Canva

[SallijaneG]

13 hours ago, Robert Hansford said:

Hello! I've been away from the forums for a while, but decided to drop in tonight. I stumbled across this post, and I just wanted to say congratulations on closing the deal, and that I really admire you and your team. You guys have been pure class from day one, and have taught me a lot about what it means to be a professional and a creative. In that regard, I still have a long long way to go. However, I am certain that I have learned so much more than just how to use your software.

As for the acquisition, when I saw the video announcement and felt the air I could only imagine what a difficult decision it must have been. I admit that like many others I had a moment of despair, but it was relatively brief. I have been using your software for a few years now, but I feel like I am just now hitting my stride. You see, you guys have made it possible for all kinds of people to chase their dreams; or at the very least find a respite from the world in their hobby of choice. At any rate, it gives people hope and some kind of potential to work towards. Entire communities have sprung up around Affinity as a result. This in turn creates a powerful sense of belonging. People don't want to lose these things.  They don't want to lose that hope and sense of belonging. I think this is what a lot of people are feeling at the moment, but are unable to articulate. They're reacting in anger because they are subconsciously afraid their hopes and dreams will die. 

I am confident, that with time, people will see that you have held to your pledges regarding mission, practices, and pricing. They will see your software offerings continue to improve and excel. The negativity will pass. I suspect you have already considered much of what I have said here, but I felt compelled to chime in. There doesn't seem to be enough encouragement to go around these days. Please keep going. Don't give in to the neigh sayers or the pitchfork mob, and don't let it affect the way you conduct yourselves. Please continue to work confidently and proudly with your heads held high. Thank you for everything thus far. 

Cheers, and best wishes on the next leg of your journey. 🍻

Nice!  I hope that things go as well as you expect; I’ll stay around for now to watch the developments.

[SallijaneG]

13 hours ago, albertkinng said:

Canva, like Adobe, is indispensable in the design business. Although I don't have a paid account, my primary focus is Brand Management and Unlimited Graphic Design for medium and large companies with marketing departments and agency partnerships. For instance, I create 50 artboards on Affinity Designer, export them as a single PDF, then upload them to Canva. Within Canva, I add placeholders for images so that my clients, who use Canva and appreciate its features, can easily customize the content. Once the templates are ready, I share a link on their portals for them to transfer the project to their accounts. I utilize Canva in this manner, solely for sharing projects that require customization by clients.. 

That is a reasonable use case, to be sure.  I used a grassroots non-profit’s account for a month long project with 6 social media posts daily, and between cloning and scheduling posts, it worked well.  I would not use it for any high-end items, though; it is clearly for those without specialized knowledge.

[SallijaneG]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:25 AM, MikeV said:

This announcement was a shock. While Version 2 was oversold, and the recent slow pace of bug fixes and limited feature updates is concerning, I understand there was a lot of V2 under-the-hood work. Regardless, we were more than happy to pay for the Version 2 ‘all options’ package, even though we don’t (at the moment) run Windows machines and the iPad apps remain something to be explored. The value from V1 was so great that buying version two was both a V1 'thank you’ and a V2 encouragement.

The new ownership compels us to examine of our continued use of Affinity software.

Background
We are a small publishing operation creating image-rich print and multi-media ebooks, based in regional Victoria.

We used PageMaker and then the Adobe Creative Suite from its inception until it went subscription. It was not cheap software – $AU600 to $AU800 a seat with half-price updates that, particularly toward the end, were of diminishing worth. We always had the option to skip an update, over the nine years we probably skipped half – skipping more often towards the end. The Australian pricing was at times up to twice that Adobe charged in the US after allowing for the $AUD/$USD exchange rate. It was very expensive software, but as we purchased outright we could partially control the cost. When the subscription ‘model’ was introduced it effectively doubled our already high costs (again charged at much higher prices than to US users), and the moment we stopped paying we would have lost access to our files.

We limped on with CS6 for publishing and drawing while we pivoted photo processing to Apple’s Aperture – based on this being flagship software from a major corporation. This prove to be a major mistake. We also started producing multi-media ePub projects in Apple’s iBooks Author. Another mistake.

Affinity journey
As CS6 faltered, we waited impatiently for Affinity Publisher for our print-based work, taking part in the beta testing. The moment it launched we moved some projects across, even though key features were missing (compared to In-Design) and there were strange bugs. The killer aspect for us was/is the seamless integration of the three apps. This more than compensated for missing functions and ‘managing’ bugs.

When Apple abandoned Aperture we moved to Photo. The first in our string of abandoned software experiences.

