Canva

[nezumi]

15 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Sorry to burst the bubble of some commentators here who disparage Canva for not being “professional”

Canva itself makes a distinction on their page, saying:
"While our last decade at Canva has focused heavily on the 99% of knowledge workers without design training, truly empowering the world to design includes empowering professional designers too."

Thats why they bought Affinity in a first place. To have something for professionals.

19 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

but a lot of design work does not need to be “professional”. The reality of most “content” today is Instagram, YouTube thumbnails, TikTok, and swiping in less than half a second.

Well, absolutely. Just like not everybody makes Citizen Kane - many more just make idiotic videos for TikTok. Its up to you what work you would rather do. Youre into making garbage - certainly there are tools for it too.

 

21 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

It is easy to belittle what other people use, and say it is not professional.

It doesnt have to be belittled. It is what it is. Its simply stating a fact. Fact that Canva recognizes as well. I know now in fashion is not to hurt anybodys feelings but reality is - you are either professional or you are not. I am riding a bike occasionally but I am not arguing with professional cyclists that my ride to shop is just as valid as Tour de France because... many more people is riding to shops.. Or something. 🤣

[OpaErnst]

I have read through all 15 pages in this thread. I share all the fears about a subscription model and the further development and overall quality. I also think Affinity's reputation may suffer somewhat if it is associated with canva. I have been using Affinity since V1.0, bought the complete universal licence V2 with Designer, Publisher and Photo and would love to continue doing so. I was also able to convince some colleagues at work to use Affinity and have migrated all my work documents from Adobe CC to Affinity.

I'm not very happy about this news and have very mixed feelings and concerns. But on the other hand i'm also curious to see what information Serif will provide in the next few days.
If all else fails, I will have to switch back to Adobe CC…
🥴

 

[Print to Scale]

Nobody will pay for a subscription to Affinity.

As consumers and professionals who are forced to pick a subscription, why would anyone use Affinity when you can pay for Adobe and get more powerful tools and the industry-standard file formats that every client needs?

Don't get me wrong, I loved my Affinity products. They worked perfectly for what I needed to do as a non-professional. But they are years behind Adobe and anyone who uses Affinity will simply migrate back to Adobe and probably realize all they missed.

[bici]

You must leave, now take what you need
You think will last
But whatever you wish to keep
You better grab it fast

 

Yonder stands your Canva with his gun
Crying like a fire in the Sun
Look out baby, the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, affinity blue

 

The Cloud Sub is for gamblers
Better use your sense
Take what you have gathered
From coincidence

[GRH]

2 hours ago, cTHULHU said:

I feel quite nostalgic for those days, when icons were plain and simple and the interface easy to navigate. Now the software has to entertain you before you start work. It's become like supermarkets, they keep changing things around and you can never find what you want.

[nezumi]

Just now, LondonSquirrel said:

It isn't. It is distorting a fact. As I mentioned, most content is on social media these days. You don't need "professionals" or "professional tools" for nearly all of it.

I agree. And thats why Canva has 175 millions of users. Who are not professionals. For all that little, repetitive jobs mostly based on templates.

And thats why Canva bought Affinity - to offer something for professionals. That is literally what they are saying too. I dont know what are you arguing with to be honest.

[Alexander Rutz]

19 minutes ago, darwinwasright said:

You won't V2 is ONLINE activated. You can only use V1 this way.

So at some point we will be at Canva’s mercy when we want to keep using our Version 2 suite. If they decide it’s too costly to keep the licensing servers running, it’s goodbye.

[Thomas Bohn]

4 minutes ago, nezumi said:

And thats why Canva bought Affinity - to offer something for professionals. That is literally what they are saying too. I dont know what are you arguing with to be honest

That is the core issue nowadays, instead of developing Canva into a product professionals would use w/o alienating casual users they buy a small software house as a short cut. They are not the first and won't be the last but many good companies dissappear because of this. (PowerPoint was bought by Microsoft, Photoshop was bought by Adobe)

[bici]

4 minutes ago, Alexander Rutz said:

So at some point we will be at Canva’s mercy when we want to keep using our Version 2 suite. If they decide it’s too costly to keep the licensing servers running, it’s goodbye.

You mean V2 won't run without being connected to the internet?

[debraspicher]

1 hour ago, BofG said:

This was Serif's own statement in their last accounts filing.

Oh look, more freaking moonspeak 🌙 ... Might as well be written by AI.

3 hours ago, Bit Disappointed said:

The fundamental and dominant thought in my mind is that Serif protected their own interests, and now I must protect mine. I cannot live with this unexpected gigantic uncertainty in my work with Designer as a graphic tool, and I am beginning to quietly plan an alternative course with alternative professional products.

I'm not buying the sterile bullshit about a revolution and other predictable recycled rhetoric; I don't know who out there gobbles up such pathetic spin raw, it's an insult on all conceivable levels, but what's worse, a business risk imposed on me that I cannot live with.

Exactly. Even if Serif announces tomorrow they are to reveal all our hopes and dreams will come true (in a future update, of course), it means very little in the grand scheme of things as they are the ones who have been bought out. At best they buy some time until Canva figures out what they will ultimately do with the software, but what Serif says itself is irrelevant. Canva can allow them continue to run as-is for a little while to maintain some semblance of stability, but the longterm is now uncertain and the rug can be pulled at any moment.

