Brand Saga

Brand Saga: How Canva marketed the ease of design for all

Canva’s journey has been about one thing: making design easy, accessible, and human, and its marketing has mirrored that simplicity every step of the way.

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Pranali Tawte
New Update
Canva

In the early 2010s, the world of design was a fortress. Powerful tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator reigned supreme, but they came with steep learning curves and even steeper price tags. If you were a student wanting to create a presentation that looked half-decent, or a small business owner needing a logo, your options were slim: hire an expensive designer, wrestle with clunky software, or settle for something uninspired.

That was the world Melanie Perkins was living in. A university student in Perth, Australia, she saw her peers struggling to learn graphic software just to make school yearbooks and flyers. It struck her: why did design have to be so complicated?

Back then, in 2007, Perkins and her partner, Cliff Obrecht, were young entrepreneurs with limited resources and little business experience. From their living room in Perth, and driven by the vision that design could be simple, online, and collaborative, the opposite of what intimidating platforms offered, they both created their first experiment: Fusion Books, an online platform that helped schools design yearbooks with ease.

Teachers and students could drag-and-drop photos and text into templates. It was a runaway hit in Australia, and even expanded overseas. More importantly, it validated an idea that would change the way the world thought about design. Soon, the venture became Australia’s largest yearbook publisher, even expanding to France and New Zealand.

This side project became the prototype for Canva.

The birth of Canva

The spark for Canva was simple: make design accessible to everyone. But turning that spark into a fire was anything but easy.

In 2010, Perkins, along with co-founder Obrecht (who would later become her husband), pitched the idea of a global design platform to investors in Silicon Valley. The response? A polite but firm rejection. Many couldn’t see why the world needed another design tool. Perkins was rejected over 100 times.

Then came a breakthrough. The duo met Cameron Adams, a former Google engineer with deep design experience. He joined as the third co-founder, giving Canva both technical muscle and credibility. 

In 2013, Canva launched and supported their debut with a $3 million seed round. This backing came from a group of investors, including Matrix Partners, InterWest Partners, 500 Startups, Lars Rasmussen (Google Maps co-founder), Ken Goldman (Yahoo CFO), and Bill Tai. By mid-2014, Canva raised an additional $3.6 million in seed funding, pushing its total seed-stage capital to around $6.6 million before they even hit Series A.

By the end of its first year, Canva had 150,000 users. The idea had more than just legs. It had developed wings. 

Marketing without marketing

What made Canva explode wasn’t just its product. It was how the company marketed itself without really “marketing” in the traditional sense.

From the start, Canva adopted the ‘freemium’ model, free for most users, with advanced features and premium templates locked behind Canva Pro. This meant millions could use it with zero friction. The more they used it, the more they wanted the upgrades.

Users didn’t just design on Canva, they shared those designs. Every social post, resume, or presentation made with Canva carried the invisible stamp of the platform. Word-of-mouth spread especially among students, entrepreneurs, and creators.

Canva’s blog churned out SEO-rich tutorials like “How to Make a Resume” or “Best Instagram Post Sizes.” Each piece pulled in traffic, converted casual visitors into users, and positioned Canva as the friendly design guide of the internet.

The phrase "Canva: Design is All Around Us" refers to Canva's launch and foundational mission. This was translated in its initial marketing videos.

When Guy Kawasaki, an Apple evangelist, joined Canva as Chief Evangelist in 2014, it signaled credibility. He championed Canva across conferences and communities, furthering its global appeal.

By 2018, Canva had over 10 million users. By 2020, that number had skyrocketed past 30 million. In 2021, Canva was valued at $40 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable private tech companies.

Canva comes to India

If there was one market tailor-made for Canva, it was India.

India’s fertile ground for Canva’s growth was shaped by three powerful tailwinds: a booming SME sector with millions of small shops, entrepreneurs, and local brands hungry for affordable marketing tools; the rise of the creator economy, where YouTubers, Instagram influencers, and freelancers demanded quick, professional-looking design; and a smartphone-first internet culture that favored mobile apps over desktop software, making Canva’s intuitive, cloud-based platform an instant fit.

Canva recognised this. Around 2018-2019, India became a focus market. While the company didn’t enter with flashy billboards or celebrity endorsements, it quietly began localising. Templates for Diwali, Holi, Raksha Bandhan, and Independence Day popped up on the platform. Designs in multiple Indian languages rolled out. Suddenly, a small bakery in Lucknow or a tuition class in Pune could whip up a festive ad that looked just as slick as a multinational brand’s poster.

India’s adoption was huge. Within a few years, the country became one of Canva’s largest user bases globally, with millions of active users.

While Canva had already gained traction in India through organic growth, 2024 marked a turning point with the launch of its maiden brand campaign in the country, titled ‘Dil Se, Design Tak’, aiming to celebrate creativity and empower individuals across the country.

This marked a significant investment in localised marketing, signalling the company’s intent to deepen its connection with Indian users.

The campaign unfolded in two phases. In the first phase, Canva released a short film aimed at showcasing the platform’s ability to help individuals and teams turn ideas into reality. The film featured relatable office scenarios, highlighting how Canva can simplify the design process for everyone, from students to professionals.