For ePub we are still, just, managing to use iBooks Author but expect that ability to ‘break’ any day. We were hoping Publisher would have a robust ePub capability before that final break.

Continue or abandon
The sale is forcing us to review the place for Affinity in our workflows.

We need software longevity. It is not uncommon for us to revisit projects across a decade. We have just spent weeks updating a project from 2014 where the hundreds of photos processed in Apple’s Aperture have to be redone. So my overriding concern is: what are the odds that the Affinity apps will still be viable in 2034?

Our other requirement is perpetual licence software we can to continue to use.

Unfortunately, ‘wait and see’ isn’t a option as we are due to begin several major projects. Do we continue to pour time, effort and capital into projects based on Affinity software or do we look for alternatives now?

This is a summary of our thinking.

Adobe takeover
One of the concerns raised in this thread is the potential for Adobe to buy Canva – given the mood and direction of Australian competition regulators I think this is so unlikely that it does not figure in my calculations.

VC cash grab leading to enshitification
Two of the three Canva founders are on record as holding 18 per cent of the company each, I guess the third also holds 18 per cent – that would give the three a controlling holding. For short-term VCs an IPO allows them to cash out, so there is a path for control to remain with the founders – parties to the assurances we are receiving today – while VCs can grab their cash.

Institutional shareholders
Two of Canva’s institutional shareholders are Australian ‘industry’ superannuation funds that together manage $250 billion of investments. We have two types of super funds – the commercial ‘for profits’ run by financial institutions etc. who make profits for their owners (and generally lower returns for their member) and ‘non-profit’ – the much larger group – of ‘Industry’ funds run only to benefit their members, often union-controlled, and generally long-term ‘ethical’ investors. That Canva’s institutional shareholders are in the second group provides some comfort.

Entrepreneurs with social conscious
Australia has a small group of billionaire entrepreneurial software developers with strong public conscious. Reports suggesting the Canva founders fall into this group – the pack leader is Atlassian co-founder Mike  Cannon-Brooks, a major driver of large renewable energy projects.

Serif’s fate
A few posts have pointed out that Canva acquired Pixabay and Pexels five years ago to support their offering. Both continue to operate as they had pre-acquisition – as stand-alone organisations with previous management – while providing that support to the main Canva product. It is not a leap to see Serif treated this way as the professional offerings would not make sense being folded into the current Canva 'anyone can design' offering.

The driver for Canva is adding ‘professional’ capabilities. In buying Serif, Canva has paid a lot for that capability. Canva senior management are very astute – they have built a $26 billion business from scratch. Dismantling or compromising Affinity software is not an ‘astute’ path, while strengthening it is. And knowing that a very large part of the attraction to Affinity users is perpetual licences, why would you change this major selling point over Adobe?

However, offering AI or cloud-based services requires a subscription to cover the ongoing costs – the template for that is Luminar Neo – you can by perpetual licences with optional AI-based ‘add ons’ with a subscription.

Much of the angst in this thread is around assurances being given by people who are/will not be in a position to deliver/honour those assurances. On reflection, I think there is a reasonable chance those people will remain in positions where they can honour those assurances for several years beyond an IPO.

Our decision
Making the wrong choice – stay or go – will have a substantial financial and resource impact on our business/operation. It is not a decision to make lightly.

For the moment that decision is to delay the major projects until 2.5 is released, see if there is an improvement in bug fixes and ePub features. If so, we will tentatively begin one of our major projects on Affinity software and remain watchful until Version 3.

If not, the search for alternatives will begin.

There are paths for this to be a net positive for Affinity, and we who use the software. I really hope this is the outcome.

Thanks for this analysis; as a USAmerican, the background on the Australian economic situation is of interest.  I did not realize that Canva had bought both Pixabay and Pexels (I do remember Pixabay no longer being searchable through Affinity, that might have been the reason for the change), and I have been using both along with Openverse.  I do feel that I have seen more ads than before, but they are both good image sources for me.  I also noted a post that mentioned Canva buying Flourish, a program of which I was unaware and looks interesting.  They have certainly been on a buying spree!

[SallijaneG]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:50 PM, MmmMaarten said:

Thanks @Patrick Connor and @Ash for your professional responses. Really appreciate your contributions and clear explanations here on the forum. Although I, like obviously several others here and on other channels, have a difficult time in believing corporate ways after take overs (by multiple experiences) and only believe it when it's a few years later, it's of no use to stay negative (for nobody. That's just a waste of energy) and it's best to give it the benefit of the doubt and just go with the flow.
 
