Canva is getting a new UI makeover and an AI-powered magic studio upgrade

All-in-one visual communications platform Canva, Inc. announced its new user interface makeover, workforce tools, and an improved artificial intelligence (AI) powered magic studio feature.

“Every part of Canva, from the editor to the homepage, has been given a polish. It’s a clean editor, we thought about the hero in your content and made sure you can personalize the experience,” said Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Canva, during a virtual press conference on May 21.

The updated UI design features a new contextual editing toolbar and customizable workspaces on the homepage.

Canva said users can favorite top designs, folders and brand templates, while organizations can pin company- or team-wide content to the top of the page.

“Last launched, our AI products have been used more than 6.5 billion times. More than 25 billion designs have been created,” Mr Adams said.

Improved features

One of the latest improvements is the expansion of the ‘supercharged’ AI generation tool Magic Studio, which has been used more than five billion times since its launch in October 2023.

The upgrade options are magic media, text-to-graphics tool, magic design that generates three times higher quality presentations, and the format and magic switch.

This will convert any design into any custom document, by entering a prompt or choosing from new options like a video script, LinkedIn post, or presentation outline.

In addition to the renowned AI-powered photo editor, the AI-powered Highlights cuts a selection of eye-catching clips from longer videos, while Enhance Voice reduces background noise.

“AI tools are very fragmented, having texts, videos, images and coding and 3D in speech means a completely different tool to learn and maintain a different platform… which is a challenge,” says Melanie Perkins, co-founder and CEO of Canva.

Mr. Adams added that Canva “really sees AI as the next wave of democratizing design and creating a beautifully simple yet powerful experience for every type of design user.”

In addition, the platform introduced Canva Work Kits, an industry-curated collection of hundreds of craft-specific templates, from presentations to documents.

The Work Kits provide tools tailored to the needs of marketing, human resources, sales and creative departments.

Meanwhile, upgrades to Visual Suite include suggested edits, where users can track changes and collaborate on edits. 375 million Canva documents have been created since 2022.

Applications built by the largest advertising platforms offer instant design feedback, data auto-completion, and uploading CSV or Excel files to create in bulk to speed up marketing workflow.

Canva Enterprise

The recently launched Canva Enterprise has a subscription offering designed for large organizations with complex security, reporting, administration and brand management requirements.

“Canva for enterprise allows organizations to do that with all the certainty and confidence they need for such large-scale and important projects,” he says.

Mr. Adams noted that Canva is the trusted platform of more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies around the world.

“FedEx has significantly downsized its brand, reduced review submissions by 77% and increased productivity. More than 33,000 workday hours have been saved by implementing Canva and enabling much of their design to scale,” he added.

According to the company, the new homepage and editing experience will be available to the first million users who will find the “secret portal” hidden on their homepage, while general availability will begin in August.

Canva has 20 million paying subscribers, leading to annual revenue of more than $2.2 billion.

The platform has more than 185 million monthly users in 190 countries in more than 100 languages. – Aubrey Rose A. Inosente