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Before Canva, creating a professional looking design was a complex process - you had to purchase expensive software; learn how to use it; purchase stock photography and fonts for the software; decide on a layout; slice images; receive photos and content via email; design something; upload and email the pdf only to find revisions needed to be made … and then finally be able to prepare your design for web or print. 

Since launching in August 2013, Canva has been changing the way in which we communicate. Today our design tool has attracted over 60 million happy users across 190 countries, who have collectively created more than 7 billion designs. 

With an integrated marketplace that has both free and paid stock photography, fonts, illustrations, and thousands of templates; a paid subscription that offers the ability to set up a brand kit so users can save their brand colours, fonts and assets, and ensure consistency across their designs; and a print service that gives our users the ability to produce professional prints in a variety of formats and sizes, delivered straight to their doorstep - Canva is disrupting the way we design.

Canva

canva

That’s what happened at <strong>Canva</strong> Create, a summit held in Los Angeles last week, in honor of <strong>Canva</strong>, a graphic design company known for helping non-designers produce good-enough flyers to advertise a yard sale or middle school talent show. In LA, Melanie Perkins, co-founder of the $40bn Australian ...

‘A fine line between humor and flopping’: tech summit’s rap battle is the height of corporate cringe | US work & careers | The Guardian

According to the , reports of identity theft and fraud went up from 4.7 million cases to 5.7 million cases in 2023. Although there are many ways for someone to steal your identity, one of the most common ways this happens is by a bad actor finding your personal information on an old PDF or document. Federal Trade Commission It’s easy for malicious individuals to use your Social Security number, address, financial details, or other sensitive information to cause a lot of damage to your life. This can be easily avoided by redacting personal information before publishing or sending your PDF out into the world. This post will cover how to black out and blur out text in a PDF with both Photoshop and Canva. How to Black Out Text in a PDF with Photoshop To start, open up Photoshop, then go to . Then, double-click the PDF you wish to redact on your hard drive. File > Open This will open your PDF in the Photoshop interface. Study your PDF and locate all the information you want blacked out. To black out your information, grab the in the or press . Rectangular Marquee Tool Tool Bar M Then, draw a rectangle around the information you want to black out. Doing this will make it so that only the pixels inside the selected area will be affected. Now that the area is selected, select the . In the Tool Bar at the top of the screen, make sure to: Brush Tool (B) The is set to . Mode Normal The is set to . Opacity 100% The is set to . Flow 100% Also, make sure your is black. Foreground Color Now, you’re ready to paint the inside of the selected area black. Don’t worry about trying to stay within the dotted lines, as only the area within the box will be affected. Repeat this process for all the information that you need to black out. How to Blur Out Text with Photoshop If blacking out information is a little too abrasive for your tastes, you can always try blurring it out for a more subtle feel. To blur out text with Photoshop, first select the area with the Rectangle Marquee Tool as described above. In the Layer’s Panel, make sure the correct layer is selected, then go to . Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur In the Gaussian Blur options menu, adjust the Radius slider until you are satisfied with how blurry your information is. Only the area within the selection will be affected, so don’t worry about the rest of your document. When you’re happy with the effect, click to confirm. OK Repeat this process as many times as needed to blur out all your sensitive information. How to Save Your File as a PDF Once you’ve redacted your document, you may want to create a new PDF for easy distribution. Doing this is slightly different than exporting an image as a PNG or JPG, but it’s just as easy. First, go to . File > Save As In the Save As options menu, choose where you want the PDF to be saved. Then, make sure Photoshop PDF is selected in the format drop-down menu. Click when ready. Save Your PDF is now ready to add to any email or message. How to Black Out Text in a PDF with Canva If you don’t own Photoshop and you don’t feel like paying the $20 a month to use it, there are free options out there as well. By far, the easiest free option for you to choose from is Canva. If you haven’t heard of Canva or don’t have a free account yet, you can check out more info . here To start redacting a PDF in Canva: Click the button in the top right corner of the Canva Home Screen –>Then click . Create a Design Import File When prompted, choose the PDF you want to redact from your hard drive and click . The PDF will then open up in Canva in a new tab. Open Now that your PDF is open click the tab in the Side Menu and select the square under the section. Once you do, a square will show up on your canvas. Elements Shapes Then, resize the square to fit the text you want to black out. To change the color of the square, make sure it’s selected, then double-click the color picker above the canvas. In the sidebar, choose black. One of the advantages of using Canva to black out your text is that you can make your job easier by duplicating the element you just placed. To do this, select the black square on your canvas, then in the Mini Options Bar above the square, click the button. Duplicate This will make an exact copy of the square. Place this copied square over the next piece of information you need redacted. Repeat this process as many times as needed. How to Blur Out Text with Canva If you prefer to blur out your sensitive information with Canva, unfortunately, doing so is not as easy as it is with Photoshop. Thankfully, it’s not a complicated process once you’ve done it a few times. Your first move is to duplicate the page you’re working on. To do this, click the in the top right corner above the canvas. Duplication button Then, with the duplicated page selected, click . Then, in the Side Menu, select under the section. Edit Photo Blur Effects Make sure to adjust the Intensity slider until the entire page is as blurred as you need it. At this point, you now have your original page on top and a blurred duplicate on the bottom. From here, drag the burred copy on top of the original and make sure the two pages line up perfectly. The goal now is to shrink the blurred page to fit the area you need blurred. To do this, click the blurred page to select it, then use the side handles to shrink it down to the exact area. Repeat this same process as many times as needed to blur out all of your sensitive information. How to Download Your PDF Once you’re finished blurring your information, you might want to resave it as a PDF. To start, click the big button in the top right corner of the screen, then select . Share Download In the next menu, open the File Type drop-down menu and choose or . Your choice depends on what you want to do with your PDF: PDF Standard PDF Print Select if you plan to send the PDF in an email or post it online. PDF Standard Select if you plan on printing the PDF physically. PDF Print Finally, check on Flatten PDF if you plan on printing the PDF. Otherwise, leave it unchecked. Ensure the correct pages are selected under , then click . Select Pages Download Your new PDF is now available on your hard drive. Final Thoughts If you only have a few documents to redact every few months, then Canva is the best option. If you have multiple PDFs to censor per month, it may be best for you to invest in Photoshop, as it can be faster to redact your documents, especially when it comes to blurring out your information.

How to Black Out Text in a PDF with Photoshop or for Free in Canva

Cómo oscurecer texto en un PDF con Photoshop o gratis en Canva

Comment noircir le texte d'un PDF avec Photoshop ou gratuitement dans Canva

फ़ोटोशॉप के साथ या कैनवा में मुफ्त में पीडीएफ में टेक्स्ट को ब्लैक आउट कैसे करें

Photoshop または Canva で無料で PDF 内のテキストを黒くする方法

Como ocultar texto em um PDF com Photoshop ou gratuitamente no Canva

Cách bôi đen văn bản trong PDF bằng Photoshop hoặc miễn phí trên Canva

如何使用 Photoshop 或在 Canva 中免费涂黑 PDF 中的文本

Today, there is a wide range of tools that designers, animators, and motion designers use in their work. On the one hand, it is good to have options to choose from, but, on the other hand, it might be difficult to choose a tool that will meet the needs and requirements of a particular specialist. This article discusses how to choose software and services that will be of benefit to you, aren't too primitive or overcomplicated, and will fit into your budget. Let's go! Step #1: Define your goals As nearly in every activity, in order to achieve a good result, it is important to first of all clearly define the goal. In our case, choosing a tool for creating animations and motion design means formulating the task for which the tool will be used. For example, creating animated graphics for advertising on social networks is very different from preparing video clips or creating movies. And despite the fact that, in general, different products can be used for a wide range of tasks, it is usually not possible to achieve high efficiency in this way. There is no software that would be equally convenient in all possible cases, inevitably there will be cases where the product will show either insufficient functionality, or too much time and effort will be spent on solving simple tasks. Step #2: Define a set of desired functions Once you are clear about what kind of graphic content you are going to create, you should think about what functions a tool should have to solve this task. For example, you need to create videos with animated text for your work—what features should your software have to be able to do it quickly and easily? Most likely, there will be a number of such tasks that will require different features to be solved. Thus, you will get a list of functions, which you will need to compare with the descriptions of existing tools. That’s what we will do at the next step. Step #3: Explore available options So, you have a specific task and an understanding of what features should be in a professional tool to solve it. Now you need to understand what products are available on the market, and how they correspond to the list of the desired features. It is important to understand that, in general, there are several categories of tools for creating animations and motion design—simple services with low entry level, more advanced tools and "starships" for sophisticated video content production. It is very likely that one or even several tasks can be solved with different tools fitting into each category, but how fast, convenient and cheap will it be? This is what we need to understand in the next step. Step #4: Making final choice To begin with, we need to make a shortlist of tools that might be suitable for our goals. For example, let's imagine that we want to create animated banners with animated text. Now, create a table listing the products that can do this—take the tools from the categories listed above (simple, medium, complex). is a popular tool for creating simple designs in a drag-n-drop editor. Canva is an online service for creating promotional videos and animated banners for social networks featuring professional effects. MixaPixa is a professional graphics and effects software package developed by Adobe that is used for the post-production of movies, video games and TV shows. After Effects It is clear that each of the listed options can help us solve our problem, namely, to create a high-quality animated banner for social networks. Still, we need to understand how easy it will be, how effective, and at what cost. Buying all possible variants of software to perform a test is not the most effective option. That's why it's a good idea to start by studying the available materials on creating the type of content you need in each program. For example, here is on how to create animated banners in Canva. The result is as follows: a tutorial Let's go further and study MixaPixa. We see that our task can be solved with the help of this tool, too. And the result can be more interesting from the visual point of view: And here's on how to create animated banners in After Effects. It took more than 1300 English words to describe how to create this gif image: a tutorial Now we can make a table with the pros and cons of each tool: The analysis of the table shows that for our task of creating animated banners for advertising in social networks the best choice would be MixaPixa—this tool has more flexibility than Canva, but it is clearly easier to work with than with After Effects. At the same time, if we needed only standard animations, it would be better to use Canva, and for rendering commercials with actors and dubbing we would have chosen the product by Adobe. Conclusion The selection of professional tools is always an activity that requires time and effort. The stage of analysis and market research should not be skipped, otherwise, you are more likely to start paying for software that might not have all the necessary features. The other extreme is to follow trends and start using the "most advanced" tool that can do virtually everything. In this case, up to 90% of its functions will not be used. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. These four simple steps for analysis and comparison will help you avoid problems and save much effort and time.

Canva vs. MixaPixa vs. After Effects for Animation and Motion Design

“Everything artificial is designed.” - Dan Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things What is Canva? Canva is a software product that helps designers of any skill level to create media 10x faster. Canva simplifies designing: Presentations Blog post covers Social media posts of different formats (regular posts, stories & WhatsApp Status, etc.,) Ads across every digital ad network (Facebook Ad, Twitter Ad, LinkedIn Video Ad, Leaderboard Ad, Story Ad, Feed Ad) Canva makes it simpler and faster to design media assets embedded across the internet. Product: The product is designed with the perspective of getting a particular job done for the user rather than aggregating a bunch of tools that allow a designer to edit an image. Not everyone who wants to create a LinkedIn cover photo has the skill, time & patience to wrestle with the complex tooling available in Adobe Photoshop. Instead with 1 click, Canva allows anyone to get started, and within 5 mins of intuitive exploration of Canva’s predefined templates the user will be able to come up with a new custom LinkedIn Cover image. Example: The effort to do the job of creating a LinkedIn Cover post is reduced by 10x with Canva. The same holds for any type of job that Canva supports currently. Time Saver as a Mental Model: Great products save great amounts of time to their consumers. Cornelius Vanderbilt's railways saved time to travel across the country for people and goods. Amazon saved time for consumers to go to the big box stores. Canva saves time in designing media that is routinely used everywhere on the internet. Business Model: Canva uses the popular freemium model commonly used by most of the Software as Service products. They give away the product for free and charge a premium price for more advanced features. Pricing options include Free ($0), Canva Pro(12.95/Month $119.40/Year) & Canva for Enterprise (Pricing is unavailable). Canva's freemium version is generous and for a majority of use cases, the premium subscription is not required. This strategy helps Canva in building a large satisfied customer base that will become strong advocates for their product and even drive their enterprise subscriptions. The reciprocation effect is at its peak effect. It is also a bottom-up strategy that has been successful in other SaaS products like Slack. As someone who has created a ton of media assets on Canva, I would bet Canva has one of the highest NPS scores in the industry. Positives: Product: Canva nailed the in-browser product experience for creating media assets while the industry started moving from desktop to browser. They also nailed down the use cases consumers are using the product for, which was a step away from what Adobe was building at the time. Instead of competing with other design products like Figma, Canva's approach has been about integrating with competition and making them partners. A designer could still design things on multiple products like Figma, , or Adobe and in the end, create the final product in Canva. Facet.ai For every investor dollar that goes into a startup, $0.5 goes into two types of taxes. Cloud tax: Paid to AWS, Azure, or GCP Marketing tax: Paid to Google or Facebook Canvas adoption is also the result of nailing the use case of creating Ads across Google and Facebook ad networks. With a significant customer base, Canva has the opportunity to expand its product into the arena of companies like HubSpot in case of marketing and also compete with Shopify in case of Click to Print category services. Product & Market Expansion: Negatives: This is a personal bias as a long-time Canva user, but there is hardly any negative that I can see as an outsider in Canva's product, strategy & execution. Competition: Adobe has a Canva equivalent (Adobe Spark) which doesn't address the customer job to be done as well as Canva. There are new startups like , & (in India) which are creating products to make it easier to create media assets. Simplified Facet.ai Invideo The previous iteration of companies made it simpler to create & edit media in browser, the next generation of products will be an attempt to make them smarter using AI & ML. The Big Question: For a long time, the prediction was that Adobe would acquire Canva. This scenario is now more unlikely. Canva is estimated to be making a cool $1B revenue/year in revenue. This is higher than a lot of publicly traded SaaS companies. Adding to that equation is the recent fundraising announcement of $200M at a $40B valuation. It looks like a Canva IPO is more likely in the next couple of years than a Canva acquisition. P.S: The cover page for BMB newsletter is designed in Canva. P.P.S. If you are interested in getting an edge in early-stage startup business models, subscribe to the BMB newsletter here.

