MBD115: Canva Is Using Adobe's Own Playbook to Destroy Them

02 November 2025 | Issue #115

In this issue:

Canva vs. Adobe
Wistia Videos are Visible to ChatGPT
People are Looking for the Next Marketo
Marketing Adoption of AI Tools Hits 60% Daily Usage Among Professionals
The Designer's Job Hunt Checklist
The Golden Ratio Goes Viral
Design Quote of the Week

Midjourney Prompt: David is facing off against Goliath. Goliath towers over David. A vibrant, high-contrast illustration using flat vector-style shading with neon and duotone color blocking. The characters are stylized with exaggerated lighting in magenta and cyan tones, set against a yellow background. There’s a strong use of shadow and highlight to create depth without using gradients. It uses clean lines and a minimal background to keep focus on the figures and objects. --ar 16:9 (then I Photoshopped the logos)

Canva is Coming for Adobe's Customers

I've been in and around design since it transitioned from analog to digital. This week, we saw the biggest change in the creative tool space.

On Thursday, Canva disrupted an entire industry.

I know this sounds like hyperbole because too many businesses call themselves "disrupters," but what Canva did this week sent shockwaves through the design industry … and Adobe.

Last year, Canva acquired the creative software platform, Affinity. Affinity was seen as the one true competition to Adobe's Creative Cloud. For a one-time cost, you could buy Affinity's versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Many independent designers opted to use Affinity because of its near-parity features and freedom from Adobe's ever-increasing subscription costs.

But people were worried about what Canva would do with Affinity. Since Canva makes money on subscriptions, many feared Affinity would be priced similarly. The alternative to Adobe's subscriptions was sold to a company that has subscriptions.

On Thursday, Canva answered everyone's fear.

The new Affinity Studio is now one app, not three.

And it's free.

Forever.

🤯

Plus, Canva/Affinity won't use your work to train its AI.

The only paid upgrade is if you want Affinity's AI features. You'll need a Canva Pro account.

That's it.

Suddenly, designers have a real option. Four months after Adobe raised its prices to $70 a month, Affinity launches for free.

The Numbers Tell the Story

During the week of Adobe's big conference, Adobe Max, the search trends between Canva and Adobe tell a compelling story about where the industry is heading. While Adobe has dominated professional design for decades, Canva's trajectory shows a company that's rapidly capturing mindshare.

Now, it's true that the Adobe suite has 20 apps in its "best value" plan for $69.99/mo (with an annual plan. Month-to-month is $104.99/mo). When compared to Affinity, which only has three "apps," the Adobe plan could seem like a good idea.

I've used Adobe programs since 1996, and I'm going to explore Affinity. I'm not looking forward to paying $779.88 when my Adobe Creative Cloud comes up for renewal. I use the three main applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), but I also use some video tools (After Effects, Premiere Pro), so I'll have to figure that out.

Right now, the option I'm exploring for video is Canva Pro. Seriously.

Why Would Canva Give Away Professional Software?

Designer and lettering artist Jessica Hische, who serves on Canva's Design Advisory Board, broke down the business logic in a detailed thread that's worth examining.

Canva has a massive active user base. Something like 260 million monthly active users. Not all of those people are paying for Canva Pro, but it's a significant number. The total professional creative marketshare is about 65 million customers. Canva can subsidize this vision indefinitely even if very few Affinity users convert to paid subscribers.

Here's the strategy: Canva bought Affinity because it's a powerful product with potential for their customers. Canva is increasingly being used by professional marketing, sales, and in-house teams to scale brand assets across huge teams. Affinity paves the way for a fully integrated system in which assets can be created by professionals and then scaled by teams on Canva.

Making Affinity free removes all friction to switching, other than the discomfort of change. You can even open .ai and .psd files in Affinity on top of other generic file formats. There's no feature gatekeeping. The free Affinity is the full, powerful, professional program. The only thing missing are AI features, and this is because AI features cost money and computational power to run.

Why Professionals Are Taking Notice

Hische, who has been using Adobe software for over 20 years, admits she was skeptical about whether Affinity could pull her away from Adobe. But as she's watched Affinity evolve, she's genuinely excited to make the switch.

One of Affinity's standout features: the ability to work on vector and pixel layers in the same program in a way that feels natural and intuitive. You can draw vector shapes then add pixel textures. You can drop in photo assets and scale them without degrading them. It's all built on a gaming engine, so it's wildly fast and powerful.

Since I started using Adobe tools in the mid-90s, I've been waiting for the different applications to combine.

