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The European boss of Canva has told City AM that AI isn't here to replace creative jobs.
In an interview with City AM's Newsletter Editor, Matt Kenyon, Duncan Clark said the technological revolution is simply making graphic design more accessible.
The company has just unveiled a prompt-based AI tool in a bid to hold on to its multi-billion dollar lead in the creative industries.
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0:00
So I am delighted to be joined by Duncan
0:01
Clark, the EMEA MD of Canva. Great to
0:05
have you here today. Great to be here.
0:06
Thanks for having me on. Well, it's such
0:08
an interesting time to be talking about
0:09
Canva and graphic design more broadly. I
0:11
think there are quite a lot of trends I
0:12
want to touch on. So, I suppose the the
0:15
rise of the creator economy, uh both in
0:18
B2B and and consumer spaces, but also
0:20
the huge rise of generative AI. I know
0:23
that plays quite heavily into uh Canva's
0:26
plans, as it as it pretty much should.
0:28
But I suppose maybe we should kick off
0:31
What are the sort of challenges that you
0:32
as a company face at the moment when
0:35
you're looking at AI and you're looking
0:37
at these big trends, these big shifts
0:39
which are happening in the industry?
0:41
What's the sort of big vision for Canva
0:42
at the moment? Well, may- maybe to start
0:44
with the vision cuz that's never changed
0:45
is to be the platform where anyone can
0:48
be creative and can create visual
0:50
content at scale. So that's that's been
0:52
unchanged since we launched more than a
0:54
decade ago. And as the world's moved
0:56
more in the direction of AI and there's
0:57
been maybe, you know, more consolidation
0:59
on who does what on the internet. We
1:01
actually see all of that as an
1:02
opportunity rather than rather than a
1:03
chat challenge. The AI features we've
1:05
already built into Canva have been used
1:08
more than 27 billion times. We've been
1:11
using AI as a just one of the ways that
1:13
we help people get to a design quickly
1:16
um without special specialist technical
1:18
skill for many many years. So for us as
1:21
as AI has got more powerful, um it's
1:23
just enabled us to
1:25
fulfill our mission more easily and more
1:27
readily. And that's why we've seen such
1:29
major user growth. We've just crossed
1:30
265 million people use Canva every
1:34
single month to to create visual
1:36
content. I suppose a big question for
1:39
for anyone trying to compete within the
1:41
AI industry at the moment is what if
1:44
Open AI or Google or Anthropic came in
1:47
and just released a big graphic design
1:49
creator package tomorrow. I suppose what
1:51
what gives you the edge at the moment?
1:53
So there's lots of things that give
1:54
Canva the edge in in this whole space.
1:57
In addition to our vast community of
1:59
users who are who are loyal users of the
2:00
Canva platform. We have spent years
2:04
creating the infrastructure
2:07
that allows AI to operate really really
2:10
well for design. And so that includes
2:12
everything from having the world's best
2:15
collaborative editing platform. You can
2:17
create a
2:19
pixel grid in in an AI tool, but like
2:21
how do you then edit it? If you What you
2:23
need is to have AI that generates
2:25
editable designs that you can then
2:28
fine-tune and edit and collaborate on.
2:30
So that's where Canva's real core
2:32
strength is. In addition
2:34
we've spent a long time building the
2:36
capability
2:37
to have AI generate a composite design
2:41
as opposed to a kind of fixed canvas.
2:45
And what that means is it can it can
2:46
create designs better um using, you
2:50
know, the latest technology, but also
2:52
that output is then something that you
2:54
can use as a starting point and
2:56
fine-tune. So it's quite different from
2:59
you know, image generation as you might
3:01
find in in the AI tools. The other thing
3:03
is we see these bigger AI companies as
3:05
just great partners. We work closely
3:07
with all of them. We are one of the most
3:09
referred websites in the world from Open
3:12
AI and from Anthropic. Um and the reason
3:15
for that is people
3:18
can come into their platforms. They
3:19
might be having a conversation about a
3:21
topic there, but then at the point where
3:23
they want to create something visual
3:24
from that conversation, they can
3:26
generate that right there in ChatGPT,
3:28
for example, generate a Canva design and
3:30
then click through to go and edit it um
3:33
in Canva.
3:34
I suppose just I mean from a um an
3:36
outsider's perspective, when you're
3:37
talking about layers, I think that you
3:38
call them magic layers, right? Um
3:41
How does that differ in terms of these
3:43
AI-generated layers from say like an
3:45
Adobe InDesign? What's the sort of
3:48
What's the different What's the
3:49
different sort
3:50
>> yeah, magic layers is a feature that's
3:51
been used millions of times since we
3:53
released it only a few weeks ago. Um and
3:55
what it does is it says that if you're
3:57
starting from an image, which might be
3:59
for example an image created by an AI
4:01
model, but it could also just be an
4:03
image you've got lying around on your
4:04
computer. Um and often what you want to
4:07
do is edit that image. And one way you
4:09
might do that is to stick it into an AI
4:11
tool and sort of try and prompt a change
4:13
like change that word from dog to cat.