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond thoroughly. It shows that you are involved and that's really something. It's also well appreciated that you didn't sensure this thread and kept it open. At least as far as possible for what I can see. As that sometimes must be hard for you I can imagine.

Let's hope everything works out well for everybody here and this turned out to be just a bump in the grand scheme of things   (Which it probably is anyway, as are most things in life! haha 😀) and turned out to be groth in the end everybody is happy with!

Well said!

[Chills]

23 hours ago, OzNate said:

Same. I think I started in '95.

At first I thought CC was cool, but that didn't last long. My only regret was not upgrading to CS6 perpetual and staying there. I went from 5.5 to CC.

I have CS6.   As I understand it the BIG jump was from CS5 to SC5.5    The move from CS5.5 to CS6 was not that big.  Strange I know, but that is what I got told by someone on the inside (all those years ago).   So you didn't miss that much being on 5.5 instead of 6 AFAIK. Unless of course the specific tweaks in CS6 were the ones you needed.

[mogsie]

I really hope Affinity doesn't go subscription because I need it. I was still using InDesign CS4, and was delighted to discover Affinity. My reason was price, but I found that I prefer Designer  to Illustrator for drawing maps.  And although I struggled a bit with Publisher at first I love it now.  I am currently setting a very big, very academic book which has a great many endnotes, and crucially, cross references to the endnotes. Publisher does a beautiful job of cross referencing, and I was amazed to discover that InDesign still can't do a cross reference like "see noteX on pageY". So Affinity is ahead of the game here, and I sincerely hope I will be able to afford it in a year's time, when the next book in the series needs setting.

[Pšenda]

41 minutes ago, mogsie said:

I sincerely hope I will be able to afford it in a year's time, when the next book in the series needs setting.

In a year, and probably much longer (if your OS allows it), the current V2 will still work - no need to buy anything else if you don't want to.

[Ruffian]

Well I thought I would go about this privately through an email, but because of this buyout, all those years of being with Serif through the Plus years have now been wiped out in my account!!  I am not a happy as we paid for those items and are still running them on our older machines!!  We understand about not supporting them, etc...but why remove our history with Serif?  @Ash  Up until recently, they were all still showing up in our account!!

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, Ruffian said:

Well I thought I would go about this privately through an email, but because of this buyout, all those years of being with Serif through the Plus years have now been wiped out in my account!!  I am not a happy as we paid for those items and are still running them on our older machines!!  We understand about not supporting them, etc...but why remove our history with Serif?  @Ash  Up until recently, they were all still showing up in our account!!

Explained here:

Quote

Purchases Before 14th May 2018

Your product Key should be in an email sent to the address your original order was placed under. Until recently any customer with a Legacy Account could access information on historical purchases. That is no longer possible because as part of our GDPR exposure review and subsequent changes we have decided to remove the legacy login on for customers.

 

[Ruffian]

7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Explained here:

 

Thank you!!  It was all there when we purchased our new laptops in Jan. because we were trying to decide what to carry over...but it would have been nice for them to send out an email letting us know they were purging our accounts so that we could make sure to have copies of everything.  I understand but am still not happy how this was done.

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, Ruffian said:

it would have been nice for them to send out an email letting us know they were purging our accounts so that we could make sure to have copies of everything

Yes, it would, but since you’re still running those applications on your older machines you at least have an easy route to the retrieval of your product keys (as explained in the linked thread).

If you need installer downloads for any of the products that were available for download via the CommunityPlus support site until Serif closed it, please contact me either by PM here or by email to serif[at]punster[dot]me and I’ll see if I can help.

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, SallijaneG said:

I did not realize that Canva had bought both Pixabay and Pexels (I do remember Pixabay no longer being searchable through Affinity, that might have been the reason for the change)....

Pixabay (& Pexels) are both still searchable in Affinity on my Mac (& in AD the Vector filter option of Pixabay in the Stock panel still works as it always has).

[Ruffian]

Thank you @Alfred.  This isn't to say that we haven't purchased all the Affinity suite products even when they wouldn't work on our older machines (Windows 7) just to show support for Serif and the brand.  When we purchased the new Windows 11 Pro, we upgraded the suite to the V2 automatically.  Again thank you.

[JGD]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:40 AM, R C-R said:

OK, but how realistic is to compare what Adobe did to Freehand to what people fear Canva will do to Affinity? Canva has no reason to kill Affinity because unlike Adobe they do not have any products that compete with Affinity.