Canva Business Model Breakdown: Product, Revenue, Competition, and The Big Question 

If you’re someone who works in the graphic design field or just likes to create visual content, chances are you have heard of or used Canva. Canva is a platform for creating graphics for social media, presentations, posters, documents, and other visual content. Its Australian founder, Melanie Perkins, has a remarkable story, and her journey to success is something we’ll be talking about today. The Young Entrepreneur Perkins was an entrepreneur at a young age. She started doing business by designing and selling scarves in her hometown when she was 14. She said she "loved the freedom and excitement of building a business," which played a big part in her motivation for the future. As you can see, Perkins was fuelled with ambition from the very beginning. The Problem When Perkins was in the university, she taught other students graphic design. She often witnessed her students struggling with the basics due to the complicated and non-beginner-friendly graphic design software. Additionally, the software was extremely expensive (The cost of Photoshop was nearly $1,000 at the time) and was overkill for many projects. There had to be a better way. She had a vision that design software in the future would be online, collaborative, and more accessible than the existing complicated tools. And so, at 19 years old, Perkins and her boyfriend Cliff Obrecht started to test out a portion of this big idea, which was called Fusion Books. The First Project Fusion Books was a print design company that was used online. It allowed people to make their own designs for the site with Fusion's templates and then order them from there, which in turn made it easy, quick, and cost-effective as opposed to traditional printing options. The couple grew the company, and in the span of 5 years, it became quite successful. To this day, Fusion Books is still fully operational and is the largest yearbook company in Australia. Broadening the Focus Fusion Books was no doubt a success for the couple, after all, it is the biggest yearbook company in Australia, and had already expanded into France and New Zealand. But when Melanie and Cliff were running Fusion Books, they thought there could be a broader application for the software, which was the start of what we would know today as Canva. The Start Of Canva In 2011, Melanie and Cliff started Canva. It was a big risk since there were many other competitors in the market - like Adobe Photoshop for example. But they continued regardless. Canva's goal was to become "the simplest way possible" to design images with just drag-and-drop functionality of templates that are accessible to everybody with an Internet connection. Rejection Perkins was based in Australia, so it was extremely difficult for her to garner big tech investors which, by the way, were mostly based in the other parts of the United States. She lived with her brother for 3 months in San Francisco. She pitched to more than a hundred venture capitalists, but unluckily, was rejected by all of them. She said in an interview: "I remember thinking: "Why is this so hard?"”. Finally Taking A Right Turn During her Fusion Book days in 2010, Melanie met venture capitalist Bill Thai at a conference in Perth. Bill was interested in the startup. Six months later, he introduced her to Google maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen. Together, they introduced her to a range of other investors. Two years later, she was able to raise the seed round. Things were finally taking a right turn! She was also eventually introduced to celebrities Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson. The two liked the idea, and invested into it. Be Patient, Not Frustrated Rasmussen agreed to serve as their tech advisor. However, when he took the position, he rejected every single resume and LinkedIn profile that Perkins sent to him, as well as anyone else she brought to him. At the time, Perkins just wanted to get started, so this was incredibly frustrating. In the end, it was all worth it. They found a tech developer in Dave Hearnden and a co-founder in Cameron Adams, who were both from Google and had the refined skillsets that the startup needed to evolve into what it is today. After closing their first round of funding, the company already began to see early growth. The Perfect Timing Canva was launched in August 2013, it got a couple of reviews from blogs and users. Canva's engineers had to stay up late just to keep up with the growth and new subscribers to the platform. During the time, the rise of social media platforms was changing how brands reached people. Schools, authors, bowling alleys - everyone really started to care about their online presence. It was the perfect timing possible since Canva was an easy and affordable way to build a magnificent online presence. In Canva's first month, it grew to 50,000 users. Melanie focused on building an incredible product, didn’t cut corners, so when people discovered Canva.. they loved it.. and evangelized it and spoke about it to all of their friends and peers. Billion Dollar Growth Canva raised $3 million by 2014. It had 600,000 users who have made over 3.5 million designs. Six years later, this start-up has become one of Australia's hottest new businesses. Mary Meeker, an investor in Silicon Valley, led the 85 million dollar funding round in October 2019, valuing the company at 3.2 billion dollars. Additionally, it makes it one of the most valuable woman-led tech companies in the world. 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies utilize the platform, and now, it's a company valued at 15 billion-dollars. Future Visions Perkins takes on this responsibility seriously. She plans to use the funding to demonstrate her leadership capabilities, expand her team of seven hundred across Sydney, Beijing, and Manila, and create new revenue streams. With this strategy, Perkins will be closer than she has ever been to competing with professional design tools of leading tech giants like Adobe and Microsoft. The young founder is ready to take on the challenge! 3 Lessons From Canva 1. She built a product for a problem she was trying to solve. She taught graphic design, used photoshop and realized it was too expensive for most students. She scratched her own itch. 2. If you build something that solves multiple customer problems, and does it better and/or simpler than other products, you can still go into a saturated market and be successful. 3. You will be rejected... a lot. You will fail... a lot. Expect this, and work on developing a personality that can withstand these setbacks.

The Story of Canva: A Billion Dollar Startup Built on Democratizing Design

is awesome for graphic and web design. Canva.com Especially using the file export feature that downloads a design as a transparent SVG. To export a transparent .svg file, first, create a design. Then, select SVG from the options dropdown. Make sure to . check the box for transparency Once downloaded, add to your project folder, and viola! ty

🎨 Export a .svg file using Canva ⚛️

Do time-saving apps like Canva help or hinder the careers of freelancers and digital creatives?  Tell us what you think! At Hacker Noon, we are all about collaboration and open sharing of ideas, and love to share this process with you via our Slogging (blogging for Slack) app that lets anyone turn a Slack thread into a beautiful Hacker Noon article. This Slogging thread by Linh, Amy, Kien, Natasha, Akasha Rose and Shaina occurred in Hacker Noon's official #podcast channel and has been edited for readability. Linh Jun 25, 2021, 4:03 PM Kien this is your turf but I think it’s time we update the default thumbnails for YouTube (again) I feel like our current one looks, for lack of a better word, too visually boring with all similar design. Here’s side by side comparison of ours and another tech channel. How do we engineer this kind of exciting, useful, user-friendly thumbnail and not have you necessarily needing to design it every time? Is it as simple as taking a better zoom screenshot where everybody smiles or shows some kind of emotion with a big text bubble a la Hacker Noon? I’d also encourage you to look through some other successful YouTube tech channels to see what they did well. Amy Jun 25, 2021, 4:47 PM Yeah, I love those thumbnails. Maybe we need to take screenshots from the video. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 4:58 PM Unfortunately, that kind of thumbnail you’re referencing takes more time than you think, with the cutting people out of the background and everything. what do we think of that? Kien Jun 25, 2021, 4:59 PM Since each thumbnail is kind of different, there will be no such thing as templates and every time I (or whoever in charge of this) will have to jump in and use a bit of creativity to design the thumbs 😂 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:00 PM I don’t think it needs to look exactly like that! Lemme find some other screenshots I like. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:00 PM Closest we did was these thumbnails. Amy Jun 25, 2021, 5:01 PM Oh, I like that better. Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Yeah, this one looks better! A little too green maybe but can mix and match with brand colors guideline? How long do those take to create? Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Can always bring that back, we lil twist 😂 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM Um i remembered Natasha did most of the cropping people out? so maybe not that… long? 😂 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:02 PM How long does it take though? Ideally I want something replicable..ish Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM Look how simple this one is Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM (She does have good stills from an expensive camera though 😂) Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM LOL but we don't have the aesthetics to follow that kind of simple 😂 😂 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:03 PM YES Natasha Jun 25, 2021, 5:04 PM Hey team Canva has a background remover :brain: 2 Natasha Jun 25, 2021, 5:06 PM It's a premium feature 🤗 Just click on "effects"  while your uploaded image is selected - it's the first option: 🔥 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:06 PM Cool! problem solved Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Genius!!!! We do that on top of 5 custom colors and BOOM 💯 2 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Hmm  hope they have that outline feature, too! Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:07 PM Let me go see Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:13 PM OHHHH SHEEET, THEY DO! we can play with shadow effects and make it the outline effect (which will come in handy for whoever is designing these!) 💚 1 Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:16 PM People say Canva are stealing jobs from graphic designers I'm saying IT SAVES US SO MUCH TIME lol 😂 😂 2 :fireball: 2 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:17 PM Yup!!! Time to actually design lolllll! Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:20 PM Hang and I just had a similar convo convincing a dev (who shall not be named) that he should just pay for a tool instead of spending time coding. The long view is it saves you time! Use tools to our advantage so we can use our brains for actually demanding high skilled tasks! Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:25 PM Btw Kien what if you hit "slog" on this thread and title it “Does Canva hurt of help graphic designers? A designer’s take” or something like that. Kien Jun 25, 2021, 5:27 PM I was thinking of that, but I'm also scratching my head with the startups video 😭 Linh Jun 25, 2021, 5:30 PM Slogging is so simple though just hit create draft!!! Linh Jun 28, 2021, 8:31 PM Akasha Rose what if you add your 2 cents here (or not) about other types of freelancing work vs. tools? Akasha Rose Jun 28, 2021, 11:52 PM When I do Youtube strategy for startups I always recommend Canva. I've used the remove background feature since it launched and it is great. I didn't know about the outline feature though, that's cool! Akasha Rose Jun 28, 2021, 11:58 PM In the future, most creative jobs will be done via AI. A lot of people in digital lost their jobs in the early 2000s when these jobs went offshore. And then came the rise of Fiverr etc that means that even providing services as a freelancer was undercut. So tools like Canva are just a progression of this, and then there will be AI. We will put our video through an AI interface and say what mood we want and it will suggest an SEO and clickbait optimised title and even produce the thumbnail. So even Canva will be disrupted in about 5 years, no more. The system is veering towards ultimate efficiency. This isn't a bad thing, as long as we implement a global UBI. Universal Basic Income. The issue at the moment is that all the wealth we generate (via mining, energy, resources, banks) goes to big companies and the wealth of 50% of the world is concentrated in the hands of 1%. Redistribute that 50% of wealth (e.g. via DeFi) and have AI do the work, and  human culture will experience a golden age of creativity and prosperity that isn't tied to physical labour or the time dollar. Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 9:26 AM Yaayy! hello everyone, Linh as Kien is busy with startup.so, for the time being, I just took Hackernoon latest podcast thumbnail and did something in different style like you said about zoom screenshot, big bubble text and all💕. But the thing is there's no permanent template for this, we have to design it every time, but the plus point here is by using Canva "background remover" feature it can be done in less than 15 minutes, all we need to do is take screenshot of zoom, remove bg, add some elements (like bubble text), put hackernoon logo and taaa daaa its ready...:carlton: Here's something I created from latest Hackernoon podcast thumbnail, just a rough idea😄 Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 10:19 AM Kien you can take a look and I think I should have added "white outline" (or green maybe) in that also👀 Linh Jul 3, 2021, 1:01 PM Awwww that’s so cute!!!! 💕 1 Linh Jul 3, 2021, 1:01 PM Let’s not do green on white though haha Shaina Jul 3, 2021, 2:24 PM Yeah sure!😄 Kien Jul 5, 2021, 2:28 PM Thanks Shaina, i’ll get to this tonight! 💕 1 Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:26 PM What do we think about this one? def will take more time than the current template ✅ 5 😍 6 Amy Jul 5, 2021, 3:28 PM OMG KIEN I LOVE IT Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 3:28 PM YAY LOVE Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 3:29 PM Also double YAY Alex Cobb and Amy the intro snippet ft. richard-kubina sounds great!!! Linh your intro... OMG everybody great job :star-struck: 💚 1 Linh Jul 5, 2021, 3:34 PM Kien looks awesome 😎 is this something Shaina perhaps can do in like less than 24 hours 3 times a week? Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:39 PM def doable in less than 24 hours, but i will need to give her (or anyone in the future in charge of that) a tutorial vid - which wont happen until after wednesday Kien Jul 5, 2021, 3:40 PM So for this week’s Topic, I can do it Amy yall can just send me the thumbnail image! Tomorrow’s when we’re posting right? Amy Jul 5, 2021, 3:40 PM SWEEEEETTTTT Amy Jul 5, 2021, 5:59 PM More thumbnail inspo that might be less design heavy? Linh Jul 5, 2021, 6:15 PM Looks like they have clean background that’s why it works Amy Jul 5, 2021, 6:16 PM TRUE no one needs nic cage 😂 1 Linh Jul 5, 2021, 6:16 PM Haha also my background is always chaotic =))) Natasha Jul 5, 2021, 8:40 PM I feel like Nic Cage might one day come on the podcast if you keep that up for long enough Amy Jul 5, 2021, 8:52 PM OMG stop LOL can you IMAGINE

