Canva

[NBG]

On 3/26/2024 at 9:08 AM, Ash said:

In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable

We need Affinity Video!

But not the Affinity suite flooded with "Canva" design assets or something like Dreamweaver...

 

[Johannes]

I like how the teams are doubling down together now. 😮‍💨

via https://affinity.serif.com/de/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/

ANNOUNCEMENT 

27 March 2024 

The Affinity and Canva Pledge 

By the Affinity and Canva Teams. 

As we step into our shared future, we are committing to four pledges that we’re excited to share with the current and future Affinity community. 

 

Earlier this week we shared the news that Affinity had been acquired by Canva. As the dust settles on the announcement, we wanted to share more about our future together and our commitment to the Affinity community. 

Since our inception, both of our companies have shared the same mission and vision. We were both founded with the belief that design shouldn’t be limited to those who can afford complex software. Our goal has been to make the highest quality design tools available to the largest number of people with fair, transparent and affordable pricing at our core. By joining forces, we’re looking forward to accelerating this shared vision. 

Above all, together, we’re committed to continuing and amplifying Affinity’s position as the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market, while continuing to empower millions of designers to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals. 

1. We are committed to fair, transparent and affordable pricing, including the perpetual licenses that have made Affinity special.

We share a commitment to making design fairer and more accessible. For Canva, this has meant making our core product available for free to millions of people across the globe, and for Affinity, this has meant a fairly priced perpetual license model. We know this model has been a key part of the Affinity offering and we are committed to continue to offer perpetual licenses in the future. 

If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it. This fits with enabling Canva users to start adopting Affinity. It could also allow us to offer Affinity users a way to scale their workflows using Canva as a platform to share and collaborate on their Affinity assets, if they choose to. 

2. We will double down on expanding Affinity’s products through continued investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite.

We believe Affinity is the highest-quality professional-grade design suite on the market. It’s non-destructive, super fast, and easy to use. As such, we want to reassure you that it isn’t going anywhere. 

In fact, we’re committed to using our shared resources to continue expanding Affinity’s products through further investment in Affinity as a standalone product suite. We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more. 

These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2. 

3. We will provide Affinity free for schools & nonprofits (NFPs).

Canva, which has pledged 30% of its value as a company towards doing good in the world through its two-step plan, offers premium plans at no cost to schools and NFPs all over the world. More than 60 million students and teachers, plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits, benefit from this each month. 

We’re excited to extend this programme to include free access for schools and nonprofits to Designer, Photo and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value to this free offering, helping millions of students to master the craft of design, and empowering mission driven organisations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact. 

We’ll share more details on this in the coming months, including what it means for our education and NFP customers that already use Affinity. 

4. We are committed to listening and being led by the design community at every step in this journey.

Affinity and Canva were both founded on the basis that their respective communities – of expert and non-expert designers – deserved better. The tools available were overly complex, overly priced, or both. We know designers deserve better. They deserve the highest quality tools to serve their needs and they deserve to be treated fairly. 

We also believe the design community also knows best what it needs. As such, we are committed to shaping our products based on your ideas, your feedback and your needs. To kick things off, we’d love to learn more about what you’d like to see as we embark on this next chapter of our journey. What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you. 

Thank you to everyone who has been an integral part of the journey so far. We’re excited for the future and can’t wait to see what we can build together. 

With gratitude and excitement, 

The Affinity and Canva Teams

[Caius Nocturne]

Something else to add - I wonder what the Competition and Markets Authority would have to say about one creative software company buying out another?

[Bit Disappointed]

27 minutes ago, Jens Krebs said:

A "Pledge" ist not a promise and "we are committed to" is very different from "we are going to" -- sorry, but while this is a nice gesture, I've heard this noncommittal language way to often (in recent years even from our gouvernment with their listening, their commitments and the famous "five pledges") to believe any of it.

Exactly.

