You can’t blame individuals for taking the path of least resistance. Creating a Canva design takes minutes and requires no skill. It’s fast, cheap and gets the job done for cash-strapped small businesses, students, nonprofits and others who can’t afford a professional designer. An original design carefully crafted from scratch is always going to look better. But why go to the effort when Canva lets you churn out something nearly as good that’s based on best practices?

Canva has been a fascinating tool to watch for the last few years. More and more I’ve seen friends and family turn to it, where they would have hired a freelancer in the past or attempted something with Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. While those tools might seem odd to a designer, they are what’s available on most computers and if you’re not a graphic designer they are the most obvious to try. 

I’m torn. Graphic design used to be my trade. I’ve now moved onto other things, but I have an affinity for it. The work I’m seeing from non-designers in Canva is better than the baseline and at least as good as what a junior graphic designer could do.

I don’t know what this means longterm, but I also feel like something is both lost and gained as a result of a tool like Canva. 

(Via Westenberg.)