Canva’s Creative OS and Affinity App Drive the ‘Imagination Era’

Canva, the $42 Billion design giant, updates its creative tools and uses the Affinity acquisition to launch ‘Your Creative OS,’ marking a shift into a new era of creation.

Moving Towards the Imagination Era

Canva’s co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins, stated, “We are moving from the information era, to the imagination era.” The unique design platform is launching its next major update. The company calls this substantial update “Your Creative OS”. Perkins highlighted its three-layered structure. The first layer is the platform itself. It includes the world’s largest content library. It also features a collaborative design engine and an app ecosystem. The second layer is Canva AI, or artificial intelligence. The third is the Visual Suite. This suite offers wide utility including Docs, Photo Editor, Video editing, and Social tools. Canva is valued at a massive $42 billion. The company reported $3.5 billion in revenue. It now boasts over 260 million monthly active users. More than 29 million of these are paying subscribers.

New and Enhanced Creative Tools

The platform’s new features include a completely revamped video editor. Perkins said Canva has been “investing very heavily” in this area. The feature is called Video 2.0. It pushes for a more “pro” focused editing suite. There is a redesigned timeline for managing video streams. Users can upload clips and select a template. Alli McKee, Canva’s head of Design Experience, explained the speed. “Canva does the heavy lifting and you can literally go from raw footage to a share worthy story in 60 seconds,” she stated.

Other updates add more flexibility to creation. These include Forms for online use. There is also Email Design for teams. AI at Work now allows creating visual or 3D graphics. These new graphics are both animatable and rotatable. Ask@Canva serves as a design partner. It gives advice and generates variations. Canva Code, released earlier this year, now incorporates a data layer. McKee noted this integration. She said, “You can add a data backend to your Canva Code creations by connecting them directly into Canva Sheets, which unlocks a whole new set of use cases that our community has been asking us for since we launched.”

The Foundation of Design AI

Co-founder and chief product officer, Cameron Adams, shared user engagement data. He said, “Canva users have used the AI tools more than 22,00,00,00,000 times.” The underlying AI layer uses many models. These include in-house models. Models from OpenAI, Black Forest Labs, Google, and Anthropic are also included. It also features Leonardo.Ai, Canva’s recent acquisition. This summer, Canva first announced a design deep research connector for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The company is moving quickly toward a world-first Design Foundational Model. Adams explained previous AI model limitations. He pointed out, “the first wave of AI, driven by the diffuser models, did a great job of generating images, but the output was static, it was flat, and it was uneditable.” Later Omni LLM models improved image layout. However, they still produced static results. Adams emphasized the new model’s core strength. He said they “are now unlocking a whole new paradigm of creation and collaboration by understanding all of the layers and the complexity of design.”

Design complexity comes from balancing many elements. These can include images, brand assets, text, audio, video layers, and animations. The exact elements depend on the user’s design level. Canva will integrate this new model. It will be part of different Visual Suite elements. It will cover various functionalities and use cases. Adams added that their expertise was vital. He stated, “With our new foundational model, we’ve been able to use our expertise in design to create something that orchestrates this whole process. And this is really exciting because it means we’re able to bring this foundational model into all of the places where design happens today.”

Affinity: The Professional Edge

Ashley Hewson, CEO of Affinity, discussed their new app. Affinity creates creative applications for professionals. Hewson said their newly crafted Affinity app will “change the game for creative professionals forever”. This development could concern rivals, like Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. The new Affinity app combines all their different apps. It brings their full functionality into one single interface.

Hewson detailed the integration. He explained, “You’ve had vector design apps, professional photography apps, and those for publishing and layout. What we’re doing for the first time ever is actually bringing all of these tools together into a single space to offer a completely revolutionary workflow.” The Canva-owned Affinity finalized its acquisition in early 2024. The company announced great news on pricing. This new app will be “free forever”. This includes all future core Affinity app updates. Its functionality will cover Vector, Pixel, and Layout design tools.

The connection between the Canva suite and the new Affinity app is clear. Any user with a premium Canva subscription gets Canva AI functionality in Affinity. This includes Generative Edit and Fill. It also offers background remover and 4K image generation. Hewson showed the app handling huge file sizes. He demonstrated zooming into a document at 10,000,000%, or ten million percent. He concluded that this is just the first step. Canva and Affinity are working to connect professional tools with everyday creation.