Does Canva Hurt or Help Graphic Designers? Hacker Noon on Design

Canva head of growth shares insights into how remote teams are collaborating creatively on the platform. We are more than 6 months into the "new normal" courtesy of COVID-19. At this point, companies like Zoom, Slack, and Asana have made huge gains by having the right solution for newly remote users to collaborate and keep business running. However, workers need more than ways to communicate and track - areas like sales, marketing, and product need to work together creatively and creative productivity tools are needed. In terms of creating layout and design with very little design skill needed, and then collaborating around the design with a team, there are few solutions that can compete with Canva. I am not a designer, but in a pinch, I've had to make images for publication   -  Canva works like bumper rails at a bowling alley, I can decide the direction but the templates make sure that everything will be more or less on track. It's Been a Good Year for Canva According to TechCrunch, Canva sent over strong product data that implies , though no publicly released financial information from this privately-owned company. strong revenue growth Canva stated that their online design service has experienced "increased growth over both Q2 and Q3, with an increase of 10 million users in Q3 alone (up from 30 million users in June)." Beyond an outstanding thirty-three percent growth in users, Canva stated it has supported more team-based usage since the start of the pandemic, which one might reasonably assume means more revenue from group subscriptions. I had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Dave Burson Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva who leads the product, marketing, and growth teams behind Canva's core subscription product, Canva Pro, following his appearance on Growth Manifesto. business and technology podcast David Burson responses: David Burson Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva - Pro Your user base has clearly grown quite a bit since March. What would you attribute this to? There has never been a more important time for simple and affordable tools that empower creativity and collaboration. The last few months, in particular, have highlighted the fact that the need for design is now more universal than ever. Whether you're a yoga instructor, cafe owner, teacher, or entrepreneur, creativity and visual communication are becoming increasingly important skills across the globe. From creating wedding invitations to social media posts, people who use Canva for the first time quickly discover the power and creativity they're able to unlock. This, combined with a vast and affordable library of design ingredients has led to much of our accelerated growth around the world. How has usage changed - what do people need from creative tools during COVID19? The last few months have definitely highlighted the need for simple and collaborative tools capable of fueling the rapid shift to remote collaboration around the world. With the majority of the world working from home, the outdated notion of needing to collaborate in one way or one place has been proven otherwise. Since the start of the pandemic, we've seen a surge in the sharing of designs along with continued growth around the globe as small businesses pivot and adapt their offerings and services. From virtual menus to social media posts, millions of people are using Canva to communicate important updates with their customers, empower students to learn remotely and collaborate among teams from anywhere in the world. The most important aspect for us has always been centered around creating a powerful platform that's both simple and enjoyable to use. For far too long, graphic design has had a high barrier to entry, often requiring expansive budgets or extensive knowledge. We believe people shouldn't need to learn complicated software, but rather, the software should be intuitive enough to guide and learn from the people using it. There are lots of SaaS solutions out there trying to make us more productive  --  is there a need for more creativity during a pandemic? How is that need manifesting and how is Canva pivoting to meet it? The pandemic has undoubtedly put a unique spotlight on creativity, particularly as small businesses pivot to remain open and continue serving their local communities amidst the pandemic. From distilleries producing hand sanitizer to personal trainers running digital classes, we've seen first-hand the ways in which creativity can have an enormous impact on just about anything. We've recently rolled out a number of initiatives to support this, from our free small business recovery toolkits to expanding our Canva for Nonprofit program to provide health organizations with free lifetime access to our Canva Pro subscription. *Images provided by Canva.

Canva Gains 10 Million New Users in 2020 Q3 [Interview]

I’m not a designer. I’m a founder. I don’t care about kerning—I care about shipping. So when Canva promised clean design with zero friction, I was sold. No agencies. No Figma drama. For $120, we looked like a Series B startup while still figuring out what our product did. Fantastic. Then one day, we tried starting from scratch. No templates, no guardrails, just an idea and a blank slide. Nothing came out. This isn’t a Canva teardown, just a warning: design tools can quietly erase your marketing instincts—until all you know how to do is make things that look like marketing. This isn’t a Canva teardown, just a warning: design tools can quietly erase your marketing instincts—until all you know how to do is make things that look like marketing. What Convenience Takes From You What Convenience Takes From You The damage of Canva isn’t aesthetic. It’s psychological. 1. Canva Cuts Strategy Gets Cut Out Of The Sequence 1. Canva Cuts Strategy Gets Cut Out Of The Sequence Before Canva, strategy came first, because it had to. You couldn’t design anything until you knew what you were trying to say. Messaging shaped layout. Insight shaped visual hierarchy. The thinking determined the design. Canva flips that sequence. You start with the template. Then you backfill the message. You tweak colors, swap fonts, drag headlines—then try to figure out what it’s saying. The visuals lead. Strategy follows, if it shows up at all. Canva severs the link between message and design—so your team builds around layout, not logic. Canva severs the link between message and design—so your team builds around layout, not logic. 2. Canva Collapses Your Ability to Prioritize 2. Canva Collapses Your Ability to Prioritize Before Canva, you had to choose your battles. Design was both time consuming and expensive, so the right to create had to be earned. You had to make the case: Why this asset? Why now? What’s the point? Why this asset? Why now? What’s the point? That design complexity acted as a filter, letting you prioritize what mattered most. Now everything takes 10 minutes. So everything feels equal. You design with the same energy for a homepage, an investor update, a LinkedIn post. You lose the instinct to ask: Is this a two-hour task or a two-week one? You forget how to feel the weight of things. Canva collapses your ability to prioritize—because when everything is equally easy to create, nothing feels important enough to think deeply about. 3. Canva Hides Brand Decay in Plain Sight 3. Canva Hides Brand Decay in Plain Sight Brand decay doesn’t happen through earth-shattering flops. It happens through hundreds of tiny, unintentional decisions: • One more font • A slightly different tone of green • A new layout for this week’s post • A promo slide that wasn’t run through anyone. By the end of the quarter, you’ve unintentionally rebranded five times. It gives you so many options, your brand dies by a thousand optimizations. you’ve unintentionally rebranded five times 4. Canva Makes Bad Ideas Look Legit—and Misleads You When They Fail 4. Canva Makes Bad Ideas Look Legit—and Misleads You When They Fail Canva designs are pretty good—a little too good. a little too good. Drop weak messaging into a sleek template, and suddenly it feels solid. Confusing copy looks clean. Half-baked ideas look presentable. And when the results suck, no one questions the content—because the container looked so convincing. You just assume the colors are off. The layout needs adjusting. The design needs a “refresh.” Canva makes weak marketing look wonderful—and when it flops, you end up fixing the wrong thing. You don’t rewrite. You redesign. And the cycle repeats. Quietly. Expensively. Ineffectively. Quietly. Expensively. Ineffectively. 5. Canva Trains You to Avoid Anything That Doesn’t Fit the Template 5. Canva Trains You to Avoid Anything That Doesn’t Fit the Template Over time, you stop chasing ideas that don’t already have a layout. You don’t write the weird essay post—because it won’t look good in a carousel. The strange campaign? No, because there’s no ready-made design for that. You steer clear of new formats simply because Canva makes them difficult to produce. You default to what fits, not what resonates. And over time, the things that don’t fit the mold don’t feel worth pursuing at all. Canva shapes how you present ideas, and also limits which ones you’re willing to have. Canva shapes how you present ideas, and also limits which ones you’re willing to have. 6. Canva Warps Your Team’s Understanding of Marketing 6. Canva Warps Your Team’s Understanding of Marketing When everyone can drag and drop, everyone thinks they “get” marketing. When you finally try to hire real marketers, real creatives, real thinkers—your team resists. “Isn’t this just making slides?” “Isn’t this just making slides?” “Didn’t we already figure out the brand?” “Didn’t we already figure out the brand?” “Can’t we just use the template?” “Can’t we just use the template?” Canva makes marketing feel like something anyone can do—sure, if your definition of marketing is pixel shuffling. But real marketing isn’t decorating. It’s positioning, insight, narrative, timing, channel, taste. And once your team is trained to value polish over depth, it’s hard to reintroduce the real thing. Canva democratizes marketing execution at the cost of respect for the discipline itself. By the time you need the real thing, your team doesn’t believe it matters. Canva democratizes marketing execution at the cost of respect for the discipline itself. By the time you need the real thing, your team doesn’t believe it matters. The Cases That Justify Convenience The Cases That Justify Convenience Canva is brilliant. But it only works if you know exactly what you’re using it for. Here are the legitimate, high-leverage use cases—where Canva becomes an asset, not a marketing assassin. 1. When You’re Just Trying to Exist Online Long Enough to Get Feedback 1. When You’re Just Trying to Exist Online Long Enough to Get Feedback You’re early. Resources are tight. The idea might pivot by next week. But you still need to throw out a landing page, run a quick ad, or test a message—just to see if anyone bites. You just need something that looks decent enough to get feedback, but you don’t have a budget for a designer. That’s where Canva fits. It’ll give you the ammunition you need to figure out if you’ve actually built something worth marketing. But don’t bother shopping around to find the perfect template. If your product positioning and messaging are off, no template will save you. 2. When You Know Exactly What You Want—and CBF Learning Illustrator 2. When You Know Exactly What You Want—and CBF Learning Illustrator This is the sweet spot. You’ve got the vision in your head. You’ve done the hard part: the copy works, the hook is tested, the positioning is sharp. You know the vibe. You just don’t want to spend 5 hours watching Adobe tutorials or begging a designer to “move the logo 10 pixels left.” Canva works when it’s used as a tool of translation, not inspiration. When you’re not there to be inspired by templates, just to recreate something already clear in your mind. 3. When You Have a Brand Identity—But No Time to Police It 3. When You Have a Brand Identity—But No Time to Police It You’ve defined the voice. You’ve chosen the color system. You’ve aligned on tone. But every day someone on the team is creating something—and you don’t have time to approve it all. Canva works when your job as a founder or brand lead shifts from creator to enforcer. You’re not asking Canva to invent your brand. You’re asking it to protect it while you’re doing 10 other things. And their Brand Kit function lets you do just that. It’s not a design tool at this point—it’s a compliance tool. 4. When You’re Trying to Make Strategy Feel Real 4. When You’re Trying to Make Strategy Feel Real Startups move fast, but alignment moves slow—especially when ideas are abstract. For example: a new vibe, or campaign that lives in your head but hasn’t clicked for the team yet. In these moments, Canva helps you make things real enough for people to react to. You’re not shipping externally, just creating internal clarity. Sometimes, the only way to get buy-in is to show—not tell. Use Canva when the team needs to see the future before they believe in it. 5. When You Need to Dress Up Something Disposable 5. When You Need to Dress Up Something Disposable Not everything you make is sacred. Some things are just… necessary. necessary. A partner deck you’ll use twice. A recruiting asset for a specific role. A last-minute slide for a VC that’ll never read past page five. These things still need to look good—but they’re temporary, tactical, and forgettable by design. That’s when Canva makes sense. It helps you not overthink the things that don’t deserve to slow you down. It’s not for your best ideas. It’s for the ones that don’t need to be. Use Canva when the work needs to look polished—but only needs to live for a week. but only needs to live for a week. Final Thoughts: Canva Is a Controlled Substance Final Thoughts: Canva Is a Controlled Substance My Canva subscription’s still active. I use it. I love it. But I treat it like a prescription drug. In the chaos of early-stage building—when your product’s half-broken, your team’s underwater, and your messaging is mush—Canva gives you one part of the company that looks clean. So you keep fixing that layer. The visual one. The easy one. But that’s sedation, not progress. Canva can help, as long as you don’t let it numb the parts of the business that actually need your attention. So use it. Just don’t abuse it.

