TREND OF 2021: CONNECTION

Growing Our Inner Entrepreneur With Canva

This elegant design app helped us share our big ideas.

Canva: Design, Art & AI Editor

Photo, Video & Collage Maker

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Canva is one of our 2021 Trend of the Year winners because... its simple design tools helped us connect to our creative passions and entrepreneurial spirit.

‣ Designs created in Canva to date: 7 billion
‣ New designs created every second: 120
‣ “Design ingredients” available: More than 100 million

As 2021 began, the Australia-based team behind the mighty design app Canva noticed business was booming.

Not only their own business. Everyone else’s too.

“We’ve seen a massive shift in what people are using Canva for,” says Cameron Adams, the app’s cofounder and chief product officer.

Originally Canva helped people’s social media posts sparkle with gorgeous designs, everything from spring-themed wedding templates to eye-catching collages.

Canva became the design tool of choice for professional teams—and anyone planning a birthday party.

As the year went on, Canva became an integral tool for for professionals looking to connect with their audiences. “About 30 to 40 percent of our iPhone user base is small or medium businesses,” Adams says. “With so many people working from home, we needed to fill all kinds of gaps.”

With a few taps, use Canva to design business cards, a sign for your farmers market stand, or just about any element of a brand campaign. Templates for presentations—tailored for colleagues, classmates, and clients alike—became a major priority this year, and more than 30 million were created every month in the app. Indeed, 2021 was the year “Canva expert” became a skill to put in bold type on your résumé.

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Not that the app is difficult to master. Optimized for touchscreens, it lets you drag pretty much every element in a template just where you want it (and use the Nudge option for even greater precision). From text animations to photos that slide into place to the other 1 million “design elements” Canva provides, the app connected us to our passions by helping us make them visual and share them with others.

The app’s video-editing tools blew up too: Millions of videos, with elegant title treatments and spiffy transitions, are published in Canva each month. “The most empowering thing we can do is give people quick access to these tools so all they have to think about is their product,” says Adams.

One of my favorite reviews read: ‘Canva helps me get my creativity out.’

—Renee Psomadelis, Canva mobile growth lead

Canva founder and CEO Melanie Perkins was a 19-year-old student at the University of Western Australia when she came up with the idea for the app. Struck by how complicated graphic design programs were while helping other students navigate the basics, she envisioned a future where anyone could easily produce high-quality designs.

“The way I thought about it was: The future was going to be online, simpler, and collaborative. So it seemed inevitable that future design would be all of these things.”

This was the year Canva revealed the future Perkins envisioned: where design is fast, doable on the go, and easy to master.

2021 App Store Award Winners