But Wait, There's More: The Underrated Feature

One of the biggest features people might overlook with the new Affinity is the ability to create your own studio. Essentially, you can make your own app built from the tools of all the studios in the app. Vector, Pixel, Layout, Export. You can choose what works for your needs and remove the rest, then save it. Customize toolbars, panels, UI, then personalize it with your own icon. This is an underrated feature that shows how Affinity is thinking differently about professional workflows.

Canva's Broader Assault on Creative Software

The Affinity announcement wasn't the only news this week. Canva unveiled eight new AI features that collectively represent a direct challenge to multiple software categories:

Canva Video Editor 2.0: No watermarks, no paywalls, no awkward exports. Pure intuitive creative power that directly competes with video editing platforms.

Canva Forms: Rich interactivity for any design, especially great for Canva Websites, making data collection effortless without extra tools or integrations.

Data in Canva Code: Connect Canva Sheets and Canva Code to build interactive, data-powered experiences inside Canva.

Canva Email Design: Create beautiful, branded campaigns inside the Visual Suite. Start with industry-specific templates or use AI to generate something unique.

Canva Design Model: The world's first AI model trained to understand the full complexity of design. Unlike models that generate static images, it understands every aspect of design. From structure and layering to hierarchy, branding, and visual logic. It creates fully editable content in seconds.

AI-Powered Designs: Generate a complete, editable design right inside the editor. Whether you're working on a social post, a presentation, a website, a video, or a doc, your design is ready in seconds.

Ask @canva: Tag @canva in a comment and get real-time design support right where you're working. No need to leave your design to get feedback or generate new visuals.

Canva Grow (Ads): Canva Grow scans your website to learn your brand. Colors, tone, and messaging. It uses AI to generate multiple ad variants tailored to your voice and goals. Publish directly to Meta, with more platforms coming soon.

The Customer Acquisition Play

Folks are trying to figure out why Canva paid all that money for Affinity and then gave it away for free. To me, it looks like a customer acquisition play. Canva Pro is the moneymaker. Plus, they're not beholden to reporting earnings every 90 days because Canva is a private company (for now). It can make long-term moves without fear of repercussions. To access the new Affinity, you need a Canva account. And to get the AI features, you need a paid Canva Pro account.

This is about getting more Canva Pro subscribers and taking customers from Adobe.

As Canva and Affinity become more integrated, it's going to make a lot of sense to pay for a subscription (which costs $10-$15/month for a single user). A fair amount of free users will become paid customers. But even if they don't, Canva can sustain this strategy indefinitely.

History Repeating Itself

Adobe got fat and lazy, and now they're being replaced by a service that is hungrier and more nimble. Canva is just following Adobe's playbook.

The difference this time? Canva is leaning hard into their "democratizing design" ethos and making creative tools more accessible to everyone. It aligns with their values, but it's also ultimately a smart business decision that will make their already huge user base happy and bring a bunch of new people onto their platform.

As Hische put it: "It's been amazing to watch from the inside. To see a team of passionate people really stand behind their words at every opportunity."

This isn't just disruption. This is a fundamental shift in how professional creative software will be distributed and monetized. And Adobe should be very, very worried.

NEWS AT THE INTERSECTION OF MARKETING, DESIGN, & AI

Wistia Videos are Visible to ChatGPT

Wistia created an LLM-Friendly Embed Code so your videos are now readable by AI tools.

People are Looking for the Next Marketo

After years of stagnant developments, and the ever-evolving state of marketing needs, users are tired of the old playbook. Dave Schools digs into recent conversations related to the future of marketing automation.

Marketing Adoption of AI Tools Hits 60% Daily Usage Among Professionals

New research from Social Media Examiner shows 60% of marketers now use AI tools daily (up from 37% in 2024), with ChatGPT dominating at 90% adoption, followed by Google Gemini at 51% and Claude at 33%. The data suggests AI isn’t a trend anymore—it’s infrastructure. Interestingly, only 36% of marketers worry about job displacement, suggesting most view AI as complementary.

The Designer's Job Hunt Checklist

Are you a designer looking for a new job? I'm not, but if I were, I'd follow Anthony Faria's playbook.

Start Hunting

RECENT AND UPCOMING ENGAGEMENTS

Between my love of art and baseball, I noticed something funny earlier this week. And judging by the 300k+ views and 10k+ engagements, others enjoyed it too.

If you're not familiar with the golden ratio,

"In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities." – Wikipedia

It's a measurement that is seen all throughout nature and was popularized during the Renaissance. Everyone from da Vinci to Michelangelo utilized the golden ratio in their work.

DESIGN QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Design is intelligence made visible.” - Alina Wheeler

My AI disclaimer: The main article was originally written for my LinkedIn page, and then modified by Claude with other specific sources I gave it. I wrote the news section. If AI generates the images, I include the prompt so you can see how I got to that image.