It is non-binding, and it is deliberately formulated to be non-binding. I can guarantee that a business lawyer has reviewed it before publication. When you, before too long (18-36 months), receive an email about changed plans and terms, you might get three months' notice. Which terms will change, I will not speculate on, but the four pledges you can use for a silly and childishly naive hope. Nothing else. But it's a calm-the-masses PR strategy that works. Just look in this thread. You eat it up. The world is full of promises and extremely poor in fulfilled promises. Grow up.

Example:

Why is Capture One Express being deprecated?
We're constantly working to improve our tools for you. And, to give you the best creative and collaborative experience, we need to focus on our main products. This means that starting January 30, 2024, Express will no longer be available.

How is it possible for you to deactivate my perpetual license?
For legal concerns, contact our legal team at legal@captureone.com for more in-depth answers.

Can I run Capture One Express on an old computer?
No, all Capture One Express license keys will be disabled and will not be valid, regardless of the hardware used.

[Chills]

6 minutes ago, NBG said:

We need Affinity Video!

But not the Affinity suite flooded with "Canva" design assets or something like Dreamweaver...

 

No, we don't.    There are both Apple Final Cut Pro X and BMD Resolve that are the low cost, highly professional video edit tools. The only things that compete with them are  the more expensive pro tools.   There are a host of cheap amateur video editors out there, apart from the free Apple and Microsoft apps. We don't need more.

What would be good is an Affinity DAM.  This is the missing piece of the jigsaw, a Lightroom+Bridge replacement. 

[GenewalDesign]

11 minutes ago, NBG said:

We need Affinity Video!

But not the Affinity suite flooded with "Canva" design assets or something like Dreamweaver...

 

It's not like they never developed a software like that : maybe using the source code of MoviePlus is a good start.

[Chills]

5 minutes ago, Caius Nocturne said:

Something else to add - I wonder what the Competition and Markets Authority would have to say about one creative software company buying out another?

Absolutely nothing.  It happens every other month in the UK.

[GenewalDesign]

2 minutes ago, Chills said:

No, we don't. 

Sorry, YOU don't.

[Efvee]

Thank you to the Affinity team for the clarification! I am a committed user and Affinity "evangelist" so the new 4-point announcement makes me very happy. I am also excited by the possibility of the Affinity Suite getting online collaboration features. I work with a team that uses a mix of Canva and Affinity apps so the merger would make our lives easier. 

[Tickedon]

Thank you to Ash, Affinity, and Canva for responding to the reaction with four clear pledges. It is really encouraging.

The V2 universal license is incredibly great value (and much welcomed by me, as I use both OS X and Windows!). I look forward to many more years of fairly priced perpetual licenses.

[Bit Disappointed]

[DarkClown]

37 minutes ago, Johannes said:

We also believe the design community also knows best what it needs. As such, we are committed to shaping our products based on your ideas, your feedback and your needs. To kick things off, we’d love to learn more about what you’d like to see as we embark on this next chapter of our journey. What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you. 

This text is from the "Pledge" page ....

I wonder who wrote this. For more than 8 years the Forum is overloaded with feature requests - and still management "authorities" ask us for INPUT? It's all there -just read the forum! How far away can you be away from what goes on in real life? If all other statements are based on the same level of competence I doubt if anything is true ...

[Chills]

14 minutes ago, GenewalDesign said:

Sorry, YOU don't.

Well, you said "we" need a video editor. I responded in kind.

What you meant is YOU want a video editor.

Well, what is the market?  A video editor is a huge undertaking.  The market is overcrowded at all levels as it is.
What are you using now?

[monzo]

Quote

What would you like to see in Affinity? What features have you been dreaming of? What would you love to achieve? We’d love to hear from you. 

I'd like the ability to authorise my V2 software offline, using my account details, to reassure me that my 'lifetime' purchases remain accessible.

This should have been added to yesterdays updates. If you actually valued our custom and years of support.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

2 minutes ago, Bit Disappointed said:

This pictures say it all - almost every Serif staff will not survive this storm, just Ashley and his friend that have gotten some floatingwests…

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

14 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

This text is from the "Pledge" page ....

I wonder who wrote this. For more than 8 years the Forum is overloaded with feature requests - and still management "authorities" ask us for INPUT? It's all there -just read the forum! How far away can you be away from what goes on in real life? If all other statements are based on the same level of competence I doubt if anything is true ...

