Looking to see how many of us work for a company that uses Canva. Like, actively tells the employees to use it I mean. Won’t this cause issues?
I have 6 clients and they all use Canva. It’s their first choice for simple projects like flyers and social. If they can do it themselves, they will, and Canva is their preferred tool because it’s free, and it’s got lots of free templates, and it stores all the work from their teams. That’s an issue because they are constantly losing and replacing employees, and their files regularly got misfiled or lost.
As a freelancer, yes, it’s a problem. Less working coming to me.
Honestly, I just use whatever tools I’m asked to. I mostly work with Adobe because it’s the industry standard, and everyone else in the field uses it.
If a company suddenly decided to switch to Affinity, Canva, Corel Draw, Quark, or Xara, I’d adapt and learn how to use those tools properly. The tool itself isn’t the real issue it’s how people use it.
Even if every employee had access to Adobe software, you’d still end up with uneducated, off-brand designs. The same thing happened when people thought PowerPoint was a design tool. I once received a PowerPoint file where someone had designed an entire deck of playing cards—52 slides plus jokers.
Bad design isn’t about the software it’s about the designer.
… and bosses …
… when they tell non-designers to design …
I can argue all day about this, but when it comes to bosses I’m out
Yes, Canva is a great tool for creating quick and professional-looking designs, especially for social media, presentations, and marketing materials. Its templates and drag-and-drop features make it easy to use even for non-designers. Does your company use the free or Pro version?
"We Don't Talk About Canva" — Star Castle Studio.
https://www.thefingerprint.co.uk/canva-should-companies-use-it/
For every bad article about Canva there’s another article saying good things about it.
At the end of the day - it’s an Asset Management problem that designers will always face.
You can’t design around a bad boss, and you can’t get people to agree to use a standardized template.
Because there’s always someone in the company that took an summer Art School at 12 who thinks they’re Leyendecker.
If a company believes Canva alone elevates their brand to a professional standard, they might be overlooking key design principles and brand consistency.
But again, it’s all about Management when it comes to the company ethics and strong messaging.
I developed a system years ago with another company that allowed users to make things digitally online, from catalogues to brochures, to flyers.
Templates were designed, and editable regions were implemented.
Images could be uploaded from a pre-approved bank - and when placed in layout the size was restricted to output resolution.
Everything was streamlined for them, from picking the template, changing the images, inserting the text.
There was hierarchy protocol, so the design goes up the chain of command and had to be signed off by a higher-up on the decision level making side of it.
Then it went straight to a print supplier.
In essence it made the company the middle person in all of it - we designed the templates, prepped the files, made fonts available online and all that.
And it worked great - because design was limited, images were controlled, logos were available, resolution was taken care of and it had to go through review process and signed off by a higher person in the chain.
Can Canva work within a structured workflow? Yes, but only with proper asset management and oversight.
I use it for reels and digital ad gifs, it’s fun