Canva launches its biggest ever redesign – and says the old way of making documents is over

Canva says it is now creating 367 designs per second

(Canva)

Canva, the popular design app, has launched its biggest ever redesign.

The new launch aims to change how teams work, it said, and do away with the traditional idea of working in different kinds of formats.

Canva was launched in 2012, and has since gone on to become one of the world’s most popular apps. It said that more than 145 million users have joined since it launched its new Visual Suite features in 2022.

Now it has launched Visual Suite 2.0. It comes with a variety of changes that the company says will fundamentally change the nature of work.

Chief among them is a philosophical change that does away with different formats for different kinds of documents. Now, users will be able to create presentations and spreadsheets in the same kind of design, for instance.

Those spreadsheets are possible because Canva also launched Canva Sheets, a tool for calculating numbers that looks to take on rivals such as Excel and Google Sheets. It comes with a variety of features, including AI tools that Canva said will spot key patters in data.

Canva also launched an AI-focused tool that will allow people to give a simple prompt to the system and produce a design. Users will just be able to talk to the system to generate a design or make tweaks, for instance.

Another new tool called Canva Code will allow people to program within Canva. That too can use artificial intelligence to produce new interactive designs, Canva said.

Canva promised that all of those AI features are “backed” by Canva Shield, its commitment to trust and safety, which includes tools to check outputs and ensure users can control how their data is being used. It also said that it did not see the new AI features as a way of getting rid of designers, but instead helping them with their work, and pointed to a fund that compensates designers when their work is used to train artificial intelligence.