They could, however, have reasons to kill products that compete with Canva. Though it’s patently obvious that they target slightly different segments of the market, and that they’re adjacent enough for Affinity to be a bit of an upsell/upgrade, which might give Canva an edge over Figma or whatever lower-priced clone – offered under an equally lower-priced subscription tier, of course – Adobe may create or acquire at some point.

As I’ve said: this all comes down to how greedy, complacent and/or shortsighted Canva’s executives may be in the future. Yes, they may see the cheap perpetual licenses with no extensive on-line sync and collaboration features as a gateway for more profitable – or at least more consistent as far as revenue is concerned – subscriptions, but the case for them being able to milk us all due to an independent option like Affinity – especially Affinity Publisher, even in its incomplete, RTL- and multiline-composer-less form! – no longer being available can also be made.

For Affinity’s perpetual licenses to be completely safe, the folks over at VectorStyler and those at Pixelmator would have to partner up and somehow concoct a PageDesigner (sorry, FOSS peepz, Inkscape+Gimp+Scribus just don’t cut it on a technical level, because they’re frankly horrible in different ways and aren’t integrated in any meaningful way like LibreOffice is, so they don’t even have that redeeming quality going for them) and start eating away at both Adobe’s and Canva’s user base with the perpetual licenses they also based their business model on, because that’s how healthy markets work, with proper checks and balances, and not as duopolies.

And I’m not even joking about this; with one company based in Salo, Finland, and the other in Vilnius, Lithuania, they’re practically neighbours when compared to the Canva-Serif pairing, and almost on the same longitude, let alone the same time zone. Heck, if either team was up to learning the other’s exceptionally weird native language, they might even properly merge and still be able to visit their loved ones every now and then after a short flight or 11-hour drive (or shorter, after that newfangled Finland-Estonia tunnel under the Baltic Sea is finished, of course, and let’s not forget the high-speed train corridor that’s being built over there as well).

And, to wit and from a geopolitical/economical/regulatory standpoint, because I did mention the US’s and someone else mentioned the Aussie context as well, it would neatly split all actors between the behemoth that is the US, the historical Commonwealth (yes, we can see how synergies across it are easier, that’s not being called into question) and the EU (especially the Baltics and the Finns, which might very well stick together or at least forge powerful alliances even in a post-EU scenario, for reasons I’m pretty sure I won’t have to elaborate on here), thus keeping things a bit more cohesive and compartmentalized, i.e. safer from acquisitions across those “borders”. It would be a huge win for us all as consumers. 🤷‍♂️

[JGD]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:29 AM, SrPx said:

I'm curious... One of our Australian forum members, MikeV, discards this possibility, due to Canva's HQ happening to be in Sydney, Australia, and how Australian regulators are tending to deal with this sort of thing there :

" Adobe takeover
One of the concerns raised in this thread is the potential for Adobe to buy Canva – given the mood and direction of Australian competition regulators I think this is so unlikely that it does not figure in my calculations. "   

After  what has happened with Figma (Adobe tried to acquire it recently), apparently this is not such an automatic thing to expect, these days. There are some articles about it : 
https://www.afr.com/technology/no-one-can-buy-canva-now-other-start-ups-beware-20231220-p5esr8

Edit: Ouch, sorry. It seems that article is partially behind a paywall...  I could read it completely, but it seems for some reason it only shows up full when searching some stuff in Google, not accessing it directly... (I am not familiar with that site, BTW). But one of  the key points of it is that Australian companies have it pretty hard to do such operation now, due to regulation (what MikeV described).

What I am finding more in Google goes more in the lines of several sources expecting more of a competition from Canva against Adobe, grabbing more market from Adobe in the low, to low-mid end. Obviously Adobe will keep non challenged in the very high end, not just as its apps are immensely more advanced and professional, but -almost more important- because many industries (not only the game and film industries) have their pipelines, workflows, custom solutions, trained teams, tightly tied to Adobe. But a huge pie of the market is the low end (175 millions of users in Canva is no small thing) and part of a bit higher tier.

Even more the case when our skills are less and less needed (and I can't understand why people don't realize that this is the biggest danger for artists, designers, photographers, etc, but not just from Canva, but any apps with full AI art and design generation, like MidJourney , Dall-E, etc), so, the low end users can finally do a lot of work without our services (in Canva, and similar solutions), and then, the "pie" that canva can grab is significantly bigger than what it was the potential Canva's user base before. WAY more the case if they start implementing Affinity's tech inside Canva solutions (to an extent... I don't see a lot of their user base getting super technical! It's not that profile), and also keeping the branch of Affinity's standalone suite. As in, I think it aspires to way more  than the social media graphics and fast stuff for marketing people and small business owners saving bucks on designers and artists that it was its market till now. This challenges a large chunk of Adobe's user base. And from what I am digging out there, it seems I was not the only one suspecting that Canva's thing is not to be bought, but to compete with the giant, as at this point, well, it's a giant itself and it has a lot to win.