4:16
Now that is going to be really painful,
4:17
really slow, and it will quickly also
4:19
become very expensive. So what magic
4:21
layers does is it imports that image
4:23
into Canva
4:24
and uses AI to convert it into an
4:26
editable design where each aspect of the
4:29
of the image becomes something that you
4:31
can move around and edit independently.
4:33
So if someone took it a photo of us
4:35
having this interview, dropped that into
4:36
magic layers, it would enable you to
4:38
actually move you around to this side of
4:40
the table, me around to that side of the
4:42
table. This is text, so it become
4:44
editable. We could change the wording.
4:46
And so it turns an image into an
4:48
editable design. So I suppose it so it
4:50
breaks it down into sort of
4:52
aspects that it can comprehend. So it
4:53
would understand that I'm the element in
4:55
the image, you're an element in the
4:56
image, and it would generate sort of
4:58
also it would also fill back back ground
5:00
behind me. Exactly. Yeah, it would it
5:02
would kind of reconstruct the underlying
5:04
scene in such a way that it becomes um
5:06
an editable uh piece of visual content.
5:10
>> I was also quite surprised when I was
5:11
researching to learn just quite how big
5:13
the presence that Canva has in London
5:15
is. What what sort of scale is your
5:17
operation here and why London?
5:19
Yeah, so we have our HQ for the EMEA
5:22
region in Shoreditch. Um it's grown
5:25
really fast. It went from, you know,
5:26
maybe less than 100 people to several
5:28
hundred people over the last few years
5:31
and we're we're about 500 people now in
5:33
the EMEA time zones.
5:35
That's partly teams working on the local
5:37
markets, you know, unlocking the UK for
5:39
us, but it's also our center of
5:41
excellence for certain professional
5:43
tools. We've got Flourish based in
5:44
London, which is our data visualization
5:47
platform, the one that I founded. Um we
5:49
have Affinity, our flagship pro design
5:51
software is also based in the UK. So we
5:53
have this real strong focus here on
5:55
these specialist craft tools that extend
5:58
the power of Canva into these more um
6:00
specialist areas.
6:02
And I know that there's been a I mean in
6:04
in this 10-15 year history of the
6:06
company, there's been a bit of a shift
6:07
from having
6:09
previously been basically a consumer uh
6:13
product to now being more B2B focused.
6:16
How has your audience shifted? What sort
6:17
of
6:18
What's your main customer base at the
6:19
moment? Who are you targeting? Who are
6:20
you going after? So Canva always set out
6:22
with this very ambitious mission to
6:25
empower the world to design. And when we
6:26
say the world, we really mean everyone.
6:28
Um we started with a lot of um
6:30
individuals and small businesses,
6:32
charities. Schools have also been a big
6:34
factor. We've had over 100 million
6:36
people now every month using Canva um in
6:39
an educational context. But as we've
6:42
seen over the last um 5 years
6:44
especially, we've seen this very very
6:46
exponential growth in the number of
6:48
businesses, not just small ones, but
6:49
bigger ones as well using Canva. We are
6:52
now the design platform for the
6:54
internet. 95% of the Fortune 500 use
6:57
Canva internally. So we're seeing every
7:00
type of company um from the very biggest
7:03
to the very smallest um grapple with the
7:05
same underlying challenges, which is how
7:07
do you communicate? How do you engage an
7:08
audience? And how do you make design
7:12
work for your brand um
7:15
and to, you know, be part of what we see
7:18
increasingly as as a visual economy. Um
7:21
Design maybe was a bit of a specialist
7:23
task if you go back 10-20 years, but
7:25
with the rise of social media and the
7:27
rise of our kind of visual expectations,
7:30
um we now see that every company in the
7:31
world at whatever scale um is wanting to
7:34
be visual first.
7:35
I suppose maybe there's an argument too
7:37
that the
7:39
the given now that social media
7:41
marketing is is something pretty
7:42
compulsory, there would be a lot of
7:43
Fortune 500 companies who actually don't
7:45
want their graphic design to look sort
7:48
of overly commercialized, overly
7:50
professional. Actually that they could
7:51
be almost a democratizing where they
7:53
want to use the same platforms which
7:55
maybe consumers were using 8-9 years ago
7:57
so it feels more authentic. Well, there
8:00
is maybe I mean that's a kind of style
8:01
question. And one of the things that
8:02
Canva does really really well is it
8:04
allows you to, whatever your style, your
8:06
brand, your identity, um to to kind of
8:09
encapsulate that into templates, into
8:11
the the new AI model, so that, you know,
8:13
whatever your style is, it just works.