The $120 Tool That Saved Us $120k—And Nearly Killed Our Marketing Culture

founders are often “hailed as superhumans,” but the truth is they’re not. They’re everyday people like you and me. But the thing that makes them different is their fearlessness to take risks. Startup In saying that, there is a lot that can be learned from successful entrepreneurs that have made it. So, I decided to spend a good chunk of my weekend researching billion dollar tech companies to see if there were any unique patterns or key learnings that I could distill. Here are a few things that I discovered. Lemonade Insurance 2015 Founded: Fintech Industry: $2 billion Approximate valuation: Using artificial intelligence, a mobile app and other tech-centric methods, Lemonade founders Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger are turning the centuries-old business of property insurance into a . millennial-friendly consumer product Every homeowner and renter needs insurance, but many distrust insurance providers. The two concluded that insurance, with its market value of $4.6 trillion, was ripe for disruption. The differs from that of a typical insurance company – it keeps a flat 25% fee of a customer’s premium while setting aside the remaining 75% to pay claims and purchase insurance. Unpaid premiums go to a nonprofit of the users opted for the annual “give back” deal. This builds trust with millenials. Lemonade business model Unlike fintech competitors Hippo and Jetty, Lemonade doesn’t sell policies backed by established insurers. It took the risk to become a licensed carrier itself, retaining claim liability on its own balance sheet. This risk has paid off, allowing them to create a social-compact pitch that pays claims fast. Lemonade can’t profit from denying legit claims, and customers making bogus claims are cheating charity, not some greedy insurer. Lemonade puts users first, building its product with the in mind. One of the biggest pain points of traditional insurance companies is the fact that interactions can be intimidating and time-consuming, leaving consumers powerless. Not the case with Lemonade. They started by thinking about the users and built from there. user experience Entrepreneurs can sometimes make their lives harder than they need to be. Often falling victim to things like and paralysis by analysis. By focusing purely on the most essential things I.e. the problem you’re solving and your solution to that problem. shiny object syndrome Lemonade, as a name, is brilliant in its simplicity. Each step along the customer journey? Also simple. Their content? Simple to digest. Netflix 1997 Founded: Entertainment Industry: $141 billion Approximate valuation: For nearly twenty years Blockbuster sat at the top of the US video-rental industry. In the early 2000s a small disruptive company called Netflix offered to partner with them to help run their online brand in exchange for promoting Netflix in their stores. Reed Hastings (co-founder of Netflix) got laughed out of the room. Fast forward to 2020, Blockbuster is now merely a distant memory after filing for bankruptcy in 2010 while Netflix is currently worth $166B (Feb 2020). Netflix is one of the best examples of transforming your business to stay ahead of the curve. When Netflix first launched in 1997 it was purely a website-based movie rental service — this was groundbreaking at the time. It took them 10 years before they introduced their streaming services which changed the entertainment industry forever. Like many other innovative companies, Netflix is not driven by pressure to do things first, but by delivering for the customer. The opportunities to do this evolve with technology, making it a never-ending process of testing, implementation and testing again. good experiences Netflix also shows that it pays to take risks. It took a decade for broadband internet to catch up with the founder’s vision, and Netflix’s decision to switch to "original content" and divert budgets away from licensing film releases was another famously big bet. The political drama House of Cards, cost a reported to produce the first two seasons. This bet paid off, when the show went on to win multiple awards and attract millions of viewers every episode. $100 million Airbnb 2007 Founded: Travel Industry: $35 billion Approximate valuation: Long before persuaded strangers to sleep in one another's homes and became a $35 billion company, it was just an idea to earn a bit of extra money to make rent. After their first guests, the three founders realized they were onto something bigger. Airbnb They presented a final version in 2008 but investors weren’t convinced. Out of 15 angel investors, eight said no and seven ignored them completely. It was 2009 when they finally picked up $600,000 in seed funding and the rest is history. Airbnb shows how important it is to understand your users and update your product according to their requirements. The company realized early on that receiving payments was crucial for those who are giving out their space on rent, so they promptly added the advance payments feature. Marketplace models such as Airbnb have become common today, but back in 2007, this model was mostly unproven. To apply this to your own startup, you need to have an idea that not only challenges existing solutions but is also able to create value. lesson Airbnb used disruptive technology by creating a marketplace at a time when it was rare. It created ripples in the hotel industry by providing a that was different, endearing, and reasonably priced. Airbnb used innovative and new-user discounts to build loyalty for its product. service referral programs Their focus is on providing more and incremental value to their customers. If you can build a product that adds value while providing your users with an incentive to spread the word, you can create a win-win situation for your business as well as your users. Canva 2013 Founded: Internet software + services Industry: $4.7 billion Approximate valuation: For every second that you’re reading this article, Sydney-based startup Canva (fun fact: they were originally known as ) — have helped millions of people create beautiful designs and documents using its online graphic tools. Canvas Chef More than have been created since its 2013 launch, which makes you wonder why it took three years of rejections by more than 100 potential investors before it got started. These knockbacks worked in favor of the founders, allowing them to polish their offering before it hit the market. 100 million designs Canva’s purpose is to democratise graphic design – to create a tool that is imbued with such simplicity, it allows amateurs to do things that previously were only in the domain of experienced design professionals. “Simplicity” is at the core of Canva’s brand, and it’s an attribute that the company tries to weave through its entire customer experience, from an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, to its polished design templates – even its . privacy notice The strongest attribute Canva’s founders Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams have is . Canva’s success didn’t happen overnight, with their journey starting all the way back in 2007. persistence It takes time to build a unicorn — with it almost being guaranteed you’ll experience rejection, failure and frustration along the way. A great example of the founder’s persistence is the fact that it spent three years from meeting their first investor to actually landing the first investment. Focus is another strong attribute. One of the sole reasons Canva has been a big success is that the founders focused in the early days on finding one highly influential person in their space and getting them to help with their startup. Avoid trying to meet hundreds of people that aren’t really related to your business or what you need. Concentrate on the few names that can have the most impact instead. SEEK Limited 1997 Founded: Employment Industry: $7 billion Approximate valuation: SEEK Limited (stylised as SEEK) and its subsidiary companies, known as the SEEK Group, is one of the largest . SEEK focuses on facilitating the matching between jobseekers and employment opportunities and helping hirers find candidates for advertised roles. job sites in Australia SEEK was founded by brothers Paul and Andrew Bassat and Matthew Rockman, essentially as an online version of print employment classifieds. Today SEEK makes a positive impact on a global scale, with exposure to , more than 51 million students and learners and a presence in 18 countries. 2.9 billion people While a recruitment giant and disruptive force, Seek went through “a scary period” when it found itself on the other side of the fence, with new disruptors coming in and threatening its place in the market. they were not “pushing or challenging ourselves”. Andrew Basset admits Seek started to re-focus, considering what makes a person choose one platform over another, given the way technology has evolved. Bassat and SEEK’s leadership team realized that if they didn’t innovate they would be in “a lot of trouble.” “The reality is, today, everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted,” he said. “We always need to be vigilant. There’s always someone coming to take our business from us.” Key takeaways It’s important to remember that although some of the ideas and technology leveraged by these companies had never been seen before and completely changed the game. The principles and values used by the founders have been around for a very long time. Here are 3 of the main takeaways: Canva and Netflix are great examples of two companies that took nearly a decade to really hit their stride. That’s over 120 months of riding the emotional rollercoaster that comes with building a company. Consistency: All of the companies I’ve covered in this article have benefitted from simplifying processes, tasks and experiences that were traditionally painful for their customers. Simplicity: It can be easy for founders to become distracted by vanity metrics and superficial product features. By focusing on your customers' problems and how you can solve them — your company is more likely to create real value for your customers. Be obsessed with your customers: These ideas might not be as exciting as the latest trends or tactics. But they are almost guaranteed to continue to be  essential building blocks for the billion dollar companies of the future. Summing up Establishing a unicorn startup is no easy task and it’s not meant to be. You need to become comfortable with the feeling of failure and remind yourself the journey of an entrepreneur is a marathon not a sprint. Once upon a time, unicorn startups were a rare breed. Today, not so much. Lastly, if you are looking to take the dive into startup land then: be curious, be problem focused, but above all, take action.

3 Lessons From Unicorns: Consistency, Simplicity, and Customer Obsession 

The idea to create a website came to me in the economics university. I used to make a living as a freelance tech expert and dreamed of monetizing my writings with more profit. A website with appeared to be the best solution. It matched both my mobile-nerd interests and the rapidly growing market demand. mobile app reviews That’s frankly ironic, but mobile apps are not only the objects of reviews. They’re also my best companions for all daily routines and content creation. Apps help me manage Freepps.top anywhere I go, so I decided to tell you about the most crucial of them. 1. Google Docs – Content Creation Since my platform is article-driven but doesn’t require too deep editing, Google Docs perfectly deals with everything and doesn’t take a line in the budget. It’s also a unique tool for collaboration. As a chief editor, I love checking and offering changes to articles made by staff writers and collaborators from my iPhone or iPad and get notified on Gmail when the work is done. Quick access sharing saves the day quite often when I don’t have enough time to finish urgent pieces for the blog. Finally, the free integration of other services by Google lightens up the burden of dealing with numerous accounts. Customers and writers love to get in touch via Google Docs as it’s so easy to set up and use, let alone automatic saving, instant cloud backup, cross-platform sync, and an option to integrate it into the website publisher. It’s the most versatile free solution, so I recommend you to deeply. study it 2. Grammarly – Always Check Yourself We all use this app on all devices at Freepps.top to avoid making mistakes in articles and messages by accident. No matter how big your audience is, you are responsible for every word you publish. Grammarly is picky enough to help you with that, especially when the pace is overwhelming. 3. PayPal – Universal Payment Tool Proceeding daily payments is a basic daily routine for both beginner-level and popular websites. PayPal offers a universal toolbox for covering staff work, SEO expenses, and for making any other transfers internationally. 4. WordPress – Run A Site On The Go If your coding skills leave much to be desired and the budget is low, WordPress is the best solution to create a website and run it until you start grossing enough to hire a webmaster. The mobile version of the service is perfect for posting on the go, monitoring website stats, fixing issues, and answering to users’ comments. WordPress , so it’s the foremost option to consider. runs over 30% of the web 5. Canva – When There’s No Good Free Stock Images Free stocks, such as Pixabay, usually help to find high-quality images for articles. However, a moment when there’s no suitable pic always comes at the most inconvenient time. That’s where Canva lets you pick up one of 60,000+ beautiful templates, tune them to fit your needs, and copy straight to the publisher within minutes. Did I Throw Away The Computer? The level of portability and an impressive functionary of apps can make you more mobile than ever. Apps gave me the opportunity to give more time to my family, self-development, and traveling. The computer is still needed for dealing with large amounts of work and complicated setups, but you can give it up for anything else.

Services That Will Help You Run A Website

I’ve seen many indie product creators or team members work on their product/SaaS for months and after developing it, they mostly don’t know how to get their first beta testers. Getting your first early users is probably one of the most daunting tasks for most people unless you have an experienced team or have done it before. Ugly Realization: After working for 9 months on , we were over the moon but reality hit us hard since we knew nothing on how to get our early users to use/test our platform. Pixelied At this stage, our only goal was to get specific feedback from our users and how Pixelied can help in their business. The reason for this was because we needed to know how our initial users would react to our design tool. The feedback which we got from our first beta testers proved to be immensely helpful as it allowed us to see get feedback from a user’s perspective and what changes we had to do in order to make the app usable. How We Did It: 1. Post on IndieHackers: The first thing I did was post Pixelied on Indie hackers in order to get the initial traction. I posted in the community of IndieHackers. I would suggest to first contribute in different communities at least 2 weeks ahead before posting something about your startup. ‘Beta Testing’ You can even post in some other communities such as which would also allow you get some traffic from there. ‘ Landing Page Feedback’ Here’s the link to the post I made: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/need-beta-testers-for-our-design-tool-free-account-for-3-months-a24f6dd415 2. Post on Subreddits: The next place where I posted about our platform was on Reddit. But I only posted on small subreddits related to SaaS, tech and startups, where promotion was allowed. I used to find out what was the best time when most of the users were online. Delay for Reddit Here are the Subreddits where I posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/alphaandbetausers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IMadeThis/ https://www.reddit.com/r/indiebiz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/graphicdesigntools/ 3. Post on Active Facebook Groups: (Don’t spam, first ask permission from group admins) Now I went for Facebook groups that were active and related to what we were providing. The most success we got from was a Lifetime Deal group called Martech Wise. (Thank you Donald for allowing it 🤗). The members of this group were quite receptive to our idea and gave a lot helpful ideas and feedback. Always ask group admins for permission before posting. (I learned it the hard way 😅) (It is a good idea to contribute in these groups and then approach an admin for posting your startup) Here are the groups where you can post: Deals Groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/194512534531164/?ref=group_browse (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/2251731358195230/?ref=group_browse https://www.facebook.com/groups/129932107653644/?ref=group_browse (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/113643832768744/?ref=group_browse (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/324080281540161/?ref=group_browse (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1669531943120663/?ref=group_browse Discussion Groups (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/saasproductsandmarketing/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/startupproductlaunches/ (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/SaaSgrowthhacking/ (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/saasmantra/ (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/saasmarketer (Active) https://www.facebook.com/groups/saasfoundersnetwork/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/saasbreakthrough/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/growthhackersinc/ Product Hunt Groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/producthuntupvoters/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/492219071481529/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/388232458714072/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/producthunt.exchange https://www.facebook.com/groups/606482926588363/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/producthuntupvote/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/producthunteurope/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/2179638145699667/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/rocketlaunch/ 4. Submit your Product on Betalist: (We got most of our users from Betalist) I posted Pixelied on BetaList at the start of 1st June and little did I know that there was a waiting list of at least a month. But nonetheless, Pixelied was featured after a month and this is where we got most of our users. So make sure to post your startup at least before one month to avoid any issues. The key here in posting on these groups and sites is to be active in order to post something like this. Note: Alternative Traffic Channels: I haven't personally used these traffic channels but you can explore and they might bring extra traction and users for your startup. Here is the list: Trendy Startups Hacker News Quora Beta Bound Also be sure to do some personal outreach via Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram. Some Things to Consider: We also gave users a 3 month Pro access for Pixelied with all the features and updates. I’ve seen some startups give lifetime access or free access for a long period of time. Lastly, it is important to get user feedback at the end of 2 weeks in order to identify the pain points, features to be included and how the software can be refined further to help in their businesses. This feedback can be done using email and further shortlist the users who give very detailed feedback and ask them for a short Skype session where you further dive in to specifics. We used Google Forms and Skype for conducting feedback for our platform. Here is the survey which we used for collecting user feedback: https://forms.gle/sX3MMRhSpAcd9QPu7 Final Words: There are surely thousand other ways you could get your beta testers but I just focused on a few channels which provided us with good results. Here is the amount of traffic which we have been able to get from the above channels: I would love to know which other methods have worked in getting the initial traction for your product 😉 If you’d like to create awesome designs in a few minutes, then try ! Shameless Plug: Pixelied Its free to use 😊 Follow me at and to stay tuned for more awesome content and guides! Twitter Linkedin Also published at https://medium.com/@dawoodkhan254/how-we-got-our-first-200-beta-testers-key-takeaways-211dcd7b5eeb

