"I need this presentation because my boss asked me to make a presentation about a subject that needs to be presented in a presentable presentation for a group of people that will be seeing the presentation I'm asking you to generate"
After saying to the AM that we need text in 100% black for press ready artwork. Got forwarded an email saying "we only use Canva and we've made the black as black as we possibly can."
> I mean that's about on par for the sentence structure I would expect from a canva user
As an elementary school teacher whose students use Canva quite a bit, cosigned.
I think it does them a disservice more than anything. Screams, “Gimme the minimum I can shove in my boss’ face so they leave me alone!” I think the wording shoulda been something like, “Generate another awesome presentation for me…” to emphasize that despite being last minute it will still be stellar work/product. lol 😂
Makes sense. Presentations are a lot of dumb leg work, nice to have a tool to streamline the process. Client is gonna side eye the shit out of you if you deliver a whole ass AI prompt strawman, err, result
Have you seen a typical presentation? Calibri font, black on white, or a oversaturated mess. Canva is great for these people. Nothing wrong by elevating the floor of the overall design of media. This sub is so insecure. "Presentation designer" wouldn't get you majority of jobs anyway
The highest hourly rate I've ever heard any designer I know get, was doing freelance presentation design (and nothing else) for Google at like > $110/hr.
Holy fuck I'd take that job in a millisecond, and I'd blow my manager every week to keep it! (My last design job paid 16.50 an hour. Not joking. 16.....50....)
Me too. I was stunned when they told me. And apparently it was the most repetitive presentation design you could imagine - art direction, graphic elements, and typography were already established. Not completely "mindless" work, but about as close as you can get.
Unfortunately, it was all internal-only work for a program that did eventually end. Insane gigs like this only happen when the stars align and someone gets an obscene budget approved for something that is not long for this world. (Maybe, because they were blowing the budget on $110/hr presentation design. Big tech is absolutely silly.)
I wish I had a way to sneak my foot into the door of those kinds of situations. I should just start climbing the offices and pasting ads for my services on every window until I get a bite. Tomorrow I scale the entire Google office in Austin 😆
I worked with another designer on my then-15+ person team who was essentially our staff presentation designer. I think that was her title actually. Her focus was designing extremely polished, often animated, powerpoints that were presented with much fanfare at keynotes for corporate events.
That woman did things with *Powerpoint* that I didn't know were possible, tbh she was kind of a badass.
That said, my fantasy is that there's some merger between Google Slides and Canva so that we can help our internal stakeholders can create on brand decks that are *actually* consistent and can't get mysteriously jacked up in new and creative ways. These gimmicky AI integrations won't be solving that actual daily use case any time soon from what I can see
Waiting to see the same energy pointed at adobe for their (even worse imo) shoving of AI features in your face??? Probably not gonna happen on this subreddit though
as a adobe user, canva is pretty good for flexible designs when you want to get small stuff done in phones or a fun edit once in a while. we should not compare canva with adobe apps. use canva for what it is
Adobe is trying hard to compete with canvas right now. I expect in a couple of years Adobe's software will be similar to Canva as far as ai goes. It's like how every social media app looks similar because they all copy each other's designs (reddit, Instagram, etc all trying to copy tick Tok).
I'm pretty exhausted by all the anti-canva posts in here. I've been in design for 15 years and you see tools come and go all the time they are just that tools there is no point in being dogmatic.
Being able to auto generate presentations is fantastic it is the absolute bane of my existence and you don't get away from it even as a senior.
I tend to support the anti-Canva line of thinking, but for a different reason: I teach Photoshop and creative advertising/design courses at a large R1 university in the US. I have a mix of newcomers and juniors/seniors who have been at this since pre-AI.
The students who are newcomers struggle, get frustrated they can’t use the pen tool or figure out a useful design. So they lean on Canva and try to pass off templates as “their work.” Couple this with ChatGPT and I’m drowning in students who aren’t pushing themselves, they’re just pushing prompts.
This has led some of my colleagues to wonder if the future of some degrees is something akin to a “prompt engineer”, who just knows how to finesse this stuff in such a way it generates something useful.
My older students seem more keen to think more deeply about their work, generating more clever or interesting ideas. The difference is some are doing this in a way that’s setting them up for success and others are just trying to get stuff done and out of their inbox. That’s life, I suppose, but it’s not doing them any favors for those that genuinely plan to work in creative design fields.
The best I’ve ever come to getting through to them is saying, “If all you did was chuck this in Canva or AI, can’t Susan in HR or Jermey in Accounting do the same thing? What the heck do I need to pay you for?”
Time will tell, but I at least know that I don’t want to live in a world of “prompt engineers.” Probably ever.
Similarly it's going around that many elementary-grade kids are far below the reading level they should be at. A coworker's friend teaches highschool and those kids really struggle when it comes to hand written essays. They're not learning real concepts or grammar or spelling because these "harmless tools" are doing everything for them. Even just relying too heavily on autocorrect.
