Canva Wins 2021 App Store Award

Cue the drum roll… Apple has today revealed the 2021 App Store Award winners, recognising the 15 best apps and games that helped millions of people around the world tap into passions, discover creative outlets and connect with new people and experiences.

It’s with great joy and excitement we can announce that Canva has been awarded a 2021 App Store Award.

The trend for this year’s award is “Connection” with award recipients honoured for bringing people together in meaningful ways. Over the last few years, we’ve seen rapid growth and adoption of Canva around the world as a result of the booming visual economy.

Traditionally when we think about communication – we think about words. Today, the way we communicate is about so much more than that. It’s about photos, illustrations, videos and even sound. From engaging infographics and compelling pitch decks to video tutorials and social media posts, visual communication is everywhere, and it’s why more than 65 million people are embracing Canva to unlock their creativity and achieve their goals.

Reimagining Connection and Collaboration

The past 18 months have redefined how millions of people around the world stay connected. The pandemic forced businesses and teams to transition online overnight — yoga studios set up video classes, restaurants spun up mobile-first websites, and teachers had to start broadcasting to dining tables and living rooms. We saw usage of Canva for things like presentations skyrocket, and so we invested heavily into features that would help teams and workplaces stay connected: from mobile-first presentations where users can collaborate in real-time to custom Zoom backgrounds. More than 4 million Zoom backgrounds were created and downloaded on Canva, and the number of videos created with Canva has grown to more than 2 million every single day.

This period also sparked a new wave of innovators and entrepreneurs launching side hustles and new businesses using Canva. For example, Elsewhere – a travel booking platform that launched during the pandemic – used Canva to create professional Instagram videos that enticed people to engage with travel experiences at a time when the industry was at a standstill. They leaned heavily on Canva’s Instagram Reels templates to offer travel tips and advice to their community, and encourage people to book trips as it became safe to do so. With Canva, they’ve been able to connect, engage and grow their audience. They’ve already amassed an Instagram following of over 13,000 since launching in mid-April!

Our App Store Journey

These are the stories that inspire our team every day. The recognition from Apple is a true testament to the hard work of our incredibly talented team who have poured their passion and effort into creating fantastic experiences through our iPhone and iPad apps.

We launched our first native app on iPad in 2014 and followed that up with our iPhone app in 2016. The App Store ecosystem has been instrumental in growing Canva’s community over the past seven years and has allowed us to keep pushing the bar higher and higher when it comes to the simple but powerful experience that Canva is known and loved for.

It’s astonishing to think that more than 23 designs are now being created every second with Canva’s iPhone and iPad apps.

But we’re not stopping there. Our most recent addition to the Canva apps happened just a month ago – with the launch of mobile photo editing. We wanted to build a truly unique and powerful set of photo editing tools tailored to small business and marketing professionals, so we used the latest AI technology to enable one-tap background removal from any photo, auto-enhance to instantly get the best look from your photos, and doubled down on our SmartMockups feature, which allows you to transform any image into a customised 3D product mockup.

Alongside photo editing, we also recently introduced an end-to-end video editor as part of our tablet and mobile apps. Our new Canva Video Suite is an incredibly easy-to-use set of tools that empowers anyone, no matter their skill level, to create, edit, and record high-quality video content. It’s another example of how visual communication is rapidly changing the way that we connect to people all around the world.

Our Next Crazy Big Goals

It’s been a whirlwind 18 months, but we’re always looking ahead to see what other crazy big goals we can set.

As part of our mission to empower the world to design, we’re doubling down on ensuring a truly delightful experience on Canva — no matter your device, your internet connection, the language you speak, we want to empower everyone to communicate visually without any barriers. The mobile experience is key to this, so we’re focused on creating content and building features that are truly local and empower absolutely everyone.

We’ll also continue to focus on education. There are more than 60,000 schools using Canva for Education, our free offering for educators and students. We’ll continue to innovate on the ways that teachers and students are able to connect and interact with each other in physical and virtual environments.

And finally, we’re looking forward to launching our Desktop App on MacOS very shortly. That means everyone will have access to Canva across the entire Apple ecosystem!

Thank you to Apple for this special honour, and thank you to our amazing team and community. We couldn’t have done this without you.