Canva Made Everyone Creative and That’s the Problem.

Ah, Canva. The digital IKEA of design.

Everything looks clean, flat, and vaguely Scandinavian, until you realize everyone’s using the same furniture.

Canva is less of a design tool and more of a cult disguised as a productivity app.

They don’t sell you templates; they sell you salvation. Canva’s entire pitch is basically,

And oh boy, have they succeeded. Every small business owner with a ring light and a Canva Pro subscription now thinks they’re Diet Milton Glaser.

We live in a world where you can’t scroll through LinkedIn without being assaulted by motivational quote posts using Playfair Display and pastel gradients.

Canva made graphic design so easy that now it’s impossible to tell whether a startup is legit or run by three raccoons with an Instagram account.

But let’s not pretend designers are innocent either.

The design community has developed a weird superiority complex toward Canva… like it’s a Fisher-Price toy in the Adobe daycare.

Real designers use Figma, they sneer, as if their portfolio isn’t 80% rejected logo mockups and a personal rebrand they never finished.

So the question isn’t whether Canva is good. The question is: has Canva made design better… or just made bad design easier to make faster?

Spoiler: it’s the latter. But don’t click away yet, Canva stans. We’re about to dissect your digital playground.

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WATCH THIS HACK: How to Change to Landscape in Canva

You’d think changing orientation in Canva, a feature that’s existed in every piece of software since Microsoft Paint, would be easy. Wrong.

In Canva, changing from portrait to landscape feels like filing taxes in a foreign language. The video “Canva Templates Are Fast Food for the Design Economy

Let’s talk about selling digital products, specifically, Canva templates.

Etsy is full of fully editable Canva designs for busy entrepreneurs, which is code for people who think typography is a personality.

Selling Canva templates isn’t design, it’s digital franchising.

You’re cloning. Every cozy minimalist Instagram template looks like it was built in the same beige laboratory that produced oat milk and TikTok therapists.

But there’s a market for it because Canva users aren’t buying art, they’re buying identity. You’re selling people the illusion of taste for $14.99.

If you’re a professional designer thinking of joining the Canva gold rush, here’s your strategy:

• Make templates that look like they weren’t made in Canva.

• Avoid Canva’s free fonts like Open Sans and Montserrat — they’ve been overused so hard they need therapy.

• Don’t design for everyone. Design for a tribe. (Yoga moms, crypto bros, Etsy witches… the Canva ecosystem is full of niches begging for slightly better aesthetic scams.)

Because the dark irony of Canva templates is this: they’re the digital equivalent of microwave dinners.

Easy to make, look decent in photos, and leave everyone slightly ashamed after using them.

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NEXUS DEEP DIVE: How Canva Won the Design Decadence War

Let’s get philosophical for a second.

Canva isn’t just a design tool, it’s digital decadence at work.

It’s the same story as fast food, OnlyFans, or DoorDash (yes, I’m referencing that masterpiece of modern despair). Technology made everything easier, frictionless, and therefore… hollow.

Remember when design used to have friction? When you’d fight with the Pen Tool in Illustrator like it was a medieval sword duel? When kerning wasn’t just a buzzword, but a spiritual practice?

Now Canva gives you frictionless templates… no pain, no taste, no growth. It’s creative sugar water. Sweet, addictive, and utterly devoid of nutritional value.

The Second Stone Age theory applies perfectly here. Just like our ancestors traded craftsmanship for convenience, Canva has turned the artistic process into a dopamine-powered assembly line.

Design is no longer a craft; it’s a drag-and-drop fantasy where everything looks “pretty good” and nothing looks original.

And that’s the real genius and danger of Canva. It simulates creativity. You don’t design; you curate from someone else’s leftovers. It’s not real creation… it’s hyperreality, a Baudrillardian hallucination where every Canva poster is a slightly distorted echo of another one.

We are living in Canva’s hyperreal design multiverse, where:

• Fake brands look more professional than real ones.

• Every podcast thumbnail looks like an energy drink ad.

• And “good design” means “something I saw on Pinterest once.”

Canva didn’t kill creativity. It just made everyone a designer, which, statistically, means it killed it by overpopulation.

WAIT, WHAT?!

Fun fact: Canva once banned designers from uploading templates that use too many similar elements to protect originality.

Imagine McDonald’s telling franchisees to make unique Big Macs.

Design Without Pain Is Decoration

Let’s end on an uncomfortable truth:

Canva isn’t evil, it’s efficient.

And efficiency, as history keeps reminding us (hi, Rome, hi, late-stage capitalism), is how civilizations lose their soul.

Professional design isn’t about making something pretty. It’s about solving a problem in a way that slaps your brain awake. It’s about taste, restraint, and a hint of arrogance. Canva doesn’t teach you that. Canva teaches you to make something fast.

The platform is brilliant for what it’s meant to do: help small businesses not look like Craigslist ads. But let’s not pretend it’s a professional’s paradise. Canva is for production, not perfection.

So yes, Canva is good. Good like junk food is good.

Quick, cheap, satisfying… and a little embarrassing when someone catches you consuming it.

If you’re a professional designer using Canva, that’s fine. But remember:

And if you want to learn how to rotate your Canva design without crying? There’s a whole YouTube video for that.

Canva is great for everyone who doesn’t know what leading, kerning, or visual hierarchy means.

For professional designers?

It’s like painting with crayons in Photoshop.

Cute, but tragic.

Have a nice day,

Miroslav from The Design Nexus

TOOLS YOU SHOULD TRY

Even if you sell products other than mugs or t-shirts, it doesn't mean it will cost you more.

There are tools that can help you with the tasks, and most of them have free versions.

• Research: ProfitTree

• Graphic Designs: Creative Fabrica

• Design Editing: Canva, Kittl

• Vectorizing: Vectorizer AI

• POD Fulfillment: Printify

Disclaimer: Within the article, you will find affiliate links. If you decide to purchase through these links, I want to sincerely assure you that I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.