Good designers don’t use Canva

Canva markets itself as a design tool. So I tried to design my app with it.

I was scrolling through Reddit when I saw the ad. My ad. Only it wasn’t my ad. A big company had used the same stock photo as me. Only it wasn’t a stock photo. It was a Canva graphic.

I had discovered Canva years before while searching for an easy way to make infographics. Canva had hooked me immediately. It felt a hundred times more intuitive and user-friendly than Photoshop. There were thousands of templates, stock photos, icons, and graphics. Canva packaged each one in a drag-and-drop interface that made sense. Soon I was using Canva for everything.

According to Canva’s website, they launched Canva Pro in 2015 to “provide opportunities for graphic designers and agencies.” Today, you can find freelance graphic designers on Fiverr offering their Canva services. You can even use Canva to “become a graphic designer in one hour or less” on Udemy.

But, do good designers really use Canva?

I made this cheesy logo in under 2 minutes on Canva. It would have taken me three hours in Adobe Illustrator. (Then once Adobe finished downloading updates it would have taken me another 20 minutes to make this cheesy logo.)

I can usually figure out how to do what I need using tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, but web design and…