4 Easy Tips to Get Your First 200 Beta Testers

How Millions of Users Unwittingly Fed Their Facial Data to ChatGPT and the Consequences That Followed How Millions of Users Unwittingly Fed Their Facial Data to ChatGPT and the Consequences That Followed How Millions of Users Unwittingly Fed Their Facial Data to ChatGPT and the Consequences That Followed Picture this for once. You're scrolling through your favorite AI art generator, captivated by how your basic pictures were converted to a  beautifully rendered Ghibli-inspired portrait, and that too, within seconds. The magic of this automated image generation meets the whimsical world of Studio Ghibli, allowing you to create art with the click of a button. But beneath the surface of this captivating digital renaissance lies a troubling reality! In this article, we delve into the unsettling truth behind the AI art revolution, focusing on how millions of users have unknowingly contributed their facial recognition data to AI platforms. This is not only about the art you create; it is also about the personal data you leave behind, the possible consequences that could reshape security, and the future of digital art itself. The Rise of AI-Generated Art and the Ghibli Aesthetic The explosion of AI-generated art has been fueled by platforms like DALL·E, MidJourney, and ChatGPT and has given users an unparalleled opportunity to create stunning visuals with just a few words/prompts. One particular style that has been dominating the AI art world is the nostalgic, dreamlike quality of Studio Ghibli. Generations have been enthralled by Ghibli's whimsical charm, from Princess Mononoke to My Neighbor Totoro, and AI now makes it possible for anybody to create similar fantastical worlds. However, as more users went to these sites to produce their own Ghibli-inspired works of art, they inadvertently joined a far wider ecology of data harvesting. Not only are ChatGPT and other AI systems educated on text, but they also take in a variety of additional personal information, such as facial recognition data. Unaware of the consequences, users unintentionally enter their facial expressions, feelings, and even micro-reactions into the algorithms that drive these sites. Facial Recognition: The Invisible Price of Creative Freedom Even if AI-powered creative production is unquestionably innovative, it is critical to recognize the hidden costs that many users incur. Systems for facial recognition are modeled to examine every nuance of a person's face, which also includes emotions and minute variations in expression. Platforms like ChatGPT may be collecting biometric markers in addition to visual data when they request access to your camera or let users upload images. These markers could be utilized for purposes well beyond creating art. Every time you engage with an AI model, you’re not just interacting with a tool; you're feeding an algorithm. For millions of users, this data is not just used to improve art generation- it is stored, analyzed, and could be monetized by third-party companies. This is where things start to get murky!!! The Big Brother Potential: Facial Data and Surveillance The potential applications of facial recognition technology outside the creation of art are growing along with AI technology. What started off as a playful experiment with Ghibli-inspired graphics could eventually become a huge monitoring tool. Facial expression data can be used to forecast your behavior, customize material, and even subtly influence your emotions. Imagine this. Every smile, frown, or even the look of surprise could be analyzed and stored to create a digital profile of your emotional tendencies. Companies could then use that information to target you with ads or even influence the art you see, making it more aligned with your perceived emotional state. This, of course, assumes that facial recognition data is shared with or sold to third parties — a very real risk in an increasingly data-driven world. The Ethics of AI Art: Should We Be Concerned? At its core, the issue here isn't about privacy but ethics. Is it right for platforms to collect facial data without clear consent? Should the creators of these tools be transparent about how this information is used? The fact that many consumers are ignorant of how their data is being utilized exacerbates the issue. We frequently don't recognize that we are consenting to the processing and use of our facial data in ways we don't completely comprehend when we click "accept" on a terms-of-service agreement. It is the ethical duty of AI businesses to clarify this procedure and guarantee that customers can manage their data. Real-World Consequences: How Facial Data Could Be Misused Despite our desire to believe that our data is secure, practical examples have demonstrated that this is not the case. Facial recognition software has occasionally been used to follow people in public areas, track their emotions for advertising, and even support mass monitoring. There is a great deal of opportunity for this technology to be abused, and it frequently is. Take the increasingly popular "deepfake" technology, which makes use of AI and facial recognition to produce incredibly lifelike recordings of people speaking things they never actually uttered. Deepfakes might be amusing, but they can seriously jeopardize trust and privacy. It may soon be possible to produce deepfakes, sway public opinion, or harm reputations using the same facial data that drives art generators. Protecting Your Data: What Can You Do? Users must be more aware of their digital footprint in light of the possibilities. Here are a few steps you can actually take to protect your facial data: Be Informed: Always review the platforms' privacy policies. Verify what information they gather and how they intend to use it.
Control Your Data: Whenever feasible, take advantage of solutions that give you data management capabilities. Platforms should offer the ability to anonymize or remove your data.
Be Vigilant: Remain alert by routinely checking and updating your accounts' and devices' privacy settings. Give users access to facial recognition features with caution. Be Informed: Always review the platforms' privacy policies. Verify what information they gather and how they intend to use it. Be Informed Control Your Data: Whenever feasible, take advantage of solutions that give you data management capabilities. Platforms should offer the ability to anonymize or remove your data. Control Your Data Be Vigilant: Remain alert by routinely checking and updating your accounts' and devices' privacy settings. Give users access to facial recognition features with caution. Be Vigilant Conclusion: The Art of Balance One of the most fascinating developments in creative technology has been the emergence of AI-generated art, particularly the Ghibli-inspired designs. However, we must be aware of the hidden risks associated with this new frontier as we continue to explore it. Despite its strength, facial recognition raises a number of privacy issues that should not be disregarded. As users, we must demand more transparency and better control over how our data is used. In Parallel, companies need to take a more proactive role in safeguarding user privacy and ensuring that AI technologies are not misused for profit or surveillance. The future of AI art is bright, but we must ask ourselves: Are we willing to trade our privacy for creativity? The future of AI art is bright, but we must ask ourselves: Are we willing to trade our privacy for creativity? Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Interested in reading the content from all of our writing prompts? Click HERE. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Interested in reading the content from all of our writing prompts? Click HERE. HERE HERE HERE. HERE

Behind the Canvas: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Ghibli Art

The world of AI is constantly evolving, and it feels like every week brings a new tool promising to revolutionize how we work and create. I recently got a chance to try out Gemini Canvas, a new interactive space built into Google’s Gemini app. If you want to know what I discovered and how you might use it, read this article until the end. What Is Gemini Canvas? At its heart, Gemini Canvas is designed as a single, unified workspace where you and the Gemini AI can collaborate in real time to produce documents and generate code. Think of it as a digital blank slate that comes with a powerful AI assistant built right in. You can write an essay, draft a blog post, or code a small project. It updates your work instantly. Writing with Canvas One of the best things about Canvas is how it helps with writing. I started a draft by simply typing my ideas, and the tool offered suggestions to make my text clearer and more engaging. With quick editing tools, I could easily adjust the tone, length, and format of my writing. Coding and Creating As someone who dabbles in coding, I was excited to test the code generation feature. I asked Gemini Canvas to create a simple webpage layout, and within moments, it generated HTML code with a live preview. I could instantly see how my changes affected the output. This feature makes coding much more interactive and fun — especially for beginners who want to learn by doing. Use Cases and Examples I found that Gemini Canvas is versatile enough to support many different creative and work-related tasks. Blog Writing and Essays: When I need to draft a blog post, I can quickly generate an outline and then refine each section with detailed suggestions. This is great for writers who want to overcome writer’s block or simply get a second opinion on their work. Blog Writing and Essays: When I need to draft a blog post, I can quickly generate an outline and then refine each section with detailed suggestions. This is great for writers who want to overcome writer’s block or simply get a second opinion on their work. Blog Writing and Essays: Coding Projects: If you’re a developer or a student learning to code, you can use Canvas to generate HTML, React, or JavaScript snippets. Not only did it generate the code, but it also provided a live preview so you could see the design come to life instantly. Coding Projects: If you’re a developer or a student learning to code, you can use Canvas to generate HTML, React, or JavaScript snippets. Not only did it generate the code, but it also provided a live preview so you could see the design come to life instantly. Coding Projects: Brainstorming and Outlining: Gemini Canvas is perfect for brainstorming ideas, creating outlines for research reports, or even drafting business proposals. Brainstorming and Outlining: Gemini Canvas is perfect for brainstorming ideas, creating outlines for research reports, or even drafting business proposals. Brainstorming and Outlining: Educational Purposes: Teachers and students can use Canvas to prepare lesson plans, study guides, or quizzes. Educators can benefit from its collaborative features by exporting their work to Google Docs to share and further refine their content with colleagues or students. Educational Purposes: Teachers and students can use Canvas to prepare lesson plans, study guides, or quizzes. Educators can benefit from its collaborative features by exporting their work to Google Docs to share and further refine their content with colleagues or students. Educational Purposes: How to Access Gemini Canvas Here is a step-by-step guide to accessing and using Gemini Canvas, along with a couple of examples. Open the Gemini Website: Go to gemini.google.com on your computer. Open the Gemini Website: Go to gemini.google.com on your computer. Open the Gemini Website: gemini.google.com Log In: Sign in with your Google account. Log In: Sign in with your Google account. Log In: Select the Correct Model: Make sure you have the Gemini 2.0 Flash model selected (Canvas works with this model). Select the Correct Model: Make sure you have the Gemini 2.0 Flash model selected (Canvas works with this model). Select the Correct Model: Find the Canvas Option: Look below the prompt box at the bottom of the screen. Click the “Canvas” button to enter the workspace. Find the Canvas Option: Look below the prompt box at the bottom of the screen. Click the “Canvas” button to enter the workspace. Find the Canvas Option: “Canvas” Enter Your Prompt: Type what you want to create. For example, “Write a blog post about AI in education” or “Create a simple tic-tac-toe game.” Enter Your Prompt: Type what you want to create. For example, “Write a blog post about AI in education” or “Create a simple tic-tac-toe game.” Enter Your Prompt: Interact and Edit: Once your content appears, you can click on sections to make changes. Use the built-in tools to adjust tone, expand text, or debug code. Interact and Edit: Once your content appears, you can click on sections to make changes. Use the built-in tools to adjust tone, expand text, or debug code. Interact and Edit: Export or Share: When you’re happy with your work, export it to Google Docs, Export it to Colab, or share it with others using a shareable link. Export or Share: When you’re happy with your work, export it to Google Docs, Export it to Colab, or share it with others using a shareable link. Export or Share: This 7-step process will help you start with Gemini Canvas for writing and coding projects. Pricing Information The basic version of Gemini Canvas is free. You don’t even have to create an account to use it. Pricing details might change over time, so it’s a good idea to check Google’s official website for the latest updates. Video Tutorial https://youtu.be/_IOJ4ir1v28?si=TBv66y1zX42K07QA https://youtu.be/_IOJ4ir1v28?si=TBv66y1zX42K07QA https://youtu.be/_IOJ4ir1v28?si=TBv66y1zX42K07QA Conclusion Using Gemini Canvas has been a refreshing experience. It combines writing, coding, and creative editing into one simple tool. I’m looking forward to seeing more improvements and updates as Google continues to roll out new features. If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend giving Gemini Canvas a try — you might find it helpful! Cheers! ;)