I am not saying this to challenge your opinion. I am genuinely curious about all this matter, and I might be wrong, as I'm just barely reading about these things now, pretty ignorant in finances stuff, and English is not my first language, but seems to be there quite a bunch of articles supporting this theory and right now I am not finding anything suggesting the possibility of an Adobe--> Canva buyout. But who knows.

 

I mean, yeah, that article’s title makes even more sense now, considering how regulators would see an acquisition of Canva by Adobe as even more of a problem… Overall, from what I’ve read today, I am a bit less concerned about Canva’s future in that regard.

The jury is, sadly, still out on Affinity’s future inside of the “Canva family”, as they like to call it, but Flourish’s apparently preserved identity does seem to be a positive indicator (I actually had some colleague suggest it as a tool during one of our PhD seminars and I didn’t even suspect it was owned by Canva, so there’s that). It does seem to be cloud- and subscription-based, on a freemium model, and maybe it already was before, which would mean they already had extra synergies with Canva as a company. The latter suddenly having perpetual licenses and offline apps in their portfolio would indeed represent a pivot, or a diversification, on their business model, and if they stick to it and respect us all in the process, and further shield themselves from hostile takeovers, hey, more power to them, I guess. 🤷‍♂️

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, JGD said:

They could, however, have reasons to kill products that compete with Canva.

In what way do you see any Canva product competing with any of the Affinity apps? 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, JGD said:

 ... I didn’t even suspect it was owned by Canva....

FWIW, at the bottom left of the Flourish "Find out more" link there is this:

Quote

 

Flourish is a registered trademark of

Canva UK Operations Ltd, UK company 08825531

33 Hoxton Square

London N1 6NN

 

 So it would seem Canva already had a UK presence prior to the Serif buyout.

[Patrick Connor]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So it would seem Canva already had a UK presence prior to the Serif buyout

They did. The head of Flourish came to Serif recently and recounted a very positive experience when Flourish were purchased by Canva.

[Sid J]

On 3/27/2024 at 7:32 AM, Pseudolus said:

It feels a bit like our divorced dad is taking our puppy and giving it to his new family.

More like taking the puppy and killing it in front of the kids...

[Sid J]

On 3/30/2024 at 9:00 AM, Chills said:

Let's just clarify. Affinity exists exactly as it did last month.  It now has different owners.
The development teams and management teams still exist, with a few exceptions at the top.

Serif does not exist "exactly as it did", clearly it has changed, you acknowledged that when you stated "It now has different owners".
You also confirmed more changes "The development teams and management teams still exist, with a few exceptions at the top."

Please recognize the reality of a business takeover.
Watch this space, the standard approach in these matters will be that other staff will be gone soon.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

They did. The head of Flourish came to Serif recently and recounted a very positive experience when Flourish were purchased by Canva.

This reply from Patrick is really funny…

Why shouldn’t the head of Flourish have nothing than positive things to say about Canva?

He’s not neutral, he’s part of this konglomerat Canva International (soon to be bought by Adobe Inc.)…

[albertkinng]

On 3/29/2024 at 3:01 PM, loukash said:

Because it could do "crazy" things that PageMaker 4 couldn't do!

I used to be a fan of PageMaker. QuarkXPress was reigning supreme at that time and, consequently, I was obligated to learn and use it. However, PageMaker was the one I secretly adored all along.

[albertkinng]

I revisited the latest posts and was astounded to find that this forum has already reached the stage where Adobe is set to acquire Canva. How did the forum evolve to reach such a critical juncture?

[lphilpot]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:35 PM, R C-R said:

so there is nothing wrong I can see with expressing concern about that

Possibly my comment apparently had a part to play in this discussion (?), so let me clarify.

I personally try to be a realist and I tend to not get excited in general, but I'm not chronically pessimistic. I've tended to, in output terms, "under-promise and over-deliver" (if possible) while in intake terms, "under-expect and over-receive". The latter is a conscious thing, intended as a buffer against disappointment from unrealistic expectations.

While I agree in general with @debraspicher about refraining from unwarranted classifications, so to speak (if I understand correctly) I also agree with @loukash in a general sense. However I didn't take his comments as specifically descriptive of me, but rather his view in general.

[loukash]

20 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

However I didn't take his comments as specifically descriptive of me, but rather his view in general.

It definitely wasn't meant personally…