Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today announced the acquisition of Affinity, the award-winning creative software suite for professional photo editing, illustration, graphic design and page layout.
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Affinity CEO Ash Hewson and Canva Head of Europe Duncan Clark (Photo: Business Wire)
The acquisition significantly bolsters Canva’s vision to build the world’s most comprehensive suite of visual communication tools. While the last decade has seen rapid growth for Canva amongst the 99% of knowledge workers without design training, the integration of Affinity’s professional design software now unlocks the full spectrum of designers at every level and stage of the design journey.
As visual communication becomes the status quo in teams and organizations around the world, the acquisition also accelerates Canva’s enterprise ambitions, unlocking a future where professional designers can craft designs and templates with Affinity to scale across organizations with Canva.
“Visual communication is now ubiquitous in the workplace and investing in strategies that enhance our B2B offerings is core to the future of our business,” said Canva co-founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht. “From sales and marketing, to brand and creative teams, the need to create effective and engaging visual content is on the rise. The Affinity team comes with an incredible caliber of talent and technology and we’re delighted to welcome them to Canva as we enter our next phase together.”
Empowering professional designers
Affinity stemmed from a vision to empower designers to produce high quality content in an effective and affordable way. In 10 years, the Affinity suite of creative products has become beloved and renowned for delivering powerful experiences for professional designers. This includes offering extremely fast and highly responsive tools which deliver on all the photo and vector editing tasks required by professionals.
Today, more than 3 million users around the world trust Affinity to create everything from complex multi-layered graphics to detailed technical diagrams, art and illustration, logos, mockups, documents, magazines and much more.
Designed for the latest hardware and packed with features to simplify real-life professional workflows, Affinity’s all-inclusive photo editing, graphic design and desktop publishing products serve as a powerful, cost effective and subscription-free solution for photographers and designers requiring versatility and precision.
Their core products – Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher – have been lauded for their lightning-fast performance and seamless cross-platform compatibility across macOS, Windows and iPadOS. To date, Affinity has won a number of industry awards, including an Apple Design Award, Apple App of the Year for Mac and iPad and the Microsoft Application Developer of the Year.
Canva growth surge continues
Now entering its second decade, Canva has pioneered the model for simple and effective design and is now used by more than 175 million people across 190 countries and in more than 100 languages. As visual communication becomes an imperative for every kind of industry and organization, the last few years has seen Canva make significant strides in this arena, bolstered by the introduction of Canva’s Visual Suite in September 2022.
Since then, the company has added more than 90 million new users, experiencing nine years’ worth of growth in just 18 months. The acquisition of Affinity will increase Canva’s offering of design tools by expanding into the professional design market.
Canva will continue to invest in the Affinity suite to ensure it not only meets the needs of professional designers, but also enhances their experiences and empowers them to do their best work. Together, Canva and Affinity will be a powerhouse combination built to supercharge the goals of every type of designer.
“Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish,” said Ashley Hewson, CEO of Affinity. “We’ve worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. Canva’s commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with those values. We couldn’t be more excited about becoming part of the Canva family and can’t wait to see what we will achieve together.”
Europe Based Acquisitions Continue To Fuel Canva’s Product Strategy
Acquisitions from Europe’s startup ecosystem have elevated Canva’s technology and continue to play an important role in expanding the company’s physical presence in the region. Over the years, Canva has found high caliber talent and compatible technology in Europe with a number of acquisitions that have become key to the company’s product strategy. Affinity marks Canva’s latest Europe-based acquisition, joining Flourish (2022), Kaleido (2021), Smartmockups (2021), Pexels (2019) and Pixabay (2019). Canva opened their first European HQ in 2023, based in London.
For more details about the acquisition, see Canva Co-Founder Cliff Obrecht’s blog post and Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson’s post, respectively.
About Canva
Launched in 2013, Canva is a free online visual communications and collaboration platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a vast range of templates ranging from presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel to videos, plus a huge library of fonts, stock photography, illustrations, video footage, and audio clips, anyone can take an idea and create something beautiful.
About Serif (Affinity)
Founded in 1987, Serif is the parent company behind Affinity, the renowned suite of creative tools for professional designers and photographers. Affinity’s cost-effective, high-quality and powerful design tools Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher have been recognised with industry-leading awards, gained plaudits from reviewers and are trusted by more than 3 million customers around the world. Serif employs approximately 90 people and is based in Nottingham, UK.
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