Google Gemini Canvas: FREE AI Workspace for Writing & Coding

An aside: Let me be honest with you for a second, I am a sucker for free things. If a tool is on freemium, you would see me there. This was until a friend thoroughly insisted I get Canva Premium. The statement “You don't know what you're missing until you find it” has proven true. On Canva Freemium, you make do with what you have and convince yourself that for the tools you can’t access you can always find a way around it. As a new Canliever (Canva Believer), if you value convenience and are open to seeing your work at its maximum output you might want to do away with this thinking. With all said and done, whether you are on Freemium or Premium, you probably clicked on this article because you are an ardent/casual Canva user in the depths of your marketing lore and seeking ways to utilize it more efficiently and I welcome you. Today, we shall cover all the bases (as much as I can) on how best to adapt Canva Templates for your MultiChannel Marketing Campaigns. But first of all, let's define the BIG WORDS What is Multichannel Marketing? Multichannel marketing encompasses engaging with customers through various channels. Whether it's through emails, SEO, or content, it ensures that YOU, the marketer, take a well-rounded approach that fits proportionally to the needs of your consumers. In recent years, we have witnessed a shift in brands ' approach to multichannel marketing, and this can be observed in their retail strategies. According to research conducted by the Economic Annals, the concept of retail has significantly evolved since 2013, with 85% of respondents in the survey admitting to using a multichannel approach to meet their consumers. This represents a substantial increase from previous years, as only 15% of retailers utilized e-commerce as part of their strategy in 1994. This shift is not surprising, given that the consumer journey can be unique- individuals might start on their phones, browsing prices during their commute to work, and later compare prices at the office. On weekends, they may check the products they see online. (side eye TEMU) This is what brands should aim for - meeting the consumer at every touchpoint. It eventually pays off as it breaks barriers and enables them to reach more customers locally and internationally while providing convenience for intended customers to shop wherever they are. Where does Canva come in? Canva templates facilitate this by allowing you to generate ready-made marketing materials that cater to your various platforms. Their sheer volume of easy-to-use templates enables you to create content easily and is categorized by platform and purpose, so you don't have to scroll through a million features. Canva allows you to repurpose content seamlessly in various formats suitable for different channels. Canva allows you to save time by turning long-form content into bite-sized Instagram posts or infographics. And if you are a Premium user You can utilize the brand kit to store all your brand assets - logo, fonts, and color palette in one central place.  Every time you create something new, you don’t need to start from scratch because all the elements are right there. This saves you time and also enables you to track consistency when creating assets that are quite similar.
For larger teams, Canva brand control features enable you and your team to maintain consistency even for non-designers and allow everyone with access to create content that aligns with the brand guidelines.
Its integration with Sociable allows you to import scheduled posts and track your analytics all in one place. Strategies for Adapting Canva Templates Across Channels Using a template makes it easier to post regularly, which is important when building a following. Consistency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust. When you use a template to keep the look and feel of your content, you are reinforcing your brand and eventually building credibility, which gives room for trust in your audience. So, regarding repurposing content across different platforms - Canva allows you to save time by turning long-form content into bite-sized Instagram posts or infographics. Now… A little more on execution… What does this look like? The Brief: Develop a 360 campaign promoting Canva’s templates as a tool for simplifying design processes. Who will we engage? Entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketers, social media managers, and creatives seek efficient design solutions. Key message:  Design in minutes. Simplify your creative process with Canva templates. Getting started requires that we understand where our key target hangs out. This will inform our media strategy, and also the channels we implement, dictating our approach. To get started, you must outline all your brand identity. In this case: (Logo) (Typography) and (Color Palette) You should set this up with your brand tool kit to maintain You can either start designing on an already existing template or if you feel extra creative and want to be unique, you might need to start the journey by drafting your unique template that is particular to you. For this article, we shall be developing our template from scratch. Our first step here is to craft our key visual. This serves as the core for creating variations based on the recommended platform size in line with our audience persona. Now, you might be hooving and heaving. It seems to be a lot of work right? Not!!! Canva magic resize tool, available to pro users, enables you to resize your design to any format of your choice. You might need to move a design or two around to suit your taste and needs, but it remains efficient. The best part is that if new ad placements are added during a campaign, you can quickly resize existing visuals without starting from scratch. Turning Designs into Email Templates Newsletters are critical in personalizing communication as they give you direct access to your audience through their inbox, allow you to build relationships with them through personalized content, and stay top of mind when your audience is not engaging with other channels. For this campaign, I used the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) route, personalizing each adventure to our target audience's pain point and guiding them to the promised land—Canva Template. I wanted the email to reflect every part of the audience journey in the style and tone of the key newsletter. To efficiently achieve this, we needed to map out the template accordingly. Still in doubt… If you are a bit hesitant to create your multimillion-dollar creative on Canva, here’s a little reminder that Docusign leveraged Canva in scaling its rebrand with the help of the brand kit and templates. They were able to create over 2000 brand templates. The results—well, they speak for themselves. It led to a 50% increase in Sales engagement and a 78% reduction in battle card production time, from 7 days to 1.5 days. Ultimately; Canva allows you to do what matters most: create, engage your audience, and drive results without the complexities of design. If you need a sign today to get started, consider this as your sign go-ahead. Cheerios An aside: Let me be honest with you for a second, I am a sucker for free things. If a tool is on freemium, you would see me there. This was until a friend thoroughly insisted I get Canva Premium. The statement “You don't know what you're missing until you find it” has proven true. On Canva Freemium, you make do with what you have and convince yourself that for the tools you can’t access you can always find a way around it. As a new Canliever (Canva Believer), if you value convenience and are open to seeing your work at its maximum output you might want to do away with this thinking. An aside: Let me be honest with you for a second, I am a sucker for free things. If a tool is on freemium, you would see me there. This was until a friend thoroughly insisted I get Canva Premium. The statement “You don't know what you're missing until you find it” has proven true. On Canva Freemium, you make do with what you have and convince yourself that for the tools you can’t access you can always find a way around it. As a new Canliever (Canva Believer), if you value convenience and are open to seeing your work at its maximum output you might want to do away with this thinking. An aside: Let me be honest with you for a second, I am a sucker for free things. If a tool is on freemium, you would see me there. This was until a friend thoroughly insisted I get Canva Premium. The statement “You don't know what you're missing until you find it” has proven true. On Canva Freemium, you make do with what you have and convince yourself that for the tools you can’t access you can always find a way around it. As a new Canliever (Canva Believer), if you value convenience and are open to seeing your work at its maximum output you might want to do away with this thinking. With all said and done, whether you are on Freemium or Premium, you probably clicked on this article because you are an ardent/casual Canva user in the depths of your marketing lore and seeking ways to utilize it more efficiently and I welcome you. Today, we shall cover all the bases (as much as I can) on how best to adapt Canva Templates for your MultiChannel Marketing Campaigns. But first of all, let's define the BIG WORDS What is Multichannel Marketing? Multichannel marketing encompasses engaging with customers through various channels. Whether it's through emails, SEO, or content, it ensures that YOU , the marketer, take a well-rounded approach that fits proportionally to the needs of your consumers. YOU In recent years, we have witnessed a shift in brands ' approach to multichannel marketing, and this can be observed in their retail strategies. According to research conducted by the Economic Annals , the concept of retail has significantly evolved since 2013, with 85% of respondents in the survey admitting to using a multichannel approach to meet their consumers. This represents a substantial increase from previous years, as only 15% of retailers utilized e-commerce as part of their strategy in 1994. This shift is not surprising, given that the consumer journey can be unique- individuals might start on their phones, browsing prices during their commute to work, and later compare prices at the office. On weekends, they may check the products they see online. Economic Annals (side eye TEMU) (side eye TEMU) This is what brands should aim for - meeting the consumer at every touchpoint. It eventually pays off as it breaks barriers and enables them to reach more customers locally and internationally while providing convenience for intended customers to shop wherever they are. Where does Canva come in? Canva templates facilitate this by allowing you to generate ready-made marketing materials that cater to your various platforms. Their sheer volume of easy-to-use templates enables you to create content easily and is categorized by platform and purpose, so you don't have to scroll through a million features. Canva allows you to repurpose content seamlessly in various formats suitable for different channels. Canva allows you to save time by turning long-form content into bite-sized Instagram posts or infographics. And if you are a Premium user You can utilize the brand kit to store all your brand assets - logo, fonts, and color palette in one central place.  Every time you create something new, you don’t need to start from scratch because all the elements are right there. This saves you time and also enables you to track consistency when creating assets that are quite similar. For larger teams, Canva brand control features enable you and your team to maintain consistency even for non-designers and allow everyone with access to create content that aligns with the brand guidelines. Its integration with Sociable allows you to import scheduled posts and track your analytics all in one place. You can utilize the brand kit to store all your brand assets - logo, fonts, and color palette in one central place.  Every time you create something new, you don’t need to start from scratch because all the elements are right there. This saves you time and also enables you to track consistency when creating assets that are quite similar. For larger teams, Canva brand control features enable you and your team to maintain consistency even for non-designers and allow everyone with access to create content that aligns with the brand guidelines. Its integration with Sociable allows you to import scheduled posts and track your analytics all in one place. Strategies for Adapting Canva Templates Across Channels Using a template makes it easier to post regularly, which is important when building a following. Consistency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust. When you use a template to keep the look and feel of your content, you are reinforcing your brand and eventually building credibility, which gives room for trust in your audience. So, regarding repurposing content across different platforms - Canva allows you to save time by turning long-form content into bite-sized Instagram posts or infographics. Now… A little more on execution… What does this look like? The Brief: The Brief: Develop a 360 campaign promoting Canva’s templates as a tool for simplifying design processes. Who will we engage? Who will we engage? Entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketers, social media managers, and creatives seek efficient design solutions. Key message:  Design in minutes. Simplify your creative process with Canva templates. Getting started requires that we understand where our key target hangs out. This will inform our media strategy, and also the channels we implement, dictating our approach. To get started, you must outline all your brand identity. In this case: (Logo) (Typography) and (Color Palette) (Logo) (Typography) and (Color Palette) You should set this up with your brand tool kit to maintain You can either start designing on an already existing template or if you feel extra creative and want to be unique, you might need to start the journey by drafting your unique template that is particular to you. For this article, we shall be developing our template from scratch. Our first step here is to craft our key visual. This serves as the core for creating variations based on the recommended platform size in line with our audience persona. Now, you might be hooving and heaving. It seems to be a lot of work right? Not!!! Canva magic resize tool, available to pro users, enables you to resize your design to any format of your choice. You might need to move a design or two around to suit your taste and needs, but it remains efficient. The best part is that if new ad placements are added during a campaign, you can quickly resize existing visuals without starting from scratch. Turning Designs into Email Templates Newsletters are critical in personalizing communication as they give you direct access to your audience through their inbox, allow you to build relationships with them through personalized content, and stay top of mind when your audience is not engaging with other channels. For this campaign, I used the Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) route, personalizing each adventure to our target audience's pain point and guiding them to the promised land—Canva Template. I wanted the email to reflect every part of the audience journey in the style and tone of the key newsletter. To efficiently achieve this, we needed to map out the template accordingly. Still in doubt… If you are a bit hesitant to create your multimillion-dollar creative on Canva, here’s a little reminder that Docusign leveraged Canva in scaling its rebrand with the help of the brand kit and templates. They were able to create over 2000 brand templates. Docusign Docusign The results—well, they speak for themselves. It led to a 50% increase in Sales engagement and a 78% reduction in battle card production time, from 7 days to 1.5 days. Ultimately; Canva allows you to do what matters most: create, engage your audience, and drive results without the complexities of design. If you need a sign today to get started, consider this as your sign go-ahead. Cheerios Cheerios Cheerios

A Canva Template Is All You Need for Your Multichannel Marketing Campaigns

Canvas often feels like a mystery box—we use tools built on top of it, but few of us truly understand how it works. If you're a JavaScript developer, this might sound familiar 😊. Back in May 2020, when I was at HackerRank and we were looking for a whiteboard to integrate, we chose Excalidraw for its simplicity after reviewing many options. Back then, I was very familiar with React, Webpack, and other tools as I used them daily at work. So, I proposed to the excalidraw team that we could build an npm package. Since Excalidraw was at a very early stage and supporting the npm package would introduce a huge change in the codebase, it took me some time to convince them. Meanwhile, I forked the repo, and we shipped the editor at HackerRank. However, I was aware of the nightmare it would introduce to keep the forked codebase up to date if we don’t push the changes to the base repository so I was having back-and-forth conversations with the Excalidraw team regarding the npm package. Finally, after ~8 months, WE DID IT! This was my AHA moment! Thus, I started maintaining the npm package. However, I knew nothing about Canvas, but I was really curious about how these drawing tools worked inside. It seemed so cool that you could draw any shape and interact with it. As a maintainer of the NPM package, I had the chance to dive deep into the codebase. However, the canvas was still a puzzle I was trying to solve. Over time I learned a lot (I am still learning as learning can never end :p) and started building core canvas features, some of which were Text containers, Labeled arrows, adding points in line segments, hyperlinks, and more, and every time I realized there weren’t enough resources on the web about Canvas. Why this workshop? Besides my passion for open source, I love sharing what I've learned and experienced. As there aren’t enough resources on the web regarding Canvas, I want to make it more accessible so anyone can easily learn about it. That's how I started speaking at conferences three years ago. I always aim to share my insights in my talks, and I enjoy doing it. I’ve delivered talks and podcasts on Canvas, where I discuss building features like text containers, labeled arrows, and other whiteboard functionalities, along with how they are implemented in Excalidraw. You can check out my talks and podcasts (I will be adding the 2024 ones soon). While giving these talks, I noticed that although not many people explore Canvas-related topics, the audience is curious and enjoys learning about the unknown and how things work behind the scenes. This inspired me to do it even more! Since then I wanted to dive in one level deeper and do a workshop where we not only dive into the concepts but also build this stuff together - yes that’s the IDEA - A deep dive Hands-on workshop where we start from the basics and deep dive into internals turning these implementations into reality. I have been thinking of doing this workshop for months and years. Last year I gave a workshop about “Building a whiteboard from scratch” at React Alicante and wanted to do more. But I couldn’t prioritize it but why am I finally doing it? Recently at React India in Goa, Tejas and I were having a casual conversation, and suddenly this topic came up: "Hey Aakansha, why don’t you run a workshop on Canvas?", I replied, "Really? Do you think people will be interested? I have been thinking about this for a long time".Tejas is an awesome community member and an amazing friend. He strongly encouraged me to go for it, and the following week, I launched the website with the workshop announcement✨. Hence here I am doing the workshop On January 25, 2025. What will you learn? The workshop will start with the basics, keeping it beginner-friendly, right from how to render the Canvas and then take a deep dive into the internals. And the best part is it’s not just theory but lots and lots of hands-on. Here is a quick overview 👇 HTML Canvas Fundamentals - Learn how to use Canvas APIs for drawing shapes and paths. This will ensure the workshop is completely beginner friendly and slowly we deep deeper into internals.
Hit Testing and Interactive Canvas - Have you wondered how user interactions work in Canvas? To understand this will be diving into techniques like Hit Testing to enable the selection, movement, and resizing of Canvas shapes.
Navigating the Infinite Canvas - Building Infinite Canvas and learning how to manage the viewport to make it interactive. This might be your favorite part as everyone loves endless Canvases, isn’t it?
Text and HTML Rendering - Rendering Text in Canvas and making it interactive with HTML elements. This might sound simple but there is a lot to explore when it comes to text rendering and making it in sync with the HTML Input element used for updating the text element.
Performance Optimizations - Learn how to improve performance with complex Canvas applications. During the workshop, we will come across cases where we need to improve the performance for rendering the Canvas shapes and this will help us understand the techniques which can be used to improve the performance of Canvas-based applications.
Build a Mini Whiteboard - This is the best part as together, we will build a mini Canvas-based whiteboard editor using all the concepts learned above. You can find more details about my workshop here. Register with an Early bird discount If any of this sounds interesting and exciting to you, sign up for my workshop with a special early bird discount of 40% until the 1st of December. I would love to see you there!. If you know someone who might be interested, please do share it with them :). Since it's a live workshop, seats are limited, so the sooner you register, the better :). The recordings will also be provided after the workshop. I am still working on the exact time of the workshop, based on the registrants across the world and I will soon share more details on the same. If you have any questions or suggestions, please comment or contact me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Bluesky. I'd love to hear from you! If anything is stopping you from joining the workshop, my DMs are open. Let me know, and I'll do my best to help :) Closing thoughts I am very excited about the workshop. I'm learning a lot during this process, though I must admit some things are quite challenging! I will document all my learnings and experiences from this workshop. Until then, goodbye and have a great day, and see you soon! Canvas often feels like a mystery box—we use tools built on top of it, but few of us truly understand how it works. If you're a JavaScript developer, this might sound familiar 😊. Back in May 2020, when I was at HackerRank and we were looking for a whiteboard to integrate, we chose Excalidraw for its simplicity after reviewing many options. Back then, I was very familiar with React, Webpack, and other tools as I used them daily at work. So, I proposed to the excalidraw team that we could build an npm package. HackerRank Excalidraw React, Webpack, and other tools npm package. Since Excalidraw was at a very early stage and supporting the npm package would introduce a huge change in the codebase, it took me some time to convince them. Meanwhile, I forked the repo, and we shipped the editor at HackerRank. However, I was aware of the nightmare it would introduce to keep the forked codebase up to date if we don’t push the changes to the base repository so I was having back-and-forth conversations with the Excalidraw team regarding the npm package. Finally, after ~8 months , WE DID IT! This was my AHA moment! Thus, I started maintaining the npm package. ~8 months WE DID IT! AHA However, I knew nothing about Canvas, but I was really curious about how these drawing tools worked inside. It seemed so cool that you could draw any shape and interact with it. As a maintainer of the NPM package, I had the chance to dive deep into the codebase. However, the canvas was still a puzzle I was trying to solve. Over time I learned a lot ( I am still learning as learning can never end :p ) and started building core canvas features, some of which were Text containers , Labeled arrows , adding points in line segments , hyperlinks , and more, and every time I realized there weren’t enough resources on the web about Canvas. I am still learning as learning can never end :p Text containers Labeled arrows adding points in line segments hyperlinks Why this workshop? Besides my passion for open source, I love sharing what I've learned and experienced. As there aren’t enough resources on the web regarding Canvas, I want to make it more accessible so anyone can easily learn about it. That's how I started speaking at conferences three years ago. I always aim to share my insights in my talks, and I enjoy doing it. I’ve delivered talks and podcasts on Canvas, where I discuss building features like text containers, labeled arrows, and other whiteboard functionalities , along with how they are implemented in Excalidraw . You can check out my talks and podcasts ( I will be adding the 2024 ones soon ). talks podcasts text containers, labeled arrows, whiteboard functionalities Excalidraw talks podcasts I will be adding the 2024 ones soon While giving these talks, I noticed that although not many people explore Canvas-related topics, the audience is curious and enjoys learning about the unknown and how things work behind the scenes. This inspired me to do it even more! This inspired me to do it even more! Since then I wanted to dive in one level deeper and do a workshop where we not only dive into the concepts but also build this stuff together - yes that’s the IDEA - A deep dive Hands-on workshop where we start from the basics and deep dive into internals turning these implementations into reality. IDEA I have been thinking of doing this workshop for months and years. Last year I gave a workshop about “Building a whiteboard from scratch” at React Alicante and wanted to do more. But I couldn’t prioritize it but why am I finally doing it? “Building a whiteboard from scratch” React Alicante why am I finally doing it? why am I finally doing it? Recently at React India in Goa, Tejas and I were having a casual conversation, and suddenly this topic came up: " Hey Aakansha, why don’t you run a workshop on Canvas? ", I replied, " Really? Do you think people will be interested? I have been thinking about this for a long time ".Tejas is an awesome community member and an amazing friend. He strongly encouraged me to go for it, and the following week, I launched the website with the workshop announcement✨. React India Tejas Hey Aakansha, why don’t you run a workshop on Canvas? Really? Do you think people will be interested? I have been thinking about this for a long time Hence here I am doing the workshop On January 25, 2025. January 25, 2025. What will you learn? The workshop will start with the basics , keeping it beginner-friendly , right from how to render the Canvas and then take a deep dive into the internals. basics beginner-friendly And the best part is it’s not just theory but lots and lots of hands-on . Here is a quick overview 👇 lots and lots of hands-on HTML Canvas Fundamentals - Learn how to use Canvas APIs for drawing shapes and paths. This will ensure the workshop is completely beginner friendly and slowly we deep deeper into internals. Hit Testing and Interactive Canvas - Have you wondered how user interactions work in Canvas? To understand this will be diving into techniques like Hit Testing to enable the selection, movement, and resizing of Canvas shapes. Navigating the Infinite Canvas - Building Infinite Canvas and learning how to manage the viewport to make it interactive. This might be your favorite part as everyone loves endless Canvases, isn’t it? Text and HTML Rendering - Rendering Text in Canvas and making it interactive with HTML elements. This might sound simple but there is a lot to explore when it comes to text rendering and making it in sync with the HTML Input element used for updating the text element. Performance Optimizations - Learn how to improve performance with complex Canvas applications. During the workshop, we will come across cases where we need to improve the performance for rendering the Canvas shapes and this will help us understand the techniques which can be used to improve the performance of Canvas-based applications. Build a Mini Whiteboard - This is the best part as together, we will build a mini Canvas-based whiteboard editor using all the concepts learned above. HTML Canvas Fundamentals - Learn how to use Canvas APIs for drawing shapes and paths. This will ensure the workshop is completely beginner friendly and slowly we deep deeper into internals. HTML Canvas Fundamentals Canvas APIs drawing shapes and paths. beginner friendly Hit Testing and Interactive Canvas - Have you wondered how user interactions work in Canvas? To understand this will be diving into techniques like Hit Testing to enable the selection, movement, and resizing of Canvas shapes. Hit Testing and Interactive Canvas - user interactions Hit Testing selection, movement, resizing Navigating the Infinite Canvas - Building Infinite Canvas and learning how to manage the viewport to make it interactive. This might be your favorite part as everyone loves endless Canvases, isn’t it? Navigating the Infinite Canvas Infinite Canvas Text and HTML Rendering - Rendering Text in Canvas and making it interactive with HTML elements. This might sound simple but there is a lot to explore when it comes to text rendering and making it in sync with the HTML Input element used for updating the text element. Text and HTML Rendering Text interactive Performance Optimizations - Learn how to improve performance with complex Canvas applications. During the workshop, we will come across cases where we need to improve the performance for rendering the Canvas shapes and this will help us understand the techniques which can be used to improve the performance of Canvas-based applications. Performance Optimizations performance Build a Mini Whiteboard - This is the best part as together, we will build a mini Canvas-based whiteboard editor using all the concepts learned above. Build a Mini Whiteboard mini Canvas-based whiteboard editor You can find more details about my workshop here . here Register with an Early bird discount If any of this sounds interesting and exciting to you, sign up for my workshop with a special early bird discount of 40% until the 1st of December . I would love to see you there!. If you know someone who might be interested, please do share it with them :). workshop early bird discount of 40% until the 1st of December Since it's a live workshop, seats are limited , so the sooner you register, the better :). The recordings will also be provided after the workshop. seats are limited recordings I am still working on the exact time of the workshop, based on the registrants across the world and I will soon share more details on the same. exact time If you have any questions or suggestions, please comment or contact me on LinkedIn , Twitter , or Bluesky . I'd love to hear from you! LinkedIn Twitter Bluesky If anything is stopping you from joining the workshop, my DMs are open. Let me know, and I'll do my best to help :) Closing thoughts I am very excited about the workshop. I'm learning a lot during this process, though I must admit some things are quite challenging! I will document all my learnings and experiences from this workshop. Until then, goodbye and have a great day, and see you soon!