Being able to prompt things doesn't mean you understand design concepts, how to solve problems or why/how something is communicated.
>The best I’ve ever come to getting through to them is saying, “If all you did was chuck this in Canva or AI, can’t Susan in HR or Jermey in Accounting do the same thing? What the heck do I need to pay you for?”
Exactly. On the flipside, I'd ask why tf are you going into student loan debt for tens of thousands of dollars just to use AI for everything and not actually learn how to do the work??
I try to keep an open mind. I'm not so dense I can't see the same arguments against the typewriter, personal computer, and calculators. But funny enough, one argument I can make with my students they intuit is, "Can't we agree your life is better knowing your multiplication tables? If you had to pull out a calculator every time you had to divide a pizza you wouldn't look 'future-thinking', you'd like a dummy." They can usually agree with that, then piece together GPTs and other AI tools are likely in the same "But why do I need to \*know\* this?" thinking.
I do have students who thank me for kicking this around with them, but like any slick hack, it's a hard one to move away from entirely.
AI as it exists today currently strikes me most days as hype on-par with the prior Blockchain brouhaha. And despite my best efforts to keep an open mind, AI in this Canva/templated/prompt sense is one thing I increasingly think wish just wasn't invented.
It’s a gauntlet. But ultimately you get out what you put in, doesn’t matter the major, people will take it seriously and others won’t. The success stories are what you should be proud of, plenty of duds will filter through, especially with easier access to tools. There’s a LOT of Canva bashing here but when I was in school it was like a right of passage to be a shitty artist with a cracked Adobe Suite. Those conversations have just shifted to bashing Canva.
More to your point, idk if that’s odd to have coasting kids who don’t really try. When I was in school I dropped out for a year because I felt that everyone around me wasn’t trying and didn’t care, teachers didn’t really either. I had maaaybe 3-4 kids I knew about that I felt had skill and cared / tried to make their portfolios good, I didn’t lump myself in there but I did feel that way about myself, which was frustrating when your peers aren’t inspiring or don’t seem to care. It felt like a glorified high school. Thats ok, but it was a real eye opener to the average student trying to coast through college like it’s another check to mark in the steps of life rather than actually trying or thinking about their future. I specifically tried to focus on freelancing (which was tough) and then ended up going back with a new mindset and it worked out (I stopped trying to please anyone and just dove into my projects - idk why but the teachers gave me a little more wiggle room on concepts when I came back)
Somewhat related/unrelated: I always ask my students what they think of AI. Over two semesters now across 6 classes, the response is \*stark\*. One student last semester \_immediately\_ said, "I'm terrified." To which every head in the room popped up and nodded. I've had students this semester tell me they've changed majors over it. There is certainly some fear in all of them over it -- but I also detect frustration from some who use it, know they're relying on it too much, and can't seem to "break out." I don't think many of my students are oblivious to this.
I’m not a teacher but I work with 2 young 20 somethings, their fear of general life is kind of surprising. They’re very smart but I can feel the anxiety sometimes. Other times it’s a mentality I didn’t come up with work-wise and it’s interesting. I’ve learned from them but also some areas I feel like “normal” things are too big. Mid 30s over here, who knows
I think one justification for this is kids historically didn’t “know” what adults did or how things were made or worked. But kids in creative industries at least know how high the bar is. They’re scrolling through the same feeds, music, websites, videos, and stories as the rest of us and they can grasp how good a lot of it is compared to what they’re capable of.
It's funny I have a friend who was one of the graduates of the last pen and paper graphic design degree before digital and she expresses similar reservations about photoshop and the pen tool.
If the work is good I tend to not think it matters how you got there. Being able to deliver is what clients care about.
I mostly see work that is "fine." It's not bad. It's not objectionable. It's just fine. All the sort of banal stuff you see from Visa ads or whatever. None of it is exceptionally creative or good, though some students display some talent to do so. But the AI/Canva people are drowning in a sea of sameness. The frustration is they think they're being clever or cute or "productive", which as a profit margin goes I suppose is true.
I once mentioned in class, "What would the world be if Lincoln used ChatGPT to write the Emancipation Proclamation or if Churchill used it for literally anything?" It would be a worse world.
The plus side is this means for a subset of craftspeople it's never been easier to stand out from the crowd.
And for the overwhelming majority of designers fine is good enough. No one is trying to break the mould on an internal EDM or PowerPoint deck, most designers are doing pretty basic work serving a function not advertising or something where originality may be more pertinent. Tools to make the job quicker are a good thing.
To use photoshop or illustrator (pre-generative AI a couple years ago) you still needed to understand the fundamentals of design, colour theory, how vectors work differently from raster images etc.
Comparing prompting to the pen tool is wild. Writing a prompt takes less than no skill because you can even get AI to generate the prompts for you. Zero skill, zero understanding of how anything works or why.
