#134-Designing a Future That Shines, With Canva CEO Melanie Perkins

For personal or commercial events, you often need graphic material such as, banners, posters, leaflets etc.

 

For campaigns both online or offline, you need a service that can offer high quality material. Finding the right service provider is not easy.

 

In the past it often involved posting a job on freelancing sites and waiting for hours, days, or even weeks, or going to a nearby graphics designer’s brick and mortar shop, or going to a graphic design service provider’s website. You often had to make a lot of compromises.

 

Well, that was before canva entered the scene!

 

Canva is an ai powered graphic design service used by 135 M users each month. Canva, a popular design app, has revolutionized the way individuals and businesses create visually appealing content. With the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), Canva has become an even more powerful tool for designers and non-designers alike.

 

The incorporation of AI in Canva enables users to access advanced features that simplify the design process. Through machine learning algorithms, Canva's AI technology can analyze user preferences and patterns to offer personalized design suggestions, layouts, and color palettes. This not only saves time but also ensures that users can create stunning designs without extensive design knowledge or experience.

 

Furthermore, Canva's AI-powered tools assist in automating repetitive tasks such as resizing images or creating social media graphics in various formats. This streamlines the workflow for designers and allows them to focus on more creative aspects of their projects.

 

By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, Canva continues to be at the forefront of design innovation. It empowers users with intuitive features that enhance their creative capabilities while making professional-level designs accessible to all.

 

Canva has powerful apps such as, MelodyMuse, that can create tunes from text input. CanWave creates magnificent wave patterns. You can convert faces to emojis with emojify.

 

Melanie Perkins, the billionaire Australian tech entrepreneur, started her journey with a project named fusion books in 2007. It was a really nice drag n drop app for students where they could design their yearbook. The design templates could have illustrations and photos. It had font support. The app was a success. The project also acted as a pilot of canva.

 

They started small. From the living room of Perkins’s mother, Cliff Obrecht, then a close friend (now he is more than a close friend), cold called prospects. Soon, it started growing and in around five years it became Australia’s largest yearbook app.

 

However, Perkins was not entirely satisfied because what she really wanted was to create an app for people where they could design almost anything they wanted. Creating such an app was not an easy task, considering fierce competition from established players in the market. She started looking for venture funding but their requests got turned down by local and non-local players. Perth, where they were originally based, did not have much startup activity at the time. Perkins did not give up. She and Obrecht participated in a number of startup competitions and attended VC dinners. An ex google employee, Cameron Adams, showed interest in the initial idea of canva and joined the team as 3^rd co-founder and chief product officer. The company launched on Jan 1, 2013 and in the first year it reached 750 K users.  Now, it has 100 M+ users. With its extensive library of templates and customizable elements, Canva has empowered individuals and businesses to express their creativity effortlessly.

 

Melanie Perkins' vision for Canva has not only made graphic design more accessible but also transformed the way people communicate visually. By simplifying the design process and offering powerful tools, she has enabled users to produce professional-quality designs without requiring extensive technical skills or expensive software.

 

Image credit: Photo by David Fitzgerald/Web Summit via Sportsfile, CC BY 2.0