How I Went From Knowing Nothing About Canvas to Hosting a Workshop 

OpenAI has recently launched a new feature called Canvas for ChatGPT, designed to enhance users’ interactions with AI for writing and coding projects. This new interface aims to provide a more collaborative and interactive experience, moving beyond the traditional chat format. In this article, I’ll cover the top features of ChatGPT Canvas and show how to use it. What is Canvas? Canvas is an innovative interface that allows users to work on writing and coding tasks in a separate window alongside the main ChatGPT chat window. It provides a workspace where users can generate, edit, and refine their content more efficiently. This feature is currently available in beta for ChatGPT Plus and Teams users, with plans to extend access to all users once it exits beta. It’s almost the same as the Claude Artifacts, but in Canvas, you don’t have the ability to run the code. Key Features of Canvas Enhanced Collaboration Canvas opens a separate window for your projects, allowing you to collaborate with ChatGPT more effectively. You can highlight specific sections of text or code to receive targeted edits or suggestions from the AI. Writing Canvas offers several features to improve your content: Adjust Length: You can easily shorten or lengthen your document.


Change Reading Level: Adjust the complexity of your text to suit different audiences, from kindergarten level to graduate school.


Add Final Polish: ChatGPT can refine your text for grammar, clarity, and consistency.


Emojis and Formatting: Add emojis for emphasis and use basic markdown formatting for better presentation. You can do all of this with just a click on the icon. So easy :) Coding Assistance Other cool features will be helpful for programmers. Code Review: Get suggestions for improving your code.


Add Comments: Automatically generate inline documentation to explain code sections.


Debugging: Identify and fix bugs in your code with ease.


Language Translation: Convert code between different programming languages with just a few clicks. How to Use ChatGPT Canvas To start using Canvas, select “GPT-4o with canvas” from the model selector on the ChatGPT dashboard. The interface will automatically open when ChatGPT detects that a separate workspace could be beneficial, such as for more extended outputs or complex coding tasks. Users can also manually trigger Canvas by including “use canvas” in their prompts. Video Tutorial about OpenAI Canvas Please watch my video review to see Canvas in action. https://youtu.be/KDDU_L3zUas?si=b5NcwWE4iLEEVvTq&embedable=true Conclusion This tool represents a significant step in making AI interactions more productive and user-friendly. I will try it and see if this tool will be on my favorite list. If you tried Canva, please share your feedback in the comments. ;) OpenAI has recently launched a new feature called Canvas for ChatGPT, designed to enhance users’ interactions with AI for writing and coding projects. This new interface aims to provide a more collaborative and interactive experience, moving beyond the traditional chat format. In this article, I’ll cover the top features of ChatGPT Canvas and show how to use it. What is Canvas? Canvas is an innovative interface that allows users to work on writing and coding tasks in a separate window alongside the main ChatGPT chat window. It provides a workspace where users can generate, edit, and refine their content more efficiently. This feature is currently available in beta for ChatGPT Plus and Teams users, with plans to extend access to all users once it exits beta. It’s almost the same as the Claude Artifacts, but in Canvas, you don’t have the ability to run the code. Key Features of Canvas Enhanced Collaboration Canvas opens a separate window for your projects, allowing you to collaborate with ChatGPT more effectively. You can highlight specific sections of text or code to receive targeted edits or suggestions from the AI. Writing Canvas offers several features to improve your content: Adjust Length: You can easily shorten or lengthen your document. Change Reading Level: Adjust the complexity of your text to suit different audiences, from kindergarten level to graduate school. Add Final Polish: ChatGPT can refine your text for grammar, clarity, and consistency. Emojis and Formatting: Add emojis for emphasis and use basic markdown formatting for better presentation. Adjust Length: You can easily shorten or lengthen your document. Adjust Length: You can easily shorten or lengthen your document. Adjust Length: Change Reading Level: Adjust the complexity of your text to suit different audiences, from kindergarten level to graduate school. Change Reading Level: Adjust the complexity of your text to suit different audiences, from kindergarten level to graduate school. Change Reading Level: Add Final Polish: ChatGPT can refine your text for grammar, clarity, and consistency. Add Final Polish: ChatGPT can refine your text for grammar, clarity, and consistency. Add Final Polish: Emojis and Formatting: Add emojis for emphasis and use basic markdown formatting for better presentation. Emojis and Formatting: Add emojis for emphasis and use basic markdown formatting for better presentation. Emojis and Formatting: You can do all of this with just a click on the icon. So easy :) Coding Assistance Other cool features will be helpful for programmers. Code Review: Get suggestions for improving your code. Add Comments: Automatically generate inline documentation to explain code sections. Debugging: Identify and fix bugs in your code with ease. Language Translation: Convert code between different programming languages with just a few clicks. Code Review: Get suggestions for improving your code. Code Review: Get suggestions for improving your code. Code Review: Add Comments: Automatically generate inline documentation to explain code sections. Add Comments: Automatically generate inline documentation to explain code sections. Add Comments: Debugging: Identify and fix bugs in your code with ease. Debugging: Identify and fix bugs in your code with ease. Debugging: Language Translation: Convert code between different programming languages with just a few clicks. Language Translation: Convert code between different programming languages with just a few clicks. Language Translation: How to Use ChatGPT Canvas To start using Canvas, select “GPT-4o with canvas” from the model selector on the ChatGPT dashboard. The interface will automatically open when ChatGPT detects that a separate workspace could be beneficial, such as for more extended outputs or complex coding tasks. Users can also manually trigger Canvas by including “use canvas” in their prompts. Video Tutorial about OpenAI Canvas Please watch my video review to see Canvas in action. https://youtu.be/KDDU_L3zUas?si=b5NcwWE4iLEEVvTq&embedable=true https://youtu.be/KDDU_L3zUas?si=b5NcwWE4iLEEVvTq&embedable=true Conclusion This tool represents a significant step in making AI interactions more productive and user-friendly. I will try it and see if this tool will be on my favorite list. If you tried Canva, please share your feedback in the comments. ;)

