As I am an avid Canva user, fan, and critic all in one, it should be no surprise that I have a few suggestions here and there for the company. While I could go on and on about how wonderful some of Canva’s capabilities are, the app’s redesign fell flat in providing useful features that allow for more creativity. With that in mind, I’ve listed below what I would add to my Christmas list if Canva’s executives were Santa’s elves.
All I Want for Christmas: Canva Edition
1. Multiple Sizes of Canvases in One Document
In my line of work, every day, I am making images that will be used across several platforms. Each platform requires a different image size, and it’s tedious to have to create an entirely new document in Canva to resize each and every design. It clutters my files and makes it more difficult to share my work for review. All that extra time and effort just doesn’t seem necessary! Giving users the capability to create different sizes in one document would enhance Canva’s beginner-friendly nature and would overall make my life easier. Imagine the simplicity of sending over a week’s worth of content for review—all in one link that provides every graphic for every social media channel!
2. Pathfinder Tools
On Adobe software, there are nifty little buttons that allow you to combine shapes or paths with just one click. Canva is seriously lacking in this department. In order to make any shape besides those in Canva’s limited, pre-made collection, you must create a confusing arrangement of layers. This is such a messy way to construct a design, with shapes and lines precariously placed and customizations limited. I think Canva’s current solution to this is their gallery of thousands and thousands of elements and frames, wherein you can search for almost any object, shape, or even word, and find something that will (for the most part) meet your needs. But these elements are made by an array of different artists with different styles and preferences, making consistency hard to come by. With the addition of a pathfinder tool, it would be much more efficient to create things like letter cutouts and frames, which are incredibly popular.
3. Lasso Tool OR Customized Crop
Have you ever tried to crop something that wasn’t precisely aligned to 90 degrees and its variants out of a clipped PNG in Canva? It’s literally impossible. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used one of Canva’s elements that contained a part I did not want to include in my design.
For instance, suppose I find an icon I like in Canva’s collection. It has three leaves, and while I like the style of the icon, I want to use just one leaf in my design. In order to remove the other two leaves from the image, I have to hope and pray they are far enough apart or at a perfect 90-degree angle so I can accomplish my goal with a simple crop. Or I can attempt to layer a shape of the same color as the background on top.
It shouldn’t be that difficult! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Canva had something like Adobe’s Lasso tool, which allows users to create fully customizable selections and crop? Yes. Indeed it would.
Final Thoughts
If you’re familiar with the Adobe Suite, some of my suggestions may prompt you to say, “Anna, why not use Photoshop for this?”—to which I will say, “I don't want to!” I think implementing my requested features would take Canva to the next level, allowing users to up their creativity. It would also give Canva the cred to be taken a bit more seriously in the design world—honestly, most working designers do not touch the platform with a 10-foot pole.
Now, I am no computer scientist or master coder, so I may be out of touch with what’s realistic in the software development world. And I am no stranger to unreasonable requests, so I won’t throw a fit if these suggestions never come to fruition. But if other platforms have what I’m asking for, why can’t Canva?
