Canva launched in 2012 and has become a widely used visual communication platform with over 230 million monthly active users. At its Canva Create annual conference, the company announced what it called its biggest product launch since its inception.
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On Thursday, Canva unveiled Visual Suite 2.0, which has new features that touch nearly every aspect of Canva's current design platform. Artificial intelligence (AI) is sprinkled throughout these features to speed up workflows and unlock new capabilities, including a new design companion, Canva AI. For the roundup, keep reading below.
"From reimagined workplace essentials to entirely new ways to create with your own design partner, we're excited to continue making it easier than ever for anyone to bring their ideas to life," said Melanie Perkins, Canva's co-founder and CEO.
If you have ever been tasked with creating a brand-new creative project from scratch, whether an invitation, a flyer, or a PowerPoint presentation, you know it's tough to get started. With Canva AI, users can now chat with the AI-powered creative partner to bring their vision to life. According to the company's post, the tool can generate text and slides and tweak elements of your projects, like resizing designs. The conversation can be carried out via text or voice.
Adding animations and interactivity to visual projects often requires lots of backend coding. Canva Code allows users to get the same results from a conversational text prompt. This feature means users can now implement calculators, flashcards, or other interactive designs into their projects without coding knowledge.
It can be challenging to display data engagingly. Magic Charts uses AI to let people make dynamic and on-brand visuals, such as scrollable reports and infographics. According to Canva, the feature bridges the gap between data and design.
Canva Sheets, the company's take on spreadsheets, has been upgraded to be a more powerful data analysis and visualization tool. For example, the Magic Insights feature analyzes data to find key takeaways. Data Connectors allows users to import data from third-party hosts, such as HubSpot, Statista, and Google Analytics, into their Canva workspace to create visual projects.
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Another new feature, Magic Studio at Scale, is built directly into Canva Sheets. According to Canva, the feature allows users to transform spreadsheet data into different types of content, including marketing campaigns, sales outreach information, and internal communications, by auto-populating templates within seconds.
The Canva Photo Editor, now part of the Visual Suite, has been upgraded to be more powerful. It can deliver professional-grade, AI-powered edits, including AI-generated backgrounds that consider the lighting of your photo, and object removal and point-and-click to select elements.
Users can now create different projects, such as documents and presentations, in one place. This feature allows users to have a unified workspace rather than moving from one project to another. This capability can be helpful for marketers, keeping every step of a campaign, from ideation to delivery, in one place.
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