Best reply ever!

We are now eagerly awaiting the answer what have changed since 25 of mars 2024?

How come that we all of a sudden are important for Caffinity??

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Jens Krebs said:

A "Pledge" ist not a promise and "we are committed to" is very different from "we are going to" -- sorry, but while this is a nice gesture, I've heard this noncommittal language

 

44 minutes ago, 75th said:

It's quite something to complain about the use of the word "committed" and then accuse the speaker of being "noncommittal". No, the pledges they made are not legally binding, but it is a good sign that Canva let them say it and put both their logos on it. They have opened themselves up to much more solid accusations of lying or malfeasance later if they go back on these pledges. It's not a binding contract, but it is worth something.

I agree. A pledge is a solemn promise, often made in a formal context. It implies more commitment, not less, than a mere promise.

[Dr. Bunsen]

I looked in yesterday lunchtime and was saddened by the tone of the comments. I understand the concern over the potential for a move to a subscription model, but not at all the aggressive and confrontational way in which it has been articulated. Today's clarification is much more reassuring.

Remember: change is the only constant!

 

 

Edited March 27 by Dr. Bunsen

[Alfred]

30 minutes ago, GenewalDesign said:

It's not like they never developed a software like that : maybe using the source code of MoviePlus is a good start.

MoviePlus only runs on Windows, and any attempt to use it as the basis of a new video editor would involve a huge amount of catching up to cope with 4K and other modern developments. And that’s before you even think of integrating it into the Affinity suite so that files saved from the new app could be edited in any of the existing apps on any supported platform.

[Intuos5]

I also do hope there's some sort of clause, where if Canva goes bankrupt (if it is indeed backed by lots of venture capital - and mind you the company is just over 10 years old)that Serif can continue independently and that a potential shutdown of license servers won't disable users from activating their license on a new machine.

[Aongus Collins]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Bunsen said:

I looked in yesterday lunchtime and was saddened by the tone of the comments. I understand the concern over the potential for a move to a subscription model, but not at all the aggressive and confrontational way in which it has been articulated. Today's clarification is much more reassuring.

Remember: change is the only constant!

 

 

Agreed, I felt the same way. Hopefully today's announcement will help alleviate concerns.

[mogsie]

People are suffering from shock. After moving to Affinity in good faith, there seems to be a possiblity that the software could suddenly become unusable if activation is cancelled. That makes us hostages. I don't like it. Bit Disappointed has pointed out that this happened with Capture One Express.

If Affinity is genuine about at least continuing to honour existing perpetual licences, they should make it so the activation code is enough to activate the software without needing online activation. People would at least be sure then that Affinity 2.4 would continue to work for them.

[PaulEC]

It would be interesting to know if there is some technical reason for needing online registration, or if they just want to get your details for some other purpose (marketing?) . With Serif's old (Plus) range of software, you had to ring them to get an activation code, the only reason for which was so that they could keep you on the phone for ages trying to sell you other products!

[Komatös]

If Canva actually implements its 4-point plan as announced, the acquisition could be a win-win for everyone.

I am thinking here of the users who would like to use the Affinity programs on Linux or on an Android tablet. And those who would like to work in a team on the same project. All this and much more could be realized through the merger.

Canva may not have the best reputation, but they can ensure that their popularity increases with a smart approach. A smart approach would include offering stand-alone apps at a fair price so that people on low incomes can afford them too.

Time will tell what will become of the award-winning software. Until then, it's a case of wait and see.

 
 

[Chills]

48 minutes ago, GenewalDesign said:

It's not like they never developed a software like that : maybe using the source code of MoviePlus is a good start.

MoviePlus is well over a decade behind the curve and was even then seen as a bit clunky and aimed at novice home users.  It would be more suited to Canva than Affinity, which is  probably why Serif dropped it.  There are many options for novice home users that come for free on Windows and IOS.   Affinity is aiming at the pro market.   There are a lot of extremely good tools out there.  How with they compete with Resolve?  iMovie and the MS Editor all of which are free....