At the end of last year we had the opportunity at EL ESPAÑOL – El Androide Libre to interview Cliff Obrecht, COO of Canva, and now Rob Kawalsky to tell us about what Canva Empresas means, the new dedicated interface to the work environment, the renewed artificial intelligence functions of Estudio Mágico and ARM support for its three design applications: Designer, Photo and Publisher.
Canva presented the biggest renewal of the platform and the big leap into the business environment with Canva Empresas. An important turning point for their interests and even more so when it comes to a platform dedicated to users who generate content in all its forms. We can say that they have been one of the protagonists of digital creation at all levels.
Estudio Mágico now includes several new features such as Multimedia Mágico, to generate graphics and illustrations in different styles of instructions; Magic Design, for presentations with AI-enhanced design; Magic Resizing and Redesign, which makes it easy to convert a layout into a custom document; Styles and Layouts, to apply branding colors and templates to an entire design with a single click; Optimized photo editing, able to move, delete or modify any object in an image with AI; and Video Enhancements, with the “Featured” tool for trimming a selection of longer video clips.
What’s better than being able to interview Rob Kawalsky, Product Manager at Canva, to comment on all the news presented today around the world. What’s special about this presentation is that it comes at the best possible time with support for Designer, Photo and Publisher on ARM64, making it the first creation software with end-to-end native compatibility for PCs Copilot+ presented this week by Microsoft; three applications acquired with the purchase of Affinity and which directly compete with Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator and Designer, hence the importance of this day.
What are the main changes in the redesign of the new Canva Empresas interface?
There are three main areas where this change is most significant for Canva Empresas, but first I want to talk generally about what this launch means in three main aspects.
The first is to provide an ideal solution to the fragmentation that exists in other solutions and in professional environments used to handling one or more tools. We offer to evolve the experience according to the needs of the business, whether for licensing, the cloud or the creation of different teams within the same organization.
The second is the unification of the workflow in a single solution like that of Canva Empresas to save time and capital investments of the company: centralize design, content production, AI and collaboration tools in a single account. And third, Canva’s enormous ability to provide advanced branding controls to maintain identity across processes and enterprise-level security with tools like MFA, SCIM, SSO, and Canva Shield.
In the interface, the main big change is to make it more intuitive for the work and professional environment with a significant degree of customization of the tools used. The second is the ability to evolve the creative projects we work on to maximize the team’s resources and allow members to access collaborative tools with powerful filters to find the best content.
And the third are the Canva content kits in the form of templates, apps, graphics that have always made us special, yes, separate for each department of the company, whether it is sales, marketing or creativity, and with the virtue of having collaborative tools.
Another essential aspect of this transformation with Canva Companies is the ability to create Canva courses to convert any content into an interactive course that can be used to train company staff or new members.
We can therefore understand that Canva Empresas is moving directly towards notoriety for all types of businesses or businesses?
That is, and we are in a moment of evolution and growth to be the perfect solution for businesses and businesses.
If I could summarize the following question in a few words: why Canva Empresas?
We identified a huge demand for a solution for the business environment like Canva Empresas and that’s exactly what we’re delivering with today’s launch. Since the arrival of Canva’s workplace-focused visual suite 18 months ago, we’ve grown 95 million users. The answer is there.
What are the short and medium term objectives of Canva Empresas?
That’s a great question. In nine years, we have reached the same number of users as in 18 months with Visual Suite and today’s launch is going to be an important milestone for our short and medium term interests. Especially since our Canva Workplace solution is already used by 95% of Fortune 500 companies. This is an important step in the company’s commercial strategy.
What makes Canva Empresas so special compared to the competition?
Offer a complete suite that covers all business needs and respects the integrity of the message you want to communicate through marketing, sales or creative tools. By having “everything at your fingertips” it is easier for this message to be ongoing without changes in the design process. That is to say that the different departments access the same matrix tool with all its different aspects, whether for creativity, sales or marketing.
For example, you can create a campaign and then evolve it into different languages or nuances so that the different services include them in the Meta Ads, Amazon Ads or Google Ads platforms.
Of all the new AI features in Estudio Mágico, which one do you like best?
I will not stick to just one but to the very essence of the flexibility that Estudio Mágico’s artificial intelligence offers to visually shape the campaign and thus specify the message you want to convey in the different formats necessary for the social networks in which to be advertised. This ability to evolve to apply colors or frame patterns, or repurpose any design to create a new one, is an example of the greatness of Studio Magico’s AI.
Let’s say that it is very easy for the company to adapt the message or communication to create several marketing campaigns.
There you go, everything is so simple in just a few simple steps.
Canva bought Affinity a few months ago and just today you announced support for ARM64 chips, meaning the apps are optimized for the new Copilot+ PCs that Microsoft announced this week with the Surface. Does this have anything to do with marketing strategy? Canva’s purchase of Affinity, possible support from ARM? Or is it just a coincidence?
It wasn’t really related to the new Copilot+ PCs introduced by Microsoft, but I can say it’s a reflection of how far Canva has come. The purchase of Designer, Photo and Publisher corresponds to our needs and the catalog of graphic productivity that we have always wanted to offer to our millions of users.
What Microsoft presented this week fits very well with the offering that Canva is presenting today. This is undoubtedly a special moment for us. Affinity is an excellent solution for editing and graphic design tools in all its areas.
Can we then say that we are very well placed to enter the market for applications supporting ARM on the new Copilot+ PCs? To be clear, this is a huge and significant opportunity.
Yes, that’s how we see it in Canva. With Affinity we will be able to offer our users an experience that we lacked, and with the new Copilot+ PCs from Microsoft and those of its partners, we will enter an important market with a series of high quality programs at the professional level. We are very excited about everything that is happening.
It’s the perfect time, yes. Thank you very much for the interview Robert, and congratulations on the work you do.