I'd already started packing my things before this announcement because I could see clear as day that the suite was not being maintained but superficially (unfixed bugs&features, patch updates, lack of polish). We now see why.

It's disappointing for its users, but it's literally a Tuesday for most other people in the design world. Serif does have its own employees to look after and if it can't go full steam ahead on its own, it is what it is. I don't take it personally.

I appreciate that the effort was made and that we got this far. It's been a pleasure watching development, but at some point I'd like to just get on with reality. I do also appreciate that we can now take a moment to again review our own individual decisions in terms of where we invest our time and energy and go from there... so there is that.

In the end, our tools do not make us, but rather we are what make our tools great and that the growth process involved there is what makes us better designers...

[Elian Gonzalez]

7 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

but if it's "good enough" for Sony Music and Gucci, I would say it has something going for it.

Yeah, they don't have to pay professionals to do it. The interns will. It's "good enough" because it's cheap enough. 

[ADRs]

I want to stay positive on this, but i just realized that even the title of this "heated" post recently changed from "Affinity is joining the Canva family" to a generic title "Canva" that doesn't even describe what this post is all about...

 

 

[Alexander Rutz]

4 minutes ago, bici said:

You mean V2 won't run without being connected to the internet?

If it’s already activated it should be ok. But as far as I understand it you won’t be able to activate it on a new machine/system.

[bici]

if I cannot like or agree with any posts or replies to my posts.... it's because I am not allowed to post  anymore reactions today.

[Alexander Rutz]

1 minute ago, ADRs said:

I want to stay positive on this, but i just realized that even the title of this "heated" post recently changed from "Affinity is joining the Canva family" to a generic title "Canva" that doesn't even describe what this post is all about...

Possibly the »joining the family« is actually more akin to the »being assimilated into the borg collective« and they felt the title was generating the wrong connotations?

[mikerofoto]

8 minutes ago, Thomas Bohn said:

They are not the first and won't be the last but many good companies dissappear because of this. (PowerPoint was bought by Microsoft, Photoshop was bought by Adobe)

 

you talking about years ago

power point = The program, initially named Presenter, was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1987. In July of that year, the Microsoft Corporation, in its first significant software acquisition, purchased the rights to PowerPoint for $14 million

photoshop = In 1995 Adobe purchased the rights to Photoshop from the Knoll brothers for $34.5 million. The demand for Photoshop rose as computers improved and digital photography technology advanced

[bici]

12 minutes ago, bici said:

if I cannot like or agree with any posts or replies to my posts.... it's becomes I am not allowed to post  anymore reactions today.

@esto 

Forum system tells me;

 

[loukash]

10 minutes ago, Alexander Rutz said:

»being assimilated into the borg collective«

I had the same thought this morning upon looking at the Canva website, having just watched a Picard season 2 episode last night… 

[RichiePhoto]

I don't get this tweet from Affinity

[debraspicher]

16 minutes ago, bici said:

@esto 

Forum system tells me;

 

Yes, there is a limit on reactions. That's not new. We learned about it when V2 launched. How time flies.

[bici]

here is a possible outcome: 

 

[walt.farrell]

35 minutes ago, bici said:

@esto 

Forum system tells me;

 

The forum has always limited the number of reactions we can apply per day. This is not something new.

[Terry Brooks]

Like I said, I'm not interested in AI creation/replacement of things just AI selection tools

[Twolane]

I for one am so very glad that I haven't updated my POD books to v2. Earlier today I downloaded v1's 1.10.6 programs, which worked just fine for my needs. I do basic e-book and print covers to go along with the PODs. 

I wonder how long it will be before a subscription model makes an appearance.

[davepmiddleton]

Congratulations to Affinity with the acquisition. Affinity has been noticed and rewarded for their decades of dedication.

For me personally, I met Ash’s announcement with mixed feelings for the same reasons we can read here in this forum.  There a many business examples of corporate acquisitions that involve VC , PE or shareholders where it did not end well for its customers (price hikes, reduced product quality etc.) or its employees (restructuring, lay-offs etc).

The problem I had with Adobe in 2013 is that they no longer offered the user a choice: a perpetual license or a subscription-based license. There is a business case for both license models, but Adobe took that choice away from the customer. Therefore I went straight to Affinity and never looked back.

I would summarize Canva’s USP as: accessible and affordable design for non-professionals.

I see three possible strategies with the recent acquisition:

1. Compete with Adobe:  extend the Canva product portfolio with Affinity products for the professional market with desktop apps and exchangeable files. This may be the best strategy for Affinity’s user-base; even better if Canva decides to offer two licenses models: perpetual and subscription.
2. Complement Adobe: integrate Affinity products to offer more design capabilities for the non-professional market. In this case I don’t see the Affinity products survive in their current form and I expect them to become part of the Canva SaaS platform. A subscription will be the most likely license model.
3. Eliminate competition: If Canva considers Affinity a potential future threat, it just acquired Affinity to shelf its products (Like Adobe, Microsoft, Corel, Symantec etc). This is not a likely strategy as Canva would have offered the aforementioned 400M USD instead of 1B USD for the Affinity acquisition.

Even if we end up with the first strategy, we as Affinity users, may not be out of the water yet. Canva has IPO ambitions. When public there will be pressure on Canva to offer subscription-based licenses only, because subscriptions offer a predictable cash flow and reduce new development risks. We can only hope it’s different his time.