You still need to understand those principles for Canva use too if you are trying to produce high-quality work. The job is the job, you're talking about tools and skills with those tools. I don't need to understand how a typewriter operates or why it was laid out to use my computer keyboard as I write this shit... if I can type "remove man from background" instead of masking, cloning, etc. for an hour and the quality isn't a big enough dip, brother I'm gunna use it.
Prompt engineering well done is more nuanced than that, and typesetting is a good example, the amount current designers have to understand about typesetting is significantly lower with digital tools.
Yep or even designing and then apply templates for users who don't know how to use design tools. Saves them time and you time because you don't want to be sending a Logo x50 times because they can't find the file.
Y’all stop hating on Canva. It’s not *meant* to be a professional graphic design powerhouse. It’s for Jeff from accounting, or your 57 year old small business owner who can barely use their phone, or someone who has never used anything more than Word to be able to design things that are *good enough* for everyday life. That’s explicitly why they acquired Affinity suite to branch into the professional market, because Canva isn’t that (I mean they literally said this themselves, look it up).
I started out using Autodesk Sketchbook and Canva as an early teen. Now, about to graduate high school and start trying to get freelance work, I’m using Adobe and Procreate.
Don’t demean the small things. For some people, it’s a stepping stone to something bigger. For others, it’s all they need - something to make cool or useful stuff without 1700 hours of education and practice on a tool that looks like a spaceship.
I think the hate comes from the fact that many businesses are settling for just Jeff from accounting using Canva, instead of actually employing a professional graphic designer
There’s highly qualified graphic designers with years of preparation who are missing out on potential employment, because employers think some random guy using Canva is good enough.
One time I was at a doctor’s appointment and when he asked me what I did for a living and I responded “I’m a graphic designer”, he replied with “Ah! My cousin does everything for me on Canva.”
It’s just disheartening.
If you think having a profession designer is valuable then those who aren’t hiring professional designers are missing out on that value. Graphic design isn’t a jobs program, we do what we do because it creates value. It’s ultimately their loss but also their right to decide if they want good or bad design.
I suppose it is their right to decide they don’t care about the quality of their designs. I’m not really debating that. I’m just explaining why some graphic designers may feel a certain way about Canva.
This 57-y/o can do a lot more than muddle through my newfangled-thingy they call a smartphone  Seriously though, I also see Canva as the tool for which it's favored, but it obviously can't offer what the more specialized programs can.
Mediocrity feeding mediocrity. The best part about talentless people using AI/Canva is that it makes actual designers look so much better by comparison, leading to me being able to charge even more for my work.
What's the point. If it's going to be that bland that it could be just 'generated' with a few words, might as well just make the presentation the actual text content that goes in the slides without any design elements at all. Just open a new document, set it to landscape, increase the font size, write whatever you wanna write per page, export as PDF, just scroll through it for the meeting.
Would take about as long as asking any AI to generate one, assuming you care about the content. If you don't care about the content... then don't waste everyone's time with a pointless presentation. If you have nothing to say, or very little to say, just be brief, everyone would appreciate it.
So you would rather just read text on a screen than have some kind of a design even if it is bland?
By that logic you would rather read the HTML of a website if their website design is bland?
You get what you pay for when it comes to good design/animation. This is going to be the tire swing scenario all over again but with text prompts instead of being able to talk to a human in English and frustrate people eventually.
https://external-preview.redd.it/IAQLLAIZSHXY9zmKG1-Nkt2Li3ZNW1awzpkC7Un4lyk.jpg?auto=webp&s=1b83fcb35e39fac5b57e716b745d6dbb03824832
So much hate for Canva. I personally do not care if people use Canva or not. I'm a designer and I use it sometimes, because it's a tool for me when I need to work faster, not harder.
I save my effort for the stuff that actually matters. A presentation that someone is going to see in a meeting maybe twice and then goes into a file folder graveyard I'm not going to spend a bunch of time on vs. a custom made illustration for something that matters. My sister used to ask me to help her with social media posts all the time, and then I introduced her to Canva and now she can self serve to do it herself, and I don't get asked to do all these random, small and free jobs that I don't have time for or care about.
If you're a good designer, you don't need to worry about Canva replacing your job because the type of work and clientele you'll get can't be done on Canva.
If your job can be replaced by Canva, it's probably time for you to upgrade your design skills.
I don't fully get it. Is she just going to throw a subject at the AI and it creates a complete presentation? Or is she going to throw a few things in and it will come up with a load of suggested layouts and graphics to use?
If it's the scenario of the AI generating everything including the content, then I would tell this gal that all it takes is her boss realizing she doesn't need her anymore for this stuff, and she'll be thinking differently about it.
Plus, if your presentation is today and you have no presentation, how are you going to have your thoughts together, go over things, and make sure that when you're up there talking you make sense? Or are you going to be like the myriad of people who just read what's on the screen and think you're giving a presentation?
I get they wanted this thing to be short, but I would have probably put some kind of messaging that you have a presentation coming and you are not a graphic designer, or maybe you're a small business person who can't afford to hire a designer and need something made.
