An update of a popular blog post from March 19, 2018

It’s been over a year since Canva congratulated me on having completed 1,500 designs. I can’t imagine how many I’ve done since then – including the graphics that accompany many of these blog posts. But I wanted to revisit all the ways that this platform can help retailers, especially with its new AI tools. 

Most of us don’t have a design department at our beck and call, despite the constant need for sophisticated graphics and videos for social media, email blasts, websites, ads and in-store signage. It’s lucky for us that a young Australian design instructor named Melanie Perkins created Canva, a graphics design platform that is simple enough for any shopkeeper to use.

When I originally wrote about Canva, it had 8 million users – today the number is an astounding 220 million. If you aren’t one of them, you’re missing out on one of the best tools on the web. The graphic that accompanies today’s blog was created in minutes using Canva, as were some of the illustrations for the current edition of Specialty Shop Retailing.  

Once of the exciting recent developments in Canva is its use of AI. Artificial intelligence uses algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data in order to create something new from the patterns that correspond to the text prompts. ChatGPT and Copilot are well-known examples of AI, and today Canva is recognized as one of the leading users of AI for graphics, general marketing and social media.

For several years it has offered Magic Media, which allows you to turn any idea into a variety of artistic or photographic images. All four of the designs above came from the same prompt, interpreted in different styles such as retro, dreamy, psychedelic and anime. You can spend a lot of time playing around with this tool – but before using an image, be careful to check the spelling of any words, and make sure that humans have the right number of fingers, etc.  Magic Write is another useful option that can help you generate text. You’ll want to take the AI ideas and put them in your own words.

The AI capabilities within Canva have recently been expanded to include a range of additional tools. According to TechCrunch, the “AI assistant called Canva AI that has a chat-like interface for generating visual content from text prompts.” This means that you can ask it to create a Facebook post on a certain topic and utilizing the images you provide, and it will generate some options for you to consider. The TechCrunch article outlines several additional tools made available this year to Canva users, and there are many helpful tutorial videos available online.

Canva still offers a free version, however the Pro and Business plans at $120 or $200 a year seem like a small investment for the tools it provides to help with the many design needs that come with being a shopkeeper. And I still think it’s fun to use! 

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder