{"id":42650,"date":"2024-03-26T16:17:46","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T20:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42650"},"modified":"2024-06-12T15:41:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T19:41:04","slug":"canva-acquires-affinity-serif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/26\/canva-acquires-affinity-serif\/","title":{"rendered":"Canva Acquires Affinity\/Serif"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jess Weatherbed<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>, Mac Power Users<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Web-based design platform Canva has acquired the Affinity creative software suite<\/a>, positioning itself as a challenger to Adobe’s grip over the digital design industry. Canva announced the deal on Tuesday<\/a>, which gives the company ownership over Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher<\/a> — three popular creative applications for Windows, Mac, and iPad that provide similar features to Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign software, respectively.<\/p>

Official figures for the deal have not been revealed, but Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> reports that it’s valued at “several hundred million [British] pounds.” Nevertheless, the acquisition makes sense as the Australian-based company tries to attract more creative professionals. As of January this year<\/a>, Canva’s design platform attracted around 170 million monthly global users. That’s a lot <\/em>of people who probably aren’t using equivalent Adobe software like Express<\/a>, but unlike Adobe, Canva doesn’t have its own design applications that target creative professionals like illustrators, photographers, and video editors. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Olivia Poh<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

It’s the biggest outlay yet by Australia’s most valuable startup, priced at $26 billion in its latest share sale, and marks a milestone in the expansion of its range of professional tools.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Affinity<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>, PR<\/a>, forum<\/a>, 2<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

None of that changes today.<\/p>\n

In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase. Existing Affinity users will be able to continue to use your apps in perpetuity as they were originally purchased – with plenty of free updates to V2 still to look forward to!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Canva<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Trusted by more than three million creative professionals across the globe, Affinity’s award-winning suite of professional design software has become a sought-after solution for everything from photo editing to complex graphic and vector design. Together, we’re setting our sights on empowering every kind of team and organization to achieve their goals.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

While our last decade at Canva has focused heavily on the 99% of knowledge workers without design training, truly empowering the world to design includes empowering professional designers too. By joining forces with Affinity, we’re excited to unlock the full spectrum of designers at every level and stage of the design journey.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Bonyhady<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Canva has made its largest acquisition to date, likely spending more than $1 billion to buy professional design software company Serif to compete directly with Adobe as its prepares a long run at going public.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Craig Grannell<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Although the press has in recent years often positioned Serif as a kind of scrappy underdog newcomer, the company has a long history. It was founded in 1987, which makes it only five years younger than Adobe. Most of its recent history has been tied up in becoming a direct competitor to Adobe – and also a direct competitor to Adobe’s business model<\/em>. Through its Affinity suite, Serif offered an alternative: buy-once apps rather than subscriptions. And although I can’t imagine Serif makes anything other than a minority of its sales on iPad, the company’s superb Affinity apps for Apple’s tablet – compared to Adobe’s comparatively stumbling efforts – haven’t hurt the company’s reputation any.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Version 3 of the Affinity suite will probably be the moment we’ll know. You can already picture a press release stating that Canva has made the “difficult decision” to move Affinity apps to subscriptions, and a “hard choice” to move development from Nottingham to Canva HQ in Australia. I hope this won’t be the case, but we’ve seen this scenario play out so many times before.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Rui Carmo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Affinity suite is (for the moment) good quality native Mac software that does not rely on cloud features nor has a subscription model.<\/p>\n

As much as their FAQ claims that will not change, I think we’ve all seen this before–in short, I don’t trust Canva one whit and fully expect to revisit this post in a year when Serif\/Affinity breaks one of those three tenets above and forces me to move away from their software.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Christina Warren<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m selfishly sad to see Canva acquire Affinity b\/c I know it will the end to our cheap perpetually-licensed design tools for Mac\/Windows\/iOS, however, this is a really smart move from Canva who makes an excellent web-based design tool for normies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n