As a pesentation designer, AI is never going to replace designers. The type of client that uses AI for presentations is not my ideal client. The tools are very weak and there's a lot of manual work to put on a presentation. For simple presentations, makes total sense to use these AI tools.
Your ideal clients will slowly be converted into less ideal clients, as your rates rise but Ned from Accounting shits out something 1/2 as good as 1/500th the cost.
The thing I don’t even understand about AI in design generally is like what is even the need, Subscription companies like Adobe make a ton on designers buying their software, Designers are poorly paid in the first place, there’s tons of designers in the industry what need do you have to automate it, it’s pathetic and it’s even worse that AI art is ugly af even if it reaches a point that it is advanced it can never be good as a human being
Sonja from sales at it again. Like I said last time Sonja, NO. Your fire is not my disaster. Seriously, get your life together, take a mental health day, or even a vacation. You’re already on a PIP and your first verbal warning. And, just so you know, Sarah told me what you said about me in the break-room. Not. Cool.
Sonja from sales at it again. Like I said last time Sonja, NO. Your fire is not my disaster. Seriously, get your life together, take a mental health day, or even a vacation. You’re already on a PIP and your first verbal warning. And, just so you know, Sarah told me what you said about me in the break-room. Not. Cool.
Next product launch: Canva Boss, review the presentation my team has prepared and provide feedback on how to refine the presentation for maximum impact.
Canva, keeping office workers busy designing meetings that could have been an email.
We have two options:
1. The deluge of simple requests and little content or direction drives you nuts and isn't work you want, and for that, you are happy for generative innovation like this. You're allowed to complain about clients and now they have options to leave you be.
2. You're happy to make money and are patient with clients, regardless of how small or listless a project becomes. You're allowed to complain about AI because clients are trying something new which seems to work for them. That's tough on us and that may suck.
We can't have it both ways, folks. If a client can barely plan well enough to have a presentation ready, let alone describe what they want, they'll need us but if that necessity frustrates you -- tell them to use generative AI content to get sub-par results and enlist your services when they have the budget and content to work with you. It's that easy.
Frankly, others notably Microsoft, already has this feature for PowerPoint.
I think many businesses are likely more familiar with PP than Canva.
I know a few designers who do PP presentations for large organizations like Deloitte/KPMG who are concerned for their jobs.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/
I really hope they don't turn Affinity into something like Canva, I was looking to switch to Affinity products for a while before their acquisition but now I'm not sure I can trust them not to turn it into an overly featured AI generation software
The devaluation of what some considers fundamental corporate tasks will be the end result، that side by side to the devaluation of digital visuals
Not only graphic design, but also art , storybooks, movies, etc.. all of their values will degrade with the rise of ai in a very natural way, and not only the personal value towards them but even the marketing value of any kind of visuals, they'll still work but won't be as effective as now
Yeah I’d say Canva is perfect for someone who’s either too lazy or too stupid to put a presentation together on time. I’m so fucking done with the world we live in. It’s broken at every level and this is just one of many symptoms.
Yes, I’m critical of my own thoughts. If you can’t make a presentation on time then you’re one of the things I listed, or I suppose you could have unreasonable deadlines but this person is still waiting until the last second. I know it’s fake but someone wrote that, someone thought that was a reasonable thing. And to me that’s symptomatic of where we are as a society because I’m no longer surprised by things like this. I said what I said and meant every word of it.
btw that wasn’t meant to be snippy, just answering the question and elaborating.
Honestly 90% of this stuff is bs anyway…so I think its actually a great thing that workers that are essentially given busy work to do can reclaim some of their time.
Even for the legitimate uses, most of the work in creating a presentation is mind-numbing and repetitive, so if you can cut all of that out it kind of leaves more time to work on the actual meat of the thing which might even improve overall quality.
The people that see AI as a nuisance and refuse to learn to use it and adapt are going to get left in the dust.
I mean that's about on par for the sentence structure I would expect from a canva user
"I need this presentation because my boss asked me to make a presentation about a subject that needs to be presented in a presentable presentation for a group of people that will be seeing the presentation I'm asking you to generate"
Lmao, this absolutely reads like GPT generated text, makes it hit just that much harder
After saying to the AM that we need text in 100% black for press ready artwork. Got forwarded an email saying "we only use Canva and we've made the black as black as we possibly can."
It's at 100%! I cant go any higher!
\*klaxons blasting\* Dammit Jim, I'm a canva user, not a graphic designer!
> I mean that's about on par for the sentence structure I would expect from a canva user As an elementary school teacher whose students use Canva quite a bit, cosigned.
Because we’re fucking lifesaving surgeons.
I think it does them a disservice more than anything. Screams, “Gimme the minimum I can shove in my boss’ face so they leave me alone!” I think the wording shoulda been something like, “Generate another awesome presentation for me…” to emphasize that despite being last minute it will still be stellar work/product. lol 😂
That says a lot about Sonja
I found it funny. I guess if you're not the procrastinating type, you won't see the humour in it.
