Canva has made their freshly acquired creative suite Affinity free forever! This bold move baffles everybody in the creative industry. Most creatives are in disbelieve: What do you mean FREE, how? Others draw parallels to Blackmagic Design’s business model around their video editing suite Resolve. Resolve is their ‘loss leader’ product to win over professionals and corporates alike. Most however are looking for the other shoe to drop: this seems too good to be true.
Corralling creatives, through product, process and procurement
In a way Canva IS by making Affinity free forever following the Blackmagic Design Resolve playbook, by using Affinity to close the net, or rather: completing their proposition in the creative and professional industry. The one gap (for both Affinity and Canva) was getting access to the professional/ corporate world. To do so they need to legitimize their product/ ecosystem to the users AND the industry they operate in.
Learning a tool early and deeply can only be appealing if livelihood can be guaranteed. With a more accessible and friendly start, Canva creates leverage to win over future creatives and guarantees the longevity of their customer base. From the corporate side Canva now needs to offer their products in a way that it fits into a corporate IT system: single sign on, install automation hooks, etc.
The objections of other posters and commenters based on that there is no hardware in play for Canva is kind of moot. The model is about the introduction of a ‘too good to be true’ and crucial loss leader to get and keep people on board. This is a ramp up to reap the benefits of their ecosystem which needs to be a sustainable and robust revenue stream. Blackmagic Design’s ecosystem is their hardware, and Resolve the loss leader. Canva chooses Affinity as a loss leader. And in my opinion they might have chosen wisely.
AI and a Creative OS is the future value of the Canva ecosystem
Next to setting Affinity free, Canva also teased AI features akin to Adobe. These features are bound to paid subscriptions for Canva, the online creative platform. Whether or not AI is the best ‘added value’ play for Affinity/ Canva, I’m not sure. To me AI is just rehashing previous crap, but it might be useful in mass production, as their competition Adobe has shown.
Having a integrated and paid service might balance the cost and help people commit to their additional services, like collaboration. It might also undermine the only real competitive advantage of the Adobe Clown, er Cloud products: rapid AI generative stuff to pump out automated AI enhanced production assets.
That integration is done though their other and less hard hitting news: the introduction of their Creative Operating System. Basically an integration of all their creative tools, powered by an AI layer and based on their common technical platform.
Break Adobe’s stranglehold on creativity
To the point if Canva is a solid revenue stream to sustainable support such a loss leader, some people have pointed out correctly and Canva have played on words quite explicitly: they want to weaken, or even destroy the suffocating strangle hold of Adobe to the creative production industry.
A look into the future might also predict future investments, allies: typography, UX, marketing-flows, further deepening the value of their platform based on collaboration, inclusive.
Truly free means open
Making a product free AND unreasonably good will win over a lot of end users of said programs, but if the play of Canva to make creativity free is real they need to take the final step too: create true independence and operability between creatives, their tools and ecosystems.
That was the one thing I did not hear in their speech, the one thing that might codify their intent to break the stronghold of Adobe for ever: open standards. In the future: make the document formats open. That truly proves the intent to fee creativity.
Of course: Adobe would be quick to integrate such a format, so first Adobe’s overbearing role in the creative industry need to be broken down and Canva just might be the party to do so.