In the second of the Zero Friction Future series by Facebook, global strategist Anders Sörman-Nilsson speaks to Canva founder Melanie Perkins about how designing their product to be easier to use than the competition saw them become a billion-dollar company.
Not everyone is a natural designer. For some, unimpeded by conventional thinking, ideas flow freely. Others are wired differently, using practical skills to excel.
Yet Australian online design and publishing start-up Canva is striving to make designers of us all. From an individual designing a T-shirt, to SMEs striving for growth, to major corporations developing a marketing campaign, Canva has sought to make its product accessible by dismantling barriers that often frustrate the design process.
“What excites me is that taking away that pain and friction, allowing people to communicate their ideas seamlessly, means more fun ideas are going to be expressed,” says Canva founder Melanie Perkins.
According to Perkins developing a frictionless customer experience became one of the core fundamentals in the early stages of the company.
Such a philosophy, she recalls, had its origins in her experience as a tutor where she witnessed students bogged down with complex technology.
“Usually when you design you use desktop software, but then you go online to source photography, go somewhere else for illustrations, another place for fonts,” Perkins explains.
“Then you need to pull all that together in a design. It was a huge problem for small businesses because they didn’t have all the expertise. It was hard. So we built the product in the early days to solve this exact pain point.”
Perkins argues that producing a printed product – or even a t-shirt, social media post or video – should not require a user to spend “months and years” learning various software programs.
“We wanted to take all the software that people were having to learn and navigate and compile it into one place,” she explains.
To illustrate its broad appeal, Perkins says Canva is used by job-seekers designing resumes, not-for-profits aiming to raise awareness of their cause and businesses stitching together marketing campaigns.
“We’ve even seen a sheriff in the US catch criminals by creating wanted posters on Canva,” she notes.
You can see more interviews from the Facebook Zero Friction Future series and explore other resources around removing friction from your business here.
Enabling the creative renaissance
Much has been made of the convergence, or collision, of creativity and data in marketing, with some believing the latter has overwhelmed the artistic nature of the former.
For Perkins, it was important to provide an accessible opportunity for individuals and businesses to explore, and rediscover their creative side, and feel confident about doing so at an enterprise level.
“Right from the start we wanted people who had no design experience or software experience, to jump on Canva and start designing in a couple of minutes,” she explains,
“I wanted to enable everyone to take their idea and communicate it easily, without any friction.”
Delivering that seamless experience, and removing intimidating technological barriers, is allowing people to “express their creativity”, Perkins insisted.
In short, it is participating in a creative renaissance.
Consistent brand message
But what of larger companies, bound by processes, checks and balances that do not impact private users and nimble SMEs. Would unleashing an army of designers within a workforce not give marketing chiefs sleepless nights and risk losing control of the brand?
Perkins contends that CMOs already struggle to present a consistent brand message, partly a result of design teams facing an ever-expanding workload. In today’s digital age, the demand for visual content has “increased exponentially”, she says, which is putting pressure on design teams.
“Designers are in a predicament because they are expected to produce so much visual content for social media platforms, for executive presentations. Trying to keep everything on brand is really challenging,” Perkins suggests.
She cites the example of sales teams who would historically write a relatively basic letter for prospective clients. Today, they are expected to create a “beautiful visual pitch”, a job which inevitably falls to the design team.
To tackle the corporate challenge – and address any CMO concerns - Canva has launched Canva for Enterprise, which features a series of tools to eliminate friction and ensure brand consistency. It enables the creation of templates, where brand colours, fonts, graphics and logos can be saved, and used by everyone within a company.
Perkins says the innovation was designed to appeal to the CMO who wants, and needs, to control the brand message.
“We want to tick the box of the CMO and brand manager,” Perkins explains. “Companies want to empower their workforce to create presentations, social media graphics and marketing materials, but the challenge is keeping the entire company on brand.
“With Canva for Enterprise people have access to the material and ingredients the company want them to use. We wanted a tool that was easy to use by the entire company, but with the ability for the CMO to control the brand.”
But what of internal brand mavericks who want to disrupt the status quo?
Marketers can rest easy, Perkins stresses. “There’s an approval workflow built into Canva for Enterprise before anything goes out into the world.”
You can see more interviews from the Facebook Zero Friction Future series and explore other resources around removing friction from your business here.
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