ChatGPT Canvas: A Game-Changer for Writers and Coders

LOS ANGELES, United States, July 30th, 2024/Chainwire/--DSCVR, the largest web3 social media and community-building platform, announces the launch of Canvas, a groundbreaking framework that enables developers to effortlessly build and integrate custom applications directly into DSCVR’s social feeds. With just a few tweaks any web application can be made into a Canvas application. Combined with DSCVR’s API, Canvas provides an easy-to-build framework to launch and distribute embedded apps on the DSCVR platform. Canvas apps can have rich interfaces previously unseen in Web3 social that extend beyond the existing frame standards of buttons and textboxes to support games, interactive media, and more. Developers can find viral distribution for Canvases in feed, making them instantly accessible to the community and scaling them across hundreds of thousands of users. With Canvas, building, launching, and managing embedded apps has never been easier or more innovative, offering end users dynamic and rewarding experiences. A New Era of Web3 Embedded App Development DSCVR Canvas introduces a framework that makes app creation accessible to a breadth of developers, from seasoned engineers to students just learning Javascript. The platform offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the development process, allowing anyone to build dynamic, interactive applications without advanced technical skills. Canvas is also built to support existing Frames and Solana Blinks so developers in these ecosystems can easily share their apps on DSCVR. “We’re excited to introduce Canvas to our developer community,” said Rick Porter, CEO of DSCVR. “Our goal is to empower developers with the framework they need to create and scale apps within the DSCVR ecosystem for the benefit of our users. Canvas is a significant step towards realizing that vision.” Key Features of DSCVR Canvas: Transactions: Canvas applications can interact directly with user wallets which are already paired with DSCVR accounts, creating new utility for NFTs and fungible totokens. Seamless Integration: Apps built on Canvas integrate effortlessly with the DSCVR platform, leveraging robust APIs and the speed of the platform for smooth performance. Enhanced Performance: Designed for scalability, Canvas supports everything from simple ways to earn crypto, tipping, to games and other complex applications. Rich Media Support: Users can incorporate images, videos, and interactive elements to create engaging and immersive apps. Driving Innovation in Web3 Social MeMedia With more canvases being built on DSCVR, users will enjoy a wide range of fun and engaging experiences directly within their social feed. From interactive games and trading platforms to token minting, DSCVR Canvas Embedded Apps will enrich the user experience, making social interactions more dynamic and rewarding. These apps will allow users to easily monetize their activities, participate in immersive gaming and trade digital assets, transforming the way they interact on the platform. At the same time, this is an opportunity for developers to gain distribution for their applications to an audience of hundreds of thousands of users. Launch Event and Community Engagement To celebrate the launch, DSCVR will be organizing a global hackathon on August 5th hosted by Dorahacks to encourage experimentation and creativity among its developer community. Sponsors include Metaplex, Matrica, Helius, Spiderswap and Tweed. Notable judges include Austen Federa, Jon Wong, and Pedro Miranda from the Solana Foundation as well as Josh Finer from Solana Ventures. “We’re committed to supporting our developer community and providing them with the support and tools they need to succeed,” added Rick Porter. “DSCVR Canvas is a testament to our dedication to innovation in the Web3 social ecosystem.” About DSCVR With over 500k monthly unique visitors, DSCVR (pronounced “Discover”) is a Web3 social network combining the usability of a Web2-style social app with crypto technology that unlocks ownership, monetization and distribution for users, creators, and projects. Through its native crypto functionality, DSCVR rewards users and supercharges community-building, while its API allows developers and partners to build applications that target through the social graph, distribute through the feed, and monetize in posts. DSCVR’s seed investors include Polychain Capital, Upfront Ventures, BDMI, Shima Capital, Tomahawk VC, and Fyrfly Venture Partners. Users can follow DSCVR on Twitter (X) for more updates. Contact Press Inquiries Cher Park DSCVR press@dscvr.one This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. LOS ANGELES, United States, July 30th, 2024/Chainwire/--DSCVR, the largest web3 social media and community-building platform, announces the launch of Canvas, a groundbreaking framework that enables developers to effortlessly build and integrate custom applications directly into DSCVR’s social feeds. With just a few tweaks any web application can be made into a Canvas application. Combined with DSCVR’s API, Canvas provides an easy-to-build framework to launch and distribute embedded apps on the DSCVR platform. Canvas apps can have rich interfaces previously unseen in Web3 social that extend beyond the existing frame standards of buttons and textboxes to support games, interactive media, and more. Developers can find viral distribution for Canvases in feed, making them instantly accessible to the community and scaling them across hundreds of thousands of users. With Canvas, building, launching, and managing embedded apps has never been easier or more innovative, offering end users dynamic and rewarding experiences. A New Era of Web3 Embedded App Development DSCVR Canvas introduces a framework that makes app creation accessible to a breadth of developers, from seasoned engineers to students just learning Javascript. The platform offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the development process, allowing anyone to build dynamic, interactive applications without advanced technical skills. Canvas is also built to support existing Frames and Solana Blinks so developers in these ecosystems can easily share their apps on DSCVR. “We’re excited to introduce Canvas to our developer community,” said Rick Porter, CEO of DSCVR. “Our goal is to empower developers with the framework they need to create and scale apps within the DSCVR ecosystem for the benefit of our users. Canvas is a significant step towards realizing that vision.” “We’re excited to introduce Canvas to our developer community,” said Rick Porter, CEO of DSCVR. “Our goal is to empower developers with the framework they need to create and scale apps within the DSCVR ecosystem for the benefit of our users. Canvas is a significant step towards realizing that vision.” Key Features of DSCVR Canvas: Transactions: Canvas applications can interact directly with user wallets which are already paired with DSCVR accounts, creating new utility for NFTs and fungible totokens. Transactions: Seamless Integration: Apps built on Canvas integrate effortlessly with the DSCVR platform, leveraging robust APIs and the speed of the platform for smooth performance. Enhanced Performance: Designed for scalability, Canvas supports everything from simple ways to earn crypto, tipping, to games and other complex applications. Rich Media Support: Users can incorporate images, videos, and interactive elements to create engaging and immersive apps. Driving Innovation in Web3 Social MeMedia With more canvases being built on DSCVR, users will enjoy a wide range of fun and engaging experiences directly within their social feed. From interactive games and trading platforms to token minting, DSCVR Canvas Embedded Apps will enrich the user experience, making social interactions more dynamic and rewarding. These apps will allow users to easily monetize their activities, participate in immersive gaming and trade digital assets, transforming the way they interact on the platform. At the same time, this is an opportunity for developers to gain distribution for their applications to an audience of hundreds of thousands of users. Launch Event and Community Engagement To celebrate the launch, DSCVR will be organizing a global hackathon on August 5th hosted by Dorahacks to encourage experimentation and creativity among its developer community. Sponsors include Metaplex, Matrica, Helius, Spiderswap and Tweed. Notable judges include Austen Federa, Jon Wong, and Pedro Miranda from the Solana Foundation as well as Josh Finer from Solana Ventures. “We’re committed to supporting our developer community and providing them with the support and tools they need to succeed,” added Rick Porter. “DSCVR Canvas is a testament to our dedication to innovation in the Web3 social ecosystem.” “We’re committed to supporting our developer community and providing them with the support and tools they need to succeed,” added Rick Porter. “DSCVR Canvas is a testament to our dedication to innovation in the Web3 social ecosystem.” About DSCVR With over 500k monthly unique visitors, DSCVR (pronounced “Discover”) is a Web3 social network combining the usability of a Web2-style social app with crypto technology that unlocks ownership, monetization and distribution for users, creators, and projects. DSCVR Through its native crypto functionality, DSCVR rewards users and supercharges community-building, while its API allows developers and partners to build applications that target through the social graph, distribute through the feed, and monetize in posts. DSCVR’s seed investors include Polychain Capital, Upfront Ventures, BDMI, Shima Capital, Tomahawk VC, and Fyrfly Venture Partners. Users can follow DSCVR on Twitter (X) for more updates. Twitter Contact Press Inquiries Cher Park DSCVR press@dscvr.one This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here. This story was distributed as a release by Chainwire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here . here here

DSCVR Launches Canvas: A Massive Leap For Web3 Social Embedded Apps

DSCVR ক্যানভাস চালু করেছে: Web3 সোশ্যাল এমবেডেড অ্যাপের জন্য একটি বিশাল ঝাঁপ

DSCVR bringt Canvas auf den Markt: Ein gewaltiger Sprung für eingebettete soziale Web3-Apps

DSCVR lanza Canvas: un gran salto para las aplicaciones sociales integradas en Web3

DSCVR lance Canvas : un grand pas en avant pour les applications sociales Web3 intégrées

डीएससीवीआर ने कैनवास लॉन्च किया: वेब3 सोशल एम्बेडेड ऐप्स के लिए एक बड़ी छलांग

DSCVR が Canvas をリリース: Web3 ソーシャル埋め込みアプリの大きな飛躍

DSCVR, 캔버스 출시: Web3 소셜 임베디드 앱의 대대적인 도약

DSCVR lança Canvas: um grande salto para aplicativos sociais incorporados na Web3

DSCVR запускает Canvas: огромный скачок для встраиваемых приложений Web3 Social

DSCVR Canvas'ı Piyasaya Sürüyor: Web3 Sosyal Gömülü Uygulamalar İçin Büyük Bir Atılım

DSCVR ra mắt Canvas: Bước nhảy vọt lớn cho các ứng dụng nhúng trên mạng xã hội Web3

DSCVR 推出 Canvas：Web3 社交嵌入式应用的一次巨大飞跃

If you’ve never played the famous , raise your hand! Snake game I say that, but I suppose that nowadays, the new generation may never have heard of this game, which may seem a bit old-fashioned given the possibilities offered by today’s computers and the Web. And yet, there was a time when the Snake game was a game that all cell phone owners spent an inordinate amount of time playing. Yes, back then, we weren’t talking about smartphones, just telephones. It was a good time, as the saying goes, and Nokia popularized the game through its mobile devices, which were also a benchmark. Today, not much remains of Nokia’s domination of the mobile world and the Snake game. For those who are nostalgic for this game – and I’m one of them, I must admit – this tutorial will teach you how to recreate it for the Web. To do so, I’ll be using HTML5’s Canvas API and JavaScript. It’s also an opportunity to learn how to use classes in Javascript and to create an effective game loop for Web games. Creating the Web page for our Snake game To begin with, we’re going to create the Web page that will enable us to play the Snake game we’ll be developing in this tutorial. You’ll soon see that this Web page presents no difficulties whatsoever. Two divs, one for the page title and another to display the area where the snake will move. To this, I’ll add a little to center these divs by applying a fixed width to them: CSS https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/52d2a7ffd8b417fb48e27ae86237487f?embedable=true Design of the Snake class As I explained in the introduction to this tutorial, I’m going to use a dedicated Snake class to model the game. This will also allow you to discover how to manipulate classes in JavaScript. Our Snake will have the following properties: and to represent board size in width and height respectively. bw bh and represent the number of cells available for the board. nbx nby and to represent the size of a snake element in width and height. eltw elth and which represent the snake’s displacement vector. dirx diry and add a small margin to the width and height of snake elements so that the player can see the demarcation between each snake element. marginx marginy , , , which store the state of the moving arrows at a given moment. keyup keydown keyleft keyright stores the number of frames per second required to move the snake at the start of the game. startftps At the end of the constructor, an init method is called to initialize the snake at the start of the game. When a new game is to be started, simply call this init method again. This gives us the following code for our Snake class: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/719918967c6bc4d5a0bde7252fdfc617?embedable=true In the init method, you can define other snake properties, such as a pointer to its head and a pointer to its tail. The elements array will store all the snake’s elements at a given moment. The points property is used to store points for the current game, while the level property is used to define how many points are accumulated to increase the game’s fps. The higher the number of fps, the faster the snake will move. Since the fps property represents the number of frames per second, we need to have a fpsinterval property valued at the result of dividing 1 second (or 1,000 milliseconds) by the desired number of fps. The principle of the Snake game The principle of the Snake game is simple: you have to guide the snake using the four directional arrows so that it eats the maximum number of apples that appear on the board. Each time you eat an apple, the snake grows by one element. As the snake grows, you’ll find it difficult to avoid touching its own tail. If you don’t, you’ll lose, and the score will start again from zero. Of course, every time you eat an apple, you score a point. It’s worth pointing out that the version of Snake we’re going to implement is the one where touching the edges of the board doesn’t make you lose. It just makes you tip over to the opposite side. The second versions of the Snake game were implemented in this way by Nokia. Since the snake has to eat an apple, we need to display this apple on the board in a random fashion, taking care not to generate an apple directly on an element of the snake. This gives us the following generatefood method for our Snake class: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/01123c58385dfb7b2a43ca4d186eb0fd?embedable=true Snake on-screen rendering Our Snake class is progressing, and we now need to create a method for rendering the snake on the screen. We’ll also need to display the player’s number of points at a given time and, finally, display the apple to be eaten. The apple’s position is stored in the Snake class’s food property. To render the Snake on the screen, I’m using HTML5’s Canvas API. I’ll use this API’s drawing primitives to draw rectangles representing the various elements of the snake as well as the apple to be eaten. I’ll apply a different color to the apple and the snake so that the player can distinguish between them. This gives the following code for the draw method of our Snake class: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/a1381047c4849f76f38a99db5730231d?embedable=true Moving the Snake We now have a snake that we can display on screen. This is all very well, but we need to add support for the snake’s movement. As explained above, the snake moves along the coordinate vector (dirx, diry). So, each time we call the move method I’m going to define here, the snake will move by the same amount. In this move method, we check that the coordinates of the snake’s head correspond to those of the apple to be eaten. If so, the snake has just eaten the apple. The player scores a point, but more importantly, we need to take four actions: Add an element to the snake’s elements. This element becomes the new tail. Generate a new apple by calling generatefood. Add a point to the player. If the player passes a level, then we update the number of frames per second to be displayed to speed up the Snake’s movement. Still, in the move method, we need to check that the player hasn’t made the mistake of touching an element of the snake with the head. If this is the case, the game is lost, and we start afresh! To do this, we call the init method of the Snake class presented above. Now, we need to complete the move method by actually moving the snake. To do this, we add dirx and diry to the snake’s head coordinates. This gives us a new head to add. You’ll also notice that moving the snake is done intelligently by removing the tail each time and adding a new head. This avoids having to update the position of all the snake’s elements. Finish by remembering to update the new head. Incidentally, you’ll also have noticed that when the snake’s head crosses a board boundary, we make it move to the opposite side of the board. This applies to both width and length. This gives us the following code for the move method: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/857a654c2b6dd065a15bfdb5751cdcab?embedable=true The GameLoop of our Snake Game Our Snake can be displayed on screen. Our Snake can be moved by calling its move method. What are we missing? We’re missing the implementation of our game’s GameLoop! Without this GameLoop, which will call the move and draw methods at regular intervals, the Snake won’t be able to move. In what follows, we’ll show you how to implement a GameLoop the right way in JavaScript, leaving it up to the browser to call it when it sees fit so as not to block the rendering thread of the game’s web page. To do this, we’ll use the requestAnimationFrame method of the standard JavaScript object window. The browser will then adapt the maximum fps it can support to the computer or smartphone on which the web page will be used. Within our gameloop method, we’ll then decorrelate the number of fps supported by the browser from the number of fps we want to move our snake. We’ll only call the move and draw methods when we’re within the fps range defined earlier. It’s important to update the coordinates of the snake’s movement vector according to the state of the four directional keys: up, down, left, and right. Finally, we call the GameLoop, delegating to the browser the task of choosing the best moment to do so. This gives us the following code for the GameLoop: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/ef5abcd238e63cacd906a039b7647eaf?embedable=true Handling user interaction with the Snake To enable the Snake to be moved according to the directional keys pressed by the player, we use the keydown and keyup events. For each of these events, we’ll call a method of the Snake class. Logically, this will be pressdown for the keydown event and pressup for the keyup event. We update the value of the linked Snake class properties according to what the player does with these keys. As you can see, we don’t block the game by updating the snake’s position directly. Instead, we update the state in the gameloop method, which is called at regular intervals. Assembling the various Snake components To complete this Snake game, we need to assemble the various elements. We retrieve the Canvas object via its ID. Then, we obtain the 2D context linked to this Canvas. Apply the desired dimensions. We create a Snake object, passing the various expected values as parameters, including the number of cells on the board. Add the event listeners for the keydown and keyup events. Finally, all that’s left to do is call our Snake’s gameloop once to start the game. This gives us the following complete code for the famous Snake game made with the Canvas API and the infernal HTML5/JavaScript Web couple: https://gist.github.com/ssaurel/e01731169b9f0dca1a3fb19ba6e8f3a2?embedable=true Our Snake Game in Action Our Snake complete, it’s time to test it in a Web browser to see if the Snake magic works again, as it did when Nokia outrageously dominated the mobile world: From this Snake game, you can imagine several possible enhancements. For example, you could add a sound each time the snake eats the apple. You could use HTML5’s Web Storage API to store a player’s local high score. This way, when a player beats his high score, you can display a congratulatory message. The possibilities are endless, and your only limit, as ever in programming, is your imagination. Watch this tutorial on YouTube This tutorial can also be watched on YouTube on the SSaurel channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uSfTEq2JMo&embedable=true Also published . here

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