The second phase introduced a series of 12 digital ad films, set in the fictional ‘Hysterical Historical Café.’ Here, historical figures like Cleopatra and Shakespeare were humorously depicted grappling with modern-day challenges, using Canva to find solutions. The quirky concept of placing historical characters in present-day dilemmas struck a chord with audiences, demonstrating the flexibility and relevance of Canva’s tools in a creative and engaging way.

The use of historical figures grappling with modern-day challenges was a deliberate choice. By placing characters like Cleopatra or Shakespeare in everyday scenarios, Canva signalled the adaptability of its tools across contexts. The series was designed to connect with over 100 million internet users in India, cutting across demographics from students to enterprises.

The campaign, developed with Only Much Louder, leaned on humour and role reversal to make design feel approachable. By stepping away from straightforward feature-led messaging and using playful storytelling, Canva aimed to show that creativity could belong in any situation, not just professional ones.

This September, Canva rolled out the second edition of its ‘Dil Se, Design Tak’ campaign in India with a focus on making design more accessible. The campaign highlights stories of families using creativity to connect and professionals working together more seamlessly. It also brings Canva’s AI-powered tools to the forefront and is available in multiple languages, reflecting the country’s cultural diversity.

One of Canva’s ongoing challenges in India, as in other markets, is maintaining a balance between creativity and education. While the platform offers endless possibilities for design, there’s an emphasis on ensuring that users understand how to effectively use its tools. This educational element has been crucial to driving Canva’s adoption among small businesses and freelancers.

Turning trends into tutorials

With 7.57 lakh subscribers on Canva’s global YouTube channel, 2.91 lakh on Canva India YouTube, 2.3 million followers on Instagram, and 295K on Canva India’s Instagram, the brand has built a formidable social presence that balances scale with cultural relevance.

In its early days, Canva’s social media playbook was straightforward. The approach was simple: teach people how to use the tool. The early feed was filled with “how-to” videos, tutorials, and bite-sized tips that made design less intimidating. But as the brand grew in India, so did its content playbook.

Today, Canva’s social strategy is part education, part entertainment, and all culture. Take Diwali, for instance. Instead of just posting a festive greeting, Canva shared a playful reel featuring its Magic Eraser tool, showing how it could help you “erase” the scolding that inevitably comes during festive clean-ups.

During the wedding season, the brand tapped into the chaos of shaadi prep, demonstrating how designing digital invites can be quick, stylish, and stress-free with Canva.

What makes their approach stand out is that Canva uses cultural moments to showcase its product in action. Be it a viral meme format or a major event, every topical post doubles as a subtle demo. From clever template tweaks to highlighting features like text effects and animations, their content turns trends into tutorials without ever feeling like a lesson.

From clever use of design templates to highlighting features like text effects and animations, their posts don’t just join the trend, they show users how they can create similar content themselves.

Canva India taps into the internet’s love for sh*tposting, low-effort, meme-style content that thrives on absurdity and humour.

From intentionally ‘bad’ designs to over-the-top text placements, these posts lean into the DIY aesthetic, proving that Canva isn’t just for serious projects, it’s also for having fun. By doing this, the brand taps into meme culture and shows that you don’t need to be a designer to create something that sparks engagement.

Influencers play a big role, too. Rather than scripted endorsements, creators show how they naturally use Canva, whether it’s designing merch, customising invites, or remixing templates to fit their personal style. The message is that if your favourite creator can use Canva, so can you.

The brand also knows the internet’s soft spot: pets. Cats and dogs often take centre stage in its posts, wrapping Canva’s tools in universally loved humour. A cute dog summing up everyday struggles or a cat meme edited with Canva text overlays? That’s relatability meeting subtle product placement.

This mix of topicality, humour, influencer relatability, and pet-powered virality ensures Canva is more than present on social media.

When feedback became outdoor advertising

In one of its boldest out-of-home plays, Canva recently turned London’s busy Waterloo Station into a live commentary on the messy, often hilarious world of design feedback. Fourteen billboards became punchlines that doubled as product demos,  showing off Canva’s tools without ever slipping into tutorial mode. One board had the logo blown so large it spilled off the edges, a cheeky nod to the dreaded “make the logo bigger” brief. 

Another joked, “Turns out the 16×9 was meant to be 9×16,” a sly way to highlight the platform’s Magic Resize tool. 

A poster with its background literally cut out to reveal the brick wall behind it made the Background Remover impossible to miss, while an awkwardly mounted bike grinned its way into promoting “drag and drop anything.”

This OOH campaign was crafted by Stink Studios with media by OMD. The humorous approach was smart, self-deprecating, and refreshingly human.

Canva’s marketing has rarely focused on positioning itself as just another software product. Instead, its campaigns, content, and community-building have consistently circled back to one core message: design is not a specialised skill reserved for a few, but a tool that anyone can access and use. 

This framing shows up across touchpoints. The underlying communication is consistent: design doesn’t have to be intimidating, expensive, or exclusive.

For a category long dominated by complex, professional-grade platforms, this positioning has been Canva’s differentiator. 

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