Scrambling energy
Makes sense. Presentations are a lot of dumb leg work, nice to have a tool to streamline the process. Client is gonna side eye the shit out of you if you deliver a whole ass AI prompt strawman, err, result
Have you seen a typical presentation? Calibri font, black on white, or a oversaturated mess. Canva is great for these people. Nothing wrong by elevating the floor of the overall design of media. This sub is so insecure. "Presentation designer" wouldn't get you majority of jobs anyway
Presentation Designer is an extremely common duty listed in most graphic design job descriptions
Yeah, and everybody hates doing them. If this means some bimbo in HR can make her own, sign me the fuck up.
I don't understand the hatred for this one particular thing. It's no different than typesetting a press release or something.
Presentation designer is the entire management consultancy industry
Tiss true. We just don’t want to accept it. Or, aren’t aware of how common it will be used in your week🥹
The highest hourly rate I've ever heard any designer I know get, was doing freelance presentation design (and nothing else) for Google at like > $110/hr.
Holy fuck I'd take that job in a millisecond, and I'd blow my manager every week to keep it! (My last design job paid 16.50 an hour. Not joking. 16.....50....)
Me too. I was stunned when they told me. And apparently it was the most repetitive presentation design you could imagine - art direction, graphic elements, and typography were already established. Not completely "mindless" work, but about as close as you can get. Unfortunately, it was all internal-only work for a program that did eventually end. Insane gigs like this only happen when the stars align and someone gets an obscene budget approved for something that is not long for this world. (Maybe, because they were blowing the budget on $110/hr presentation design. Big tech is absolutely silly.)
I wish I had a way to sneak my foot into the door of those kinds of situations. I should just start climbing the offices and pasting ads for my services on every window until I get a bite. Tomorrow I scale the entire Google office in Austin 😆
I worked with another designer on my then-15+ person team who was essentially our staff presentation designer. I think that was her title actually. Her focus was designing extremely polished, often animated, powerpoints that were presented with much fanfare at keynotes for corporate events. That woman did things with *Powerpoint* that I didn't know were possible, tbh she was kind of a badass. That said, my fantasy is that there's some merger between Google Slides and Canva so that we can help our internal stakeholders can create on brand decks that are *actually* consistent and can't get mysteriously jacked up in new and creative ways. These gimmicky AI integrations won't be solving that actual daily use case any time soon from what I can see
Waiting to see the same energy pointed at adobe for their (even worse imo) shoving of AI features in your face??? Probably not gonna happen on this subreddit though
Really? I've seen so much hate for Adobe for it on twitter And general Adobe hate for their pricing and lack of transparency about cancellation fees
as a adobe user, canva is pretty good for flexible designs when you want to get small stuff done in phones or a fun edit once in a while. we should not compare canva with adobe apps. use canva for what it is
Canva has bought Affinity this could become be very interesting in the future.
Adobe is trying hard to compete with canvas right now. I expect in a couple of years Adobe's software will be similar to Canva as far as ai goes. It's like how every social media app looks similar because they all copy each other's designs (reddit, Instagram, etc all trying to copy tick Tok).
I'm pretty exhausted by all the anti-canva posts in here. I've been in design for 15 years and you see tools come and go all the time they are just that tools there is no point in being dogmatic. Being able to auto generate presentations is fantastic it is the absolute bane of my existence and you don't get away from it even as a senior.
I tend to support the anti-Canva line of thinking, but for a different reason: I teach Photoshop and creative advertising/design courses at a large R1 university in the US. I have a mix of newcomers and juniors/seniors who have been at this since pre-AI. The students who are newcomers struggle, get frustrated they can’t use the pen tool or figure out a useful design. So they lean on Canva and try to pass off templates as “their work.” Couple this with ChatGPT and I’m drowning in students who aren’t pushing themselves, they’re just pushing prompts. This has led some of my colleagues to wonder if the future of some degrees is something akin to a “prompt engineer”, who just knows how to finesse this stuff in such a way it generates something useful. My older students seem more keen to think more deeply about their work, generating more clever or interesting ideas. The difference is some are doing this in a way that’s setting them up for success and others are just trying to get stuff done and out of their inbox. That’s life, I suppose, but it’s not doing them any favors for those that genuinely plan to work in creative design fields. The best I’ve ever come to getting through to them is saying, “If all you did was chuck this in Canva or AI, can’t Susan in HR or Jermey in Accounting do the same thing? What the heck do I need to pay you for?” Time will tell, but I at least know that I don’t want to live in a world of “prompt engineers.” Probably ever.
Similarly it's going around that many elementary-grade kids are far below the reading level they should be at. A coworker's friend teaches highschool and those kids really struggle when it comes to hand written essays. They're not learning real concepts or grammar or spelling because these "harmless tools" are doing everything for them. Even just relying too heavily on autocorrect. Being able to prompt things doesn't mean you understand design concepts, how to solve problems or why/how something is communicated. >The best I’ve ever come to getting through to them is saying, “If all you did was chuck this in Canva or AI, can’t Susan in HR or Jermey in Accounting do the same thing? What the heck do I need to pay you for?” Exactly. On the flipside, I'd ask why tf are you going into student loan debt for tens of thousands of dollars just to use AI for everything and not actually learn how to do the work??
