In this article, I share the reasons why I use Canva, the 2 features that make me pay for it (brand kit and AI features) and the things that suck in it for my workflow.

A bit of context

I'm trained as a graphic designer, and worked as a graphic designers for years. This means I was in love with Adobe Indesign. Literrally I've made websites layouts in Indesign, which is one of the worst ideas you can have, but it shows how passionate I was about that tool. Then as I did more and more web projects within an agency my tool of choice was Sketch.

Graphic design isn't anymore the main work I do, as I work now a Service Designer and Service Design educator. But still I have to create a lot of visual stuff for my work.

I've moved from Adobe, to a mix of Apple Pages and Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo when in need of playing with more complex edits or vector files, once I didn't need to absolutely have the Adobe tools (which come at a pretty steep monthly price).

These days I mainly use two apps for my visual communication work:

• Canva for everything from presentations, images for Linkedin posts, mockups, etc.

• Apple Pages for creating my books both in ebooks formats and PDF that get sent to the print on demand platform lulu.

Why did I switch to Canva?

Canva felt at first a little bit too childish to me. The old graphic designer in me felt that it couldn't be as good as the pro tools I was used too at first.

But the more I've played with it, the more I liked it.

Here are some of the reasons that made me stick with Canva:

• It's one tool for almost everything visual

• It's super fast to use

• It works well with SVG files, which is awesome as I use a lot undraw.co

• It has a built-in stock library with photos, videos, sounds, and graphics. I especially love the possiblity to find a quick graphical element like a checkbox, or a scribble animation without having to worry about copyrights.

• It integrates other tools like Smartmockups, so I can even create mockups directly from that tool

• It works on mobile too, so I can re-hearse a presentation in the bus before a workshop easily.

These are all things that are 100% free in Canva.

Why do I pay for the pro version of Canva?

Here are the reasons why I'm paying for the pro version:

Magic Studio

The AI features like background removal and the ability to extend images. Read more about how I'm using these AI features in the backstage blog article I wrote called: "How I've used AI to write and launch my book, hint: it is not how you think"

Brand Kit

The brand kit feature that let me add custom fonts, logos, and colors and quickly switch from one brand to the other

What I wish was better in Canva

Don't get me wrong, Canva isn't the perfect tool, but it's a pretty powerful one. Still it has a few flaws for my way of working:

The export feature doesn't remember my preferences.

Usually I want just to export the page I'm working on as a PNG, and I'd love to set this as a default which I can't. So I have to always select the file type, which page I want, and so on.

The whiteboard feature is strangely too flexible

I have a Miro licence, but Canva offers a whiteboard tool, so why don't I replace Miro with Canva? Because the size of the text doesn't automatically adapt to the space available in the sticky note. So I have to manually adapt the size of the text, when Miro does that automatically. It's a small thing, but it slows me down. Maybe one day I might retry to switch to Canva, to have one subscription less.

The search button is two clicks away

I don't get why there isn't a quick way to find a specific file in Canva. I have to click on the search bar, then click on projects, then I can start to search.

The folder management sucks

It's strange to me that the folders are hidden from the home page and that you have to dig in the interface to see the folders. So for now my files are a bit of a mess.