8:16
Um
8:17
but it's also more than that. It's
8:18
really about democratizing access. So
8:20
you know, if you go back maybe 10 years,
8:22
it might be that all the bits of visual
8:24
content you were creating were going
8:26
through one person who had specialist
8:28
design software and specialist skills in
8:30
the company or you're outsourcing to an
8:31
agency. But what we've seen with the
8:34
rise of the creator economy and with
8:36
social media platforms is that the scale
8:39
expected has just gone off the charts.
8:42
So these days most companies need to be
8:44
producing more content, probably also
8:46
more languages, more variants, more
8:49
platforms, more aspect ratios. And so it
8:51
becomes really important that you can
8:53
build a workflow that scales. You can't
8:56
any longer just have someone tinkering
8:58
away making one thing and then they do
9:00
another thing the next week. There's
9:01
probably 500 bits of content that week.
9:03
And so and in fact that's another thing
9:05
we've we've worked really hard to do
9:06
with Canva AI is make sure that it
9:08
solves those workflow challenges in
9:10
addition to those sort of ideation and
9:13
generation challenges. That's quite
9:14
interesting what you say what you say
9:15
about the role of the graphic designer
9:16
with the within the organization having
9:18
been potentially something quite siloed.
9:20
Do you think we're maybe moving towards
9:21
a space where
9:23
everyone needs to be a graphic designer
9:25
and perhaps it it just it needs to be
9:26
one of those skills which is just
9:28
surfaced all the way across an
9:29
organization. Well, I think the way we
9:31
would see it is it's not that everyone
9:32
needs to be a graphic designer, but
9:33
everyone needs to produce visual
9:34
content. And if you look at our usage
9:37
figures, even as AI has um become a
9:40
bigger and bigger part of the internet
9:42
and of our product, what we're seeing is
9:44
more people using every month. So AI is
9:46
empowering more human designers um or
9:49
more human visual communicators. But in
9:52
that world where more and more people
9:53
are designing, the professional graphic
9:55
designer becomes more important rather
9:57
than rather than less. And so that's the
9:59
the brand steward. It's the person who's
10:01
in charge of the kind of craft to make
10:03
sure that the that the quality bar is
10:05
always met. And um
10:07
so Canva also has a suite of
10:08
professional tools, uh
10:10
things like Affinity, which works
10:12
seamlessly with Canva and allow the
10:14
professional designer to be the brand
10:17
orchestrator, so to speak, um
10:19
as we empower more and more individuals
10:21
to actually produce visual content.
10:23
Yeah, I suppose that's the um maybe that
10:25
becomes the role of the style guide
10:27
enforcer, a bit like how we would have
10:29
at newspapers.
10:30
So, I know you've got some announcements
10:33
coming up. What what what sort of
10:34
stuff's in the pipeline at the moment
10:36
for Canva? Well, the really exciting
10:37
stuff that we are just launching at the
10:40
moment is uh Canva AI 2.0. And that is a
10:44
wholesale renewal of our AI
10:47
capabilities, um which is built on a
10:49
whole set of really pioneering
10:51
technologies, all based around the
10:53
concept I mentioned before, which is the
10:55
idea that you want to be able to
10:57
generate from an idea through to a
11:00
finished piece of content as quickly as
11:02
possible, um but you want that to work
11:05
in a way that's on brand and it's
11:06
editable and it's collaborative. So, we
11:09
have the Canva design model at the core
11:11
of this. This is a a completely um
11:15
unique foundational model that has
11:17
learned from how design is created from
11:21
the composition of all these different
11:23
elements, whether it's a logo, an image,
11:25
piece of text, and it can actually
11:27
produce something which
11:30
is where you would have got to if you'd
11:31
made it from hand, as opposed to just a
11:33
an AI image. Can you give me a case
11:35
study of how that would look? Yeah, so
11:37
imagine that you work in the commercial
11:39
department at City AM, and you're going
11:41
to make a a business pitch um for
11:43
advertisers, for example.
11:45
You would want to come into the the
11:47
Canva account at City AM, and you'd want
11:49
to be able to just describe the deck
11:51
that you want to make. Now, because of
11:53
our new data connectors, you'd also be
11:55
able to refer to the email exchange with
11:57
those advertisers in my Gmail account.
11:59
You can connect that. Um it will then
12:02
create uh an initial kind of draft of
12:05
your presentation,
12:07
but really importantly, it will do it
12:08
knowing
12:10
the how your brand works, how your you
12:12
know, how your
12:14
the the style is for your text, how the
12:15
your logo placement works, um and it
12:18
will do all of that because it has
12:20
access to your brand templates, it has
12:22
learned from how different people in
12:23
your team design. So, it's a really,
12:25
really sophisticated way of using AI for
12:29
the visual creative process. Well, that
12:31
could save a lot of investment banking
12:33
brands a lot of stress down the line if
12:35
you've just got fonts the right size and
12:37
the right style right off the bat.
12:39
Duncan, thank you so much for joining
12:40
me. It's been great talking to you, and
12:41
I'm sure we'll be back in touch soon.
12:43
Cool. Great. Thanks for having me on.
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