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Canva has introduced its Creative Operating System, marking a significant update to its suite of design, collaboration, and marketing tools used by over 260 million monthly users in more than 190 countries. The new platform brings together a decade of product development with features designed to enhance visual communication for individuals, businesses, and marketing teams globally. At its core, the Creative Operating System is supported by Canva's new Design Model, which the company describes as a world-first AI model trained to understand the complexities of design, layout, and editable content creation. The introduction of the Creative Operating System is intended to support users throughout the design process, from initial creation to collaboration, publishing, and performance analysis. The new system aims to make design faster and smarter, with artificial intelligence amplifying users' creative capabilities, while keeping human input as the driving force of visual communication. AI across the platform Canva's latest update embeds AI technology throughout its design workflow, enabling users to generate design elements, photos, videos, textures, and 3D graphics directly on the platform. The company stated that its AI advancements include new style-matching capabilities to ensure brand consistency and a creative assistant, accessible by tagging @Canva, which provides users with feedback, design suggestions, and smart edits in context. Melanie Perkins, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Canva, commented on the launch: "As knowledge becomes more and more accessible, we believe we're moving from the Information Era to the Imagination Era, a time when creativity has never been more critical. We've been thinking about how we can empower our community to succeed in this era, which is why we're incredibly excited to unveil our biggest launch yet with the all-in-one Creative Operating System. From major upgrades to our Visual Suite with Video, Email, and Forms, to a powerful new AI layer and tools to grow your brand and business, we can't wait to see how people use all of these new products to bring their ideas to life." Visual Suite enhancements The update includes a revised Visual Suite, with new tools for video editing, email creation, form design, and the integration of data-driven widgets in Canva Sheets. The video editor, known as Video 2.0, is designed to simplify video production by combining professional-grade features with the platform's interface, allowing users to create content from a single prompt. AI-powered functions such as automated edits, content trimming, and syncing are also incorporated. Email Design, another new feature, enables users to create and export branded marketing emails without leaving the Canva platform. The Forms tool lets teams collect feedback, RSVPs, and other data, which can be integrated directly into Canva Sheets for further analysis and reporting. Meanwhile, the Canva Code Meets Sheets functionality allows for the linking of interactive widgets to spreadsheet data, supporting dynamic updates for dashboards, calculators, and learning modules. Marketing and brand management Canva Grow is positioned as an end-to-end marketing engine, combining campaign creation, publish management, and performance tracking within a single system. Marketers can design, launch, and refine ads across channels such as Meta, using insights and AI-driven recommendations to optimise their campaigns. The update also introduces enhanced brand management via an integrated system that automatically applies brand guidelines, ensuring consistent use of logos, fonts, colours, and templates across all assets. Additional features are designed to assist both small teams and global enterprises in maintaining brand consistency and scaling creative efforts. A new Canva Business plan is being launched for individuals and teams seeking extended storage, higher AI usage quotas, print discounts, and tailored tools for business growth. The plan bridges the offerings between Canva Pro and Canva Enterprise. Affinity relaunch The company announced the all-new Affinity-a suite for professional designers that includes vector, image manipulation, and advanced layout features-will now be available to all users at no cost. The Affinity suite is intended to allow professional creators to produce assets for direct use within Canva, facilitating collaboration and publishing in one workflow. This move aims to make professional-grade design tools accessible to a wider range of users, allowing for streamlined collaboration between design professionals and other stakeholders. Canva reported annualised revenue of USD $3.5 billion and a company valuation of USD $42 billion. It states that 95% of the Fortune 500 use Canva, including global brands such as Stripe, LinkedIn, Snowflake, and Pinterest.