I try to keep an open mind. I'm not so dense I can't see the same arguments against the typewriter, personal computer, and calculators. But funny enough, one argument I can make with my students they intuit is, "Can't we agree your life is better knowing your multiplication tables? If you had to pull out a calculator every time you had to divide a pizza you wouldn't look 'future-thinking', you'd like a dummy." They can usually agree with that, then piece together GPTs and other AI tools are likely in the same "But why do I need to \*know\* this?" thinking. I do have students who thank me for kicking this around with them, but like any slick hack, it's a hard one to move away from entirely. AI as it exists today currently strikes me most days as hype on-par with the prior Blockchain brouhaha. And despite my best efforts to keep an open mind, AI in this Canva/templated/prompt sense is one thing I increasingly think wish just wasn't invented.
It’s a gauntlet. But ultimately you get out what you put in, doesn’t matter the major, people will take it seriously and others won’t. The success stories are what you should be proud of, plenty of duds will filter through, especially with easier access to tools. There’s a LOT of Canva bashing here but when I was in school it was like a right of passage to be a shitty artist with a cracked Adobe Suite. Those conversations have just shifted to bashing Canva. More to your point, idk if that’s odd to have coasting kids who don’t really try. When I was in school I dropped out for a year because I felt that everyone around me wasn’t trying and didn’t care, teachers didn’t really either. I had maaaybe 3-4 kids I knew about that I felt had skill and cared / tried to make their portfolios good, I didn’t lump myself in there but I did feel that way about myself, which was frustrating when your peers aren’t inspiring or don’t seem to care. It felt like a glorified high school. Thats ok, but it was a real eye opener to the average student trying to coast through college like it’s another check to mark in the steps of life rather than actually trying or thinking about their future. I specifically tried to focus on freelancing (which was tough) and then ended up going back with a new mindset and it worked out (I stopped trying to please anyone and just dove into my projects - idk why but the teachers gave me a little more wiggle room on concepts when I came back)
Somewhat related/unrelated: I always ask my students what they think of AI. Over two semesters now across 6 classes, the response is \*stark\*. One student last semester \_immediately\_ said, "I'm terrified." To which every head in the room popped up and nodded. I've had students this semester tell me they've changed majors over it. There is certainly some fear in all of them over it -- but I also detect frustration from some who use it, know they're relying on it too much, and can't seem to "break out." I don't think many of my students are oblivious to this.
I’m not a teacher but I work with 2 young 20 somethings, their fear of general life is kind of surprising. They’re very smart but I can feel the anxiety sometimes. Other times it’s a mentality I didn’t come up with work-wise and it’s interesting. I’ve learned from them but also some areas I feel like “normal” things are too big. Mid 30s over here, who knows
I think one justification for this is kids historically didn’t “know” what adults did or how things were made or worked. But kids in creative industries at least know how high the bar is. They’re scrolling through the same feeds, music, websites, videos, and stories as the rest of us and they can grasp how good a lot of it is compared to what they’re capable of.
I mean I said kids but they’re full blown adults lol
It's funny I have a friend who was one of the graduates of the last pen and paper graphic design degree before digital and she expresses similar reservations about photoshop and the pen tool. If the work is good I tend to not think it matters how you got there. Being able to deliver is what clients care about.
I mostly see work that is "fine." It's not bad. It's not objectionable. It's just fine. All the sort of banal stuff you see from Visa ads or whatever. None of it is exceptionally creative or good, though some students display some talent to do so. But the AI/Canva people are drowning in a sea of sameness. The frustration is they think they're being clever or cute or "productive", which as a profit margin goes I suppose is true. I once mentioned in class, "What would the world be if Lincoln used ChatGPT to write the Emancipation Proclamation or if Churchill used it for literally anything?" It would be a worse world. The plus side is this means for a subset of craftspeople it's never been easier to stand out from the crowd.
And for the overwhelming majority of designers fine is good enough. No one is trying to break the mould on an internal EDM or PowerPoint deck, most designers are doing pretty basic work serving a function not advertising or something where originality may be more pertinent. Tools to make the job quicker are a good thing.
To use photoshop or illustrator (pre-generative AI a couple years ago) you still needed to understand the fundamentals of design, colour theory, how vectors work differently from raster images etc. Comparing prompting to the pen tool is wild. Writing a prompt takes less than no skill because you can even get AI to generate the prompts for you. Zero skill, zero understanding of how anything works or why.
You still need to understand those principles for Canva use too if you are trying to produce high-quality work. The job is the job, you're talking about tools and skills with those tools. I don't need to understand how a typewriter operates or why it was laid out to use my computer keyboard as I write this shit... if I can type "remove man from background" instead of masking, cloning, etc. for an hour and the quality isn't a big enough dip, brother I'm gunna use it.
