Canva 2 – Updated Online Graphic Design Tool

Canva 2 like Canva 1 supports over 8000 free templates for all the popular Social Media [Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc] plus many other graphic design targets such as logos, greeting notes, business cards,flyers, ad banners plus multi-page reports and presentations. In addition, Canvas 2 has added a broad number of new connections like Youtube, Ted, Flickr plus 20 more.

As well Canva 2 has expanded the download options well beyond PNG or JPG print formats plus PDF available in Canva 1 – there are now 2 dozen new download options such as Twitter, Dropbox, Overdrive, Slack, Tumblr, etc. Finally, Canva 2 has bulked up the Templates. Discover, and Learn menu items with mega menus packed with over 60,000 thousand templates, scores of tips and dozens of tutorials. Even better Canva 2 displays templates by categories and provides a list view to expand each template category.

Canva became the one of the most popular online graphics design tools because it  followed a classic formula

1. – be largely free and and easy to use with many tips and tutorials;
2. – let users choose from 800 free templates the starting design or choose a DYI blank page. Support single and multi-page designs;
3. – provide users over a million free stock photos, icons, and shapes;
4. – allow media & text to be added to a design with a mouse click or drag & drop placement;
5. – allow media editing for resizing, position, coloring, and vertical  rank easy to do;
6. – downloads in jpg, png and PDF format are free and without watermarks.

Canva 1 has shapes, icons, grids, frames and other media including over 1 million free stock images.  The limit has been 1GB of design space before users had to pay for more storage.

Canva 2 has upped the storage to 50GB for its Pro users and has expanded this list of media resources with 60,000 templates and 6 million stockmedia including photos, icons, shapes and video plus adding charts, smart embeds, animated stickers. But without a doubt the addion of animation, music, and video  is the coup in Canva 2:

But music and  video are not available to free users; the next tier up, Pro users at $9.99US/month, unlocks these media plus the extra 50GB of design space. Although Pro users can add their own videos they cannot do that for music.Video can be very effective in your Social Media and Web Designs, but even a 3 minute video with audio can cost 10-25MB of download burden on your website. This cost can be controlled by judicious use of  free Handbrake video compression or use of video providers like  Vimeo, Youtube, etc.

However, Canva adds a very robust set of embed options that add to the media that Canva 2 offers  its users. Here is a list of the most important embeds:

• Photo resources – Pexels, Pixabay, Flickr, Pinterest
• Video media – Ted, Vimeo, Youtube, GIPHY, Gfycat
• Music – SoundCloud, iTunes, Spotify
• Code blocks – Google Maps, Codepen, Bitmoji, QRCode, TypeForm, SmartMockups
• Storage Space – Box, Google Drive, DropBox, 
• Social Media – Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Hubspot, Tumblr, Twitter

The net result is with embeds, Canva 2 has filled its  weak music and video features while extending its media resources extensively.

We start our evaluation of Canva 2 Media Edit features with a Canva 2020 Beginner Tutorial:

1. Text processing is almost identically the same. There is no fast text background, drop shadow, or outline features as these can be done in a 2-4 step duplication or shape positioning process;
2. Shapes, Icons, and  Frames have added in Canva 2 Color, Flip, Copy Style, Lock, Crop and Reposition features to basic Transparency, Duplicate, Arrange, & Delete  options. But animated stickers lose the Color and Flip features.
3.  Photos add Effects, Adjust, Lock, Copy style to the basic Filter, Crop, Flip, Transparency, Arrange, Duplicate and Delete options available in Canva  2

   There is no doubt that Canva 2 has enhanced the number of media available and some of their editing features. But editing is the weakest part of the Canva 1 to 2 upgrade. For example, animations apply only to complete pages unlike in CMS PageBuilders which allow users to animate each element of a page design. Also the layers of elements  on a page remain hidden – Canva badly needs a popup list of elements which can be edited for position and presence. Finally, the color option does not allow for gradients. Hence the lower score for Media Editing Features.

Global Styling is where Canva 2 has made major strides. Brand Kits allow users to set default styles for Brand Logos, Brand Colors, and Brand Fonts settings But Brand Kits only apply  to  Pro contracts at $9.99US/month  with 1 Brand Kit or Enterprise contracts at $40US/month  with unlimited Brand Kits. Users can asign Brand Kits to projects where Brand Kit settings become the default logo, color and font settings.

These Brand Kit settings are very similar to the Global Setting used in CMS PageBuilders Any body using WordPress and its Customize settings or the Global Style settings used in popular Elementor Designer will be familiar with how the Brand Kits work. So here is a typical barnd kit:

1. Up to 200 Brand logos can be stored in a brandkit;
2. Up to 20 Brand swatches can be added to a Brand Kit;
3. 3 font styles can be added to Brandkit along with a user uploaded font;

Here is a screenshot of a Brand Kit:

Canva 2 has some very useful team collaboration features;but they cost $40CAD/user/month. For that, team members have unlimited Brand Kits, unlimited Cloud-based storage space plus a range of Enterrpise Team Workflow features. In contrast, free and Pro users will have to rely on Canva’s Design Distribution and social media connections for their collaboration connections.

So the balance of the Team Collaboration  review will look at the range of collaboration features $40CAD/user/month buys:

• Team access is on solid security including SSO-Single Sign On with Two Stage Authentication protection;
• Team Dashboard display roles and access privileges  to team members ensuring better collaboration and workflow;
• Control shared edit and access to designs;
• Lock elements and templates in a design ensuring Brand adherence;
• Team folders and multiple Brand Kits increase team visibility and engagement with shared content;
• But allowing comments and use of  approval workflows helps to ensure all members of a team  are on board a design.

Now Canva offers discounted access to Pro Canva and special opportunities to educational institutions for group access – see here. In sum, Canva 2.0 Collaboration featues lead many graphic design tools. But the jump in cost to $40CAD/User/month appears high. An intermediate collaboration feature set at $12-20CAD/user/month  would improve our Collaboration rating.

Design Distribution would seem to be straight forward for Canva 2 with good download options for PNG, JPG, and PDF file-types supported as in Canva 1. But there is a richness in the Canva 2 download options particularly for  the Pro and Enterprise users. For example,  one-click design resize allows pro users to copy to multiple social media using the Copy and Resize command repeated for each target Social Media.

But the the real richness of Canva 2 can be seen in this screenshot:

• Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, eMail, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, MailChimp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Slack, Tumblr, Wechat, PowerPoint;
• Code Embed, Website code[see sample here],Vidoe Download;
• Print Business Cards, Flyers, Gift Certificates, Stacked Cards, Infographics, Letterheads, Square Cards, T-Shirts, Trifolds, Postcards, Rack cards, Tags

For all print items users can choose Canva to provide the service including billing or shipping, Canva 2 has a four step process to insure that the order is right:

Canva 2 supports HTML links as well as interfaces to Medium and WordPress.
Here is the WordPress link[which like the Canva Plugin works some of the time]:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAEA2F8GQD8/view
In addition its extensive set of embed often work in both direction. As well the new beta Canva Button feature allows for more interactions with end users in powerful  ways. 

Adobe Photoshop CC has a monthly fee of $10US/month – and this has become the invisible standard for pricing of graphic tools both desktop and online. In the back of mind, is the following evaluation – does Canva 2 bring as much design opportunity, time and cost savings, plus ease of interacting with other tools and designers as using Photoshop. For this reviewer until team collaboration varies widely for different  clients plus  the availability of great music, video, image editing and animation tools are improved,  I will be sticking with the free version of Canva 2.