Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams and Melanie Perkins.” width=”970″ height=”647″ data-caption=”From left to right: Cliff Obrecht, Cameron Adams and Melanie Perkins.”>
When Cameron Adams co-founded Canva, the popular graphic design platform now best known for its A.I. image generator, with Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht in 2012, they were chasing a vision to make design simple and accessible for everyone. Today, that vision powers a $49 billion company with more than 180 million users.
Adams, originally from Australia, studied law and science in college and worked in graphic design and tech for a decade before starting Canva. “The design world was incredibly fragmented back then—you had to go to a stock photo library for images, a layout library for templates, download fonts separately, then somehow pull it all together in complex professional software. It was an incredibly tedious process,” he told Observer. “We wanted to take design from this intimidating thing that only 1 percent of the world could do and make it accessible to the other 99 per cent who don’t have design training.”
Canva’s drag-and-drop functionalities and vast library of customizable templates make it easy for users to create everything from social media graphics to business presentations. In 2023, the company launched Magic Studio, a suite of A.I.-powered design tools that includes Magic Design—which generates polished, on-brand templates from a simple prompt—alongside tools like Magic Write, Magic Animate and Magic Edit, which help users draft, customize and animate content in just a few clicks.
This intuitive yet robust design experience has fueled Canva’s broad adoption, including use by 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies, according to Canva.
Adams, who serves as the company’s chief product officer, attributes Canva’s success to its focus on end users—something he learned from his time at Google. (Adams worked at Google’s Australia office from 2007 to 2011, collaborating with brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen—the creators of Google Maps—on a now defunct project called Google Wave, which combins email, instant messaging and document-sharing into live, editable threads called “waves.”)
“One thing I took away from was the importance of thinking user-first. Technology and user experience should be held in tandem from the get-go, rather than thinking of UX as something you tack on at the end to make a tool look better,” Adams said.
He emphasized integrating user feedback early in the product development process to keep the product on track. “We’ve been guided by our users’ feedback and needs at every step,” he said. “It’s about balance—go too early and the signals you get from a low-quality product won’t help you, but go too late and you’ve spent way too much time heading in the wrong direction.”
Canva pivots to no-code coding
Canva’s latest pivot is into software development via A.I., marked by the launch of Canva Code at its annual conference last month in Los Angeles. Part of the company’s Visual Suite 2.0, the new feature enables users to turn simple prompts and design concepts into web apps, forms and tools.
“Canva Code whips up HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to make it happen…With just a prompt, users can see the code come to life and make tweaks if they want,” Adams explained, noting that it’s like “spreadsheets that can power photo editing at scale.”
“It’s our next move in helping everyone realize their ideas, regardless of how much technical training they have,” he added. “We’re building tools for a future of work that is more interactive, visual and fluid, and we’ve seen demand for this increase rapidly.”
Canva Code is the latest tool introduced by the company that blurs the lines between design and software development. Similar recent launches include Canva Dev MCP Server, which lets developers connect their favorite A.I. coding tools directly into Canva’s App Marketplace, and Canva Sheets, which integrates with Magic Studio to generate thousands of social posts from custom datasets.
Canva Code is already gaining traction in both classrooms and enterprises, said Robert Kawalsky, global head of product. Teachers are using it to introduce logic and problem-solving through interactive quizzes and matching games, while enterprise teams are prototyping internal tools—all without leaving Canva’s interface.
“What sets us apart is the integration within the Canva ecosystem,” Kawalsky told Observer. “Unlike standalone tools, Canva Code allows users to transform static content into interactive experiences—then immediately incorporate those into designs using our template library, brand kits, and collaborative features. This extra layer of customization goes beyond what most no-code platforms offer.”