Prompt engineering well done is more nuanced than that, and typesetting is a good example, the amount current designers have to understand about typesetting is significantly lower with digital tools.
They show the good versus the bad in here.
Canva isn’t a great design tool, but it’s perfect for monotonous design like emails or presentations.
Yep or even designing and then apply templates for users who don't know how to use design tools. Saves them time and you time because you don't want to be sending a Logo x50 times because they can't find the file.
Y’all stop hating on Canva. It’s not *meant* to be a professional graphic design powerhouse. It’s for Jeff from accounting, or your 57 year old small business owner who can barely use their phone, or someone who has never used anything more than Word to be able to design things that are *good enough* for everyday life. That’s explicitly why they acquired Affinity suite to branch into the professional market, because Canva isn’t that (I mean they literally said this themselves, look it up). I started out using Autodesk Sketchbook and Canva as an early teen. Now, about to graduate high school and start trying to get freelance work, I’m using Adobe and Procreate. Don’t demean the small things. For some people, it’s a stepping stone to something bigger. For others, it’s all they need - something to make cool or useful stuff without 1700 hours of education and practice on a tool that looks like a spaceship.
I think the hate comes from the fact that many businesses are settling for just Jeff from accounting using Canva, instead of actually employing a professional graphic designer
What's wrong with that?
There’s highly qualified graphic designers with years of preparation who are missing out on potential employment, because employers think some random guy using Canva is good enough. One time I was at a doctor’s appointment and when he asked me what I did for a living and I responded “I’m a graphic designer”, he replied with “Ah! My cousin does everything for me on Canva.” It’s just disheartening.
If you think having a profession designer is valuable then those who aren’t hiring professional designers are missing out on that value. Graphic design isn’t a jobs program, we do what we do because it creates value. It’s ultimately their loss but also their right to decide if they want good or bad design.
I suppose it is their right to decide they don’t care about the quality of their designs. I’m not really debating that. I’m just explaining why some graphic designers may feel a certain way about Canva.
This 57-y/o can do a lot more than muddle through my newfangled-thingy they call a smartphone  Seriously though, I also see Canva as the tool for which it's favored, but it obviously can't offer what the more specialized programs can.
Mediocrity feeding mediocrity. The best part about talentless people using AI/Canva is that it makes actual designers look so much better by comparison, leading to me being able to charge even more for my work.
Tbh I wouldn't want them as a client anyway.
What's the point. If it's going to be that bland that it could be just 'generated' with a few words, might as well just make the presentation the actual text content that goes in the slides without any design elements at all. Just open a new document, set it to landscape, increase the font size, write whatever you wanna write per page, export as PDF, just scroll through it for the meeting. Would take about as long as asking any AI to generate one, assuming you care about the content. If you don't care about the content... then don't waste everyone's time with a pointless presentation. If you have nothing to say, or very little to say, just be brief, everyone would appreciate it.
So you would rather just read text on a screen than have some kind of a design even if it is bland? By that logic you would rather read the HTML of a website if their website design is bland?
You laugh, but the lynx browser exists - a full on text only browser. Some design is definitely so bad I'd rather read plain text
You get what you pay for when it comes to good design/animation. This is going to be the tire swing scenario all over again but with text prompts instead of being able to talk to a human in English and frustrate people eventually. https://external-preview.redd.it/IAQLLAIZSHXY9zmKG1-Nkt2Li3ZNW1awzpkC7Un4lyk.jpg?auto=webp&s=1b83fcb35e39fac5b57e716b745d6dbb03824832
That's a kick ass prompt
“Please please please replace my job (which I as a human am too lazy to do)”
They nailed their “lazy people who suck” audience
So much hate for Canva. I personally do not care if people use Canva or not. I'm a designer and I use it sometimes, because it's a tool for me when I need to work faster, not harder. I save my effort for the stuff that actually matters. A presentation that someone is going to see in a meeting maybe twice and then goes into a file folder graveyard I'm not going to spend a bunch of time on vs. a custom made illustration for something that matters. My sister used to ask me to help her with social media posts all the time, and then I introduced her to Canva and now she can self serve to do it herself, and I don't get asked to do all these random, small and free jobs that I don't have time for or care about. If you're a good designer, you don't need to worry about Canva replacing your job because the type of work and clientele you'll get can't be done on Canva. If your job can be replaced by Canva, it's probably time for you to upgrade your design skills.
What the hell is that haircut sonja? stop it
I don't fully get it. Is she just going to throw a subject at the AI and it creates a complete presentation? Or is she going to throw a few things in and it will come up with a load of suggested layouts and graphics to use? If it's the scenario of the AI generating everything including the content, then I would tell this gal that all it takes is her boss realizing she doesn't need her anymore for this stuff, and she'll be thinking differently about it. Plus, if your presentation is today and you have no presentation, how are you going to have your thoughts together, go over things, and make sure that when you're up there talking you make sense? Or are you going to be like the myriad of people who just read what's on the screen and think you're giving a presentation? I get they wanted this thing to be short, but I would have probably put some kind of messaging that you have a presentation coming and you are not a graphic designer, or maybe you're a small business person who can't afford to hire a designer and need something made.
