Canva: An Interface Interrogation
Canva is a graphic design website that markets itself as a platform that makes design accessible to everyone. Their ads also emphasize that they are easy to use and have professional templates. Their main appeal comes from their vast range of editable templates that allow individuals new to graphic design to make professional marketing pieces. After a deep look into the interface of Canva, it is evident that most of their claims hold up.
Right from the start, Canva encourages the user to return to the platform again by prompting them to sign in or sign up through Google, Facebook, Apple, or your email. If you select the Google option and are already signed into Google on your browser, you can sign up with one click. This ease has the potential to draw more users into making a free account, which is necessary to save any of your designs.
Upon the first login, the user’s eye is called to look at a large purple bar that contrasts the mostly white background located in the upper third of the webpage. The bright purple can be off-putting, and to an untrained designer (Canva’s target audience) the number of options can be overwhelming and potentially stop the user from working on the website. To best use this website without being distracted by so many options, the user should come in with an idea of exactly what they need, to avoid browsing the seemingly endless options for too long. On the contrary, the amount of options shown right on the homepage does a good job at showing how versatile their design space is.
While it feels busy, it does encourage users to get straight to work since they are so easily able to click on a template for exactly what they want to make.
Canva offers a free version and “Canva Pro”, the paid version which is free for 30 days then $119.99 per year or $12.99 per month. The paid version offers access to more copyright-free photos, videos, fonts, and templates. It also offers editing features such as the “background remover”, a popular tool for anyone interested in graphic design or photo editing. The absence of this tool in the free version is a pretty large hindrance when it comes to making more original content, and other free platforms online (money apps) like Background Eraser For IOS and Cut Me In offer the ability to remove the background for free. Despite the benefits of the plan, the free version affords the user enough tools to make a decent design. Canva makes it easy to upload your images, video, or audio to use in your design with a simple click. You can upload media from your device and other media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, and Dropbox. While the average user might not need all of these options, it does increase accessibility. Many of the functions on Canva are similar to those you find in Google Slides or other similar design platforms, you can right-click on an image to reveal options such as copy, paste, delete, or send to back. Also, when you insert a photo or video you resize or rotate it by dragging the corners or edges, something that most people who have used tools like Google Docs will be familiar with. These functions are familiar to most users who have experience in basic design spaces and make the canvas they are working on easier to ease into as a new user.
The best part of the free version of Canva may be their templates, most of them are free and they seem to have an endless selection. Once the user picks a template, a white blank opens and your browser defaults to showing you editable pre-designed templates which is nice because it offers a starting point for those who lack a vision of what they are looking for.
Canva’s design space is for the most part easy to navigate and seems user-friendly. One of the smaller drawbacks is found under the “elements” section of this design space (these are comparable to stickers, pre-made digital images that you can drag on to your canvas). You do have the ability to resize these in the same way you do for the other media, but the stickers were designed using pixels, meaning that you can only make them so big before they start to become blurry. Compared to its professional competitor, Adobe Illustrator (which uses vector-based software) this is a large drawback because it makes it hard to know whether your image will be clear if you decide to print it. Although Canva does not specifically advertise the ability to print, their templates for posters and flyers may lead users to think that they can print clearly.
The drawback of having so many options available on one screen is that it is easy to lose a button you are looking for. In particular, the “animate” button, which adds transitions to the text and photos on your design, is somewhat hidden on the design page. This feature is important for many online ads, so it being such a small button that is not near the main design features is confusing.
In comparison to its more expensive competitor, Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva still manages to hold its own. Adobe Creative Cloud holds tools like Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator which are some of the most esteemed tools for design. To a professional graphic designer that is used to using these tools, Canva will seem like child’s play. It lacks the “start-from-scratch” features such as drawing shapes/text and working in layers, which are important tools that the experienced designer might need. These tools also allow for more complex, unique work that would be difficult if not impossible to replicate on Canva.
Canva can be an incredibly valuable and wallet-friendly option for any small business. It is designed so that creating an entire media marketing captioning is very easy. Larger, more established businesses should probably avoid the website, as the nature of templates can result in another business copying their marketing campaign very easily. With that said, Canva does emphasize how customizable it is and has the potential to produce professional-looking designs and campaigns.
