NOTE: I made a Canva presentation to share on the blog (as a nod to Melanie Perkins), but apparently Canva embedding options are not supported by WordPress. I have a few thoughts about WordPress, but I’ll spare you those. Therefore, I had to embed my Canva design into a Genial.ly, which I embedded here, and that is how you are viewing this (in case you were wondering how I managed to use Canva in WordPress). I recognize there are a few glitches running it this way, but the main content is visible. Enjoy!
Link for last slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep21f3ncvBk&t=3s&ab_channel=CNBCInternational
Photoshop has long been a friend of mine as has PPT. I’ve seen Canva presentations and been impressed by them. That said I enjoyed hearing Perkin’s journey and that this product was (like all good products) developed out of recognized need!
Melanie Perkins is a great example of a strong role model for inspiring entrepreneurs, especially young women in the tech industry. I love Melanie’s story of identifying a pain point that directly impacted her, founding a solution, and persevering through challenges with finding funding for her venture. I have not used Canva before, but this awesome example of the product (thanks Liana!) and description of its utility definitely piqued my interest. Also very cool to hear of an example of it being utilized for students as early as Grade 3. I imagine we have a lot to learn from Melanie and it will be interesting to see where she goes next.
Great idea to make a Canva presentation to present Melanie Perkins! Personally, I use Canva all the time as it’s extremely user-friendly. To me, it is apparent that the Canva creators, and Perkins in particular, prioritized usability above all, and that that gave their product the edge in a market where there is an infinite amount of image editing/content creating tools. My work also has a premium membership (under their non-profit/education special pricing) that we use to standardize branding, create presentations and even produce videos. I think the most important move they made on their part was in offering all of the free services they do, which are robust and can suit a variety of needs. Then, their market value comes from the additional functions offered on a paid basis. They have struck a delicate balance here that seems to work for them and their product. I think this speaks to the value of Perkins as their CEO, a young innovative-minded woman who created disruption in the industry.
What a great way to introduce Canva and Melanie Perkins with a Canva presentation! Absolutely love that idea. The introduction of Figma has upgraded the quality of online presentation and the marketing content’s quality. The ability to creat aesthetic poster and presentation slides have motivated students’ incentive to produce higher standard work and expanded the horizon for producing more creative work. Like Sage, I was also privileged by using the non-profit membership account in Canva and able to utilize most of its functions at my workplace. I was very impressed with their free functions in the first place, but when I started using it professionally, I was even impressed. Perkins’ perseverance and faith in developing Canva have led her to today’s success and contribution to the design community.
I love Canva, so I am so glad that you picked this as one of the founders to share. I now love Canva more knowing its founder is a young woman who came out of Silicon Valley. Being a woman in silicon valley is not for the faint of heart. The blatant sexism and racism that pervades silicon valley is well documented, through articles and testimonies. Here is an article from the Atlantic that outlines some of the struggles that women have had to face (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-silicon-valley-so-awful-to-women/517788/).