Canva is a name that will already be known to many creatives. In its 10 years in existence, the Australian company has expanded its products rapidly from logo, presentation and social media design to include video and more. And now it's going further.
In today's Canva Create presentation, the platform will unveil a ton of new branding features and AI tools showing that it aims to become nothing less than a one-stop shop for brand managers and creative teams, covering almost every communicational need (see our pick of the best graphic design software for more options, or see our Canva review, which will now need an update).
Canva's new features are designed to advance its aim to be an "all-in-one visual communication platform" for its 125 million monthly users and counting. First up, is a suite of brand management features called Brand Hub within the existing Visual Worksuite.
This includes the ability to create and share a Brand Kit containing logos, colours, fonts, icons, imagery, graphics, and brand guidelines that everyone in a brand's team can access. Team admins can even enforce 'Brand Controls' by limiting the fonts and codes available to other team members to avoid people having to check hex codes and to prevent the wrong assets from being used,
There's also a Brand Templates tool designed to help save time on repetitive tasks, allowing teams to create more content while staying on brand. Meanwhile, Brand Folders for specific events, campaigns, teams or projects aim to help teams keep branding organised and accessible.
Canva's 10th-anniversary update also includes a bunch of AI-driven tools that aim to speed up design processes. These include Magic Design, Magic Edit and Magic Eraser (yes, that's a lot of magic). The first allows users to upload an image and select a style to create personalised templates or presentations. Magic Edit can be used to replace or edit anything in an image using a text prompt – mark where you want something to appear, describe it, and it appears.
Other new AI features include Canva Assistant, Beat Sync to automatically match video footage to a soundtrack, Translate (we'd advise getting a native speaker to proofread your copy before going wild and publishing anything made using this), and Magic Write, Canva's 'copywriting assistant', which can now be used across the whole Visual Worksuite including in Presentations, Videos and Websites.
Finally, the Canva update also includes a batch of other new and updated features that it says have been requested by users, including Shape Assist to turn sketches into perfectly formed shapes, layout recommendations, new fonts (including Helvetica, yay!), a Styles feature that can match new designs to previous work, layers capabilities, gradients, precision position tools, Alt Text and Smart Design Imports, allowing files to be dragged into the editor and turned into an editable Canva design.
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins said: “As technology continues to advance, we are reimagining the design process by making it even easier to take what is in your head, get it onto a page, and out into the world, faster than ever before.”