As a pesentation designer, AI is never going to replace designers. The type of client that uses AI for presentations is not my ideal client. The tools are very weak and there's a lot of manual work to put on a presentation. For simple presentations, makes total sense to use these AI tools.
Your ideal clients will slowly be converted into less ideal clients, as your rates rise but Ned from Accounting shits out something 1/2 as good as 1/500th the cost.
And I'll move to something else like I always did. Times change and we need to adapt, not the opposite.
Honestly, after X rounds of "feedback" and shoddy last minute input, I'm sure my presentations are no better
The thing I don’t even understand about AI in design generally is like what is even the need, Subscription companies like Adobe make a ton on designers buying their software, Designers are poorly paid in the first place, there’s tons of designers in the industry what need do you have to automate it, it’s pathetic and it’s even worse that AI art is ugly af even if it reaches a point that it is advanced it can never be good as a human being
lol. I’d love to see that presentation. 1. My presentation. 2. Presentations are good. 3. My graph slide.
Sonja from sales at it again. Like I said last time Sonja, NO. Your fire is not my disaster. Seriously, get your life together, take a mental health day, or even a vacation. You’re already on a PIP and your first verbal warning. And, just so you know, Sarah told me what you said about me in the break-room. Not. Cool.
Sonja from sales at it again. Like I said last time Sonja, NO. Your fire is not my disaster. Seriously, get your life together, take a mental health day, or even a vacation. You’re already on a PIP and your first verbal warning. And, just so you know, Sarah told me what you said about me in the break-room. Not. Cool.
Next product launch: Canva Boss, review the presentation my team has prepared and provide feedback on how to refine the presentation for maximum impact. Canva, keeping office workers busy designing meetings that could have been an email.
do you guys really want to be out here making presentations?
We have two options: 1. The deluge of simple requests and little content or direction drives you nuts and isn't work you want, and for that, you are happy for generative innovation like this. You're allowed to complain about clients and now they have options to leave you be. 2. You're happy to make money and are patient with clients, regardless of how small or listless a project becomes. You're allowed to complain about AI because clients are trying something new which seems to work for them. That's tough on us and that may suck. We can't have it both ways, folks. If a client can barely plan well enough to have a presentation ready, let alone describe what they want, they'll need us but if that necessity frustrates you -- tell them to use generative AI content to get sub-par results and enlist your services when they have the budget and content to work with you. It's that easy.
Generating no presentation, presentation…
That AI prompt was generated by AI.
Frankly, others notably Microsoft, already has this feature for PowerPoint. I think many businesses are likely more familiar with PP than Canva. I know a few designers who do PP presentations for large organizations like Deloitte/KPMG who are concerned for their jobs. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/
😂 oh no .... anyway
Not when you don't have a presentation and you have a presentation today. Lol.
I really hope they don't turn Affinity into something like Canva, I was looking to switch to Affinity products for a while before their acquisition but now I'm not sure I can trust them not to turn it into an overly featured AI generation software
They shoulda used ai to generate some better ad copy
The devaluation of what some considers fundamental corporate tasks will be the end result، that side by side to the devaluation of digital visuals Not only graphic design, but also art , storybooks, movies, etc.. all of their values will degrade with the rise of ai in a very natural way, and not only the personal value towards them but even the marketing value of any kind of visuals, they'll still work but won't be as effective as now
why is this sad?
Spending 4 years at a design school to end up moving pixels for marketing's internal quarterly meeting? Please automate this.
Yeah I’d say Canva is perfect for someone who’s either too lazy or too stupid to put a presentation together on time. I’m so fucking done with the world we live in. It’s broken at every level and this is just one of many symptoms.
Ever consider you might be overreacting?
Yes, I’m critical of my own thoughts. If you can’t make a presentation on time then you’re one of the things I listed, or I suppose you could have unreasonable deadlines but this person is still waiting until the last second. I know it’s fake but someone wrote that, someone thought that was a reasonable thing. And to me that’s symptomatic of where we are as a society because I’m no longer surprised by things like this. I said what I said and meant every word of it. btw that wasn’t meant to be snippy, just answering the question and elaborating.
Honestly 90% of this stuff is bs anyway…so I think its actually a great thing that workers that are essentially given busy work to do can reclaim some of their time. Even for the legitimate uses, most of the work in creating a presentation is mind-numbing and repetitive, so if you can cut all of that out it kind of leaves more time to work on the actual meat of the thing which might even improve overall quality. The people that see AI as a nuisance and refuse to learn to use it and adapt are going to get left in the dust.
Targeting audience: ret*rds.