Hot Take: Designers Need to Stop Dissing Canva

Canva used to be the punchline of every seasoned graphic designer’s joke, “Oh, you made that in Canva?” was often delivered with a smirk in a facetious fashion. But that joke has run its course.

The truth is this: Canva has evolved. Fast. And the snobbery from designers who still diss it? It’s outdated. Unproductive. And honestly, a bit out of touch with how design is consumed today.

Canva Has Grown Up…a Lot

When Canva launched in 2013, it was a simple, web-based tool with basic drag-and-drop capabilities. It was cute for social posts and flyers…never serious design work, right?

Not anymore.

Over the past few years, Canva has added:

• Advanced layout tools
  Grids, alignment aids, spacing controls, and snapping that make composition far more precise than early versions.

• Vector-like functionality
  Clip art today behaves more like vector assets. You can recolor, resize, and adjust without the distortion of old versions.

• Brand management features
  Teams can now set brand colors, fonts, and logo libraries so that collateral stays on-brand.

• Collaboration and version history
  Real-time comments and auto saves let teams work together like Figma or InDesign Server workflows.

• Presentation building that rivals Keynote and even PowerPoint
  With animation export, presenter view, and speaker notes.

Look, Canva isn’t exactly Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign, but it’s ambitiously bridging the gap between casual content creation and professional design workflows.

User-Friendly is Not a Dirty Word

Graphic designers spend years mastering tools with steep learning curves. That mastery is valuable. But being user-friendly doesn’t mean being inferior.

It means:

• Being able to design faster.

  Work smarter, not harder. Being more efficient is a superpower, not something to frown upon.

• Clients can create simpler assets without help
  This reduces back-and-forth and empowers teams to execute basic needs without bottlenecks.

• Non-designers can iterate without breaking the layout
  Text doesn’t overflow. Elements snap. Everyone works faster.

• Companies of all sizes can produce quality design
  Not just Fortune 500s with dedicated creative teams.

And honestly, if ease of use helps teams communicate better, why should designers gatekeep?

Canva Handles Most of What Adobe Does, Especially for Business Needs

For many business use cases, Canva already accomplishes what Adobe products do, and often faster.

Consider this:

When it comes to everyday design tasks, Canva now covers much of the same ground as traditional Adobe tools. Social media graphics that once required Photoshop or Illustrator can be created just as effectively in Canva, with the added benefit of pre-sized templates and drag-and-drop elements that drastically reduce production time. Multi-page layouts, which were long the domain of InDesign, can now be built inside Canva for things like ebooks, reports, pitch decks, and digital brochures. Presentations, too, no longer need to be designed in Illustrator or InDesign; Canva offers robust slide design, animations, and export options that meet the needs of most businesses.

Canva has also closed the gap in motion. While Adobe’s After Effects is still the industry standard for complex animation, most brands only need simple transitions, text motion, and social-ready video formats. Canva delivers these capabilities in a far more accessible way, allowing users to create animated posts, reels, and short videos without specialized training. Finally, where Adobe tools were never built for easy, real-time collaboration or brand control across non-designers, Canva excels. Its brand kits, shared templates, and team workspaces make it possible for entire organizations to produce consistent, on-brand materials without relying on a single designer for every update.

Now, for super-complex editorial spreads, editorial color management, packaging dielines, or professional print production? Adobe still wins, hands down.

But for most everyday design needs, Canva gets the job done. And quickly, with the added perk of accessibility to your team AND your clients.

Designers Should Embrace (Not Mock) Canva

Here’s why designers shouldn’t dismiss Canva:

1. It expands design literacy.
   When teams understand basic design language, they communicate more effectively, benefiting designers, not hurting them.

2. It reduces low-effort requests.
   Instead of doing every single Instagram post, designers can build reusable templates and let teams iterate in Canva.

3. It’s where content actually lives.
   Many businesses don’t need print assets. They need constant, fast, digital content. Canva is purpose-built for that.

4. Clients already love it.
   They want control, templates, and autonomy, not just finished files they can’t edit.

Designers can be the strategist, the curator, and the quality controller. Canva helps designers level up from doer to director.

The Real Skill is Not the Software, it is Design Thinking

At the end of the day, design is not about which tool you use. It’s about solving problems visually.

A great composition in Canva is still a great composition.

Color theory, hierarchy, typography: those are design skills Adobe doesn’t automate.

So instead of scoffing at Canva, designers should:

• Embrace tools that help businesses work smarter

• Teach thoughtful design instead of software snobbery

• Focus on where creativity adds the most value

Final Thought

Canva is not a threat to professional design. Instead, it’s a sign of a maturing design ecosystem. It’s a tool that meets users where they are, and designers should meet users there too.

Dissing Canva isn’t defending good design, it’s resisting progress.

If you are looking for designs that you can edit as needed, we would love to work with you and your team to build user-friendly templates that give you autonomy over your content! Let’s get started with your free consultation today!