We need graphics, photographs, and videos to express ourselves.
The graphic design needs of most of us are above Microsoft PowerPoint standards but not at a level that requires using Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, or After Effects.
Canva came and allowed us to design graphics, make videos, and present only by using our browser, filling up the big gap and completely disrupting the graphic design market.
According to the BBC, the company, with a value of $40bn, is now one of the most valuable startups globally and is compared to TikTok, Stripe, SpaceX, and Klarna.
Since I am a long-time Canva Pro user, I want to say a few words about what you can do with Canva.
What Can You Do With Canva?
Canva essentially offers us a very stable interface for graphic design and video creation.
After logging into the panel, you click on Create a Design, choose one of the designs in different sizes, and start creating.
Below are some of the design types to give you an idea:
- Video (1920*1080)
- Instagram Post (1080*1080)
- Presentation (1920*1080)
- LinkedIn Post (1200*1200)
- Instagram Story (1080*1920)
- Resume (21*29.7 cm)
- Logo (500*500)
- Custom Dimensions
The good thing is that when you are in the main design window, you can immediately select a template from the left menu and get started.
Although advanced users do not need templates, using templates in resumes and presentations makes our work very easy.
Let’s continue with the elements from the left menu. Since I like to add simple lines and shapes to my designs, I use the elements tab frequently.
I’m also using the grids quite often. Grids allow us to add photos to our designs and resize them on the go more systematically.
One of the most disruptive features of Canva is integrating stock images and videos into the design panel. This convenience directly affects the process of making a design.
Again, by using the photo/video tab in the left menu, we can search for a photo or video and add it to our design without getting distracted.
Another feature that you can access from the left menu is the text, indispensable for designs.
Like stock images, Canva has a variety of user-friendly fonts integrated into the design panel.
Having such high-quality fonts at our disposal is also a factor that directly affects the design process. It’s also possible to add your own fonts.
When it comes to videos, I have created quite a few of them using Canva’s video creator for personal projects.
In my opinion, this is the product Canva will be heavily investing in next.
In fact, there are a few critical updates in the video editor as we speak.
The timeline that we are used to seeing in advanced video editors is now active.
With this feature, we can place the sound clips wherever we want, divide our videos into small parts, and add transition effects between the scenes.
Therefore, we can now create videos that are much more professional.
In addition to all these design features, Canva offers us many innovative possibilities;
- Sharing our designs with the team,
- Speeding up our design processes by creating a brand kit,
- Publishing posts on social media channels using the content planner,
- Easily resizing our designs.
Design is undoubtedly a valuable tool for marketers to communicate effectively with their target audience.
But the design itself is a much broader concept and concerns just about anybody on earth.
The design has a special place in my life since my grandfather İhsan Uğur was a printer.
He started his journey as an apprentice at Ajans Türk, one of Anatolia’s first private printing houses, and made his way up to General Manager.
As a little kid, I got a chance to swallow a lot of ink with him. Good times!
I witnessed the times each letter had a pattern. To use a different font, you had to switch between patterns.
The effort goes behind successfully publishing a single magazine was incredible.
Without a doubt, things got a lot easier when design went digital. But now, with Canva, design has reached its peak point in terms of simplicity.
Today, thanks to Canva, almost anyone can design with ease. This means that our world can express itself much, much better.
So thank you, Canva; we can now sit back and relax cause the design is sorted!
