Canva Magic Studio: We Got It, Let's Try It, and Rate it 1-5.
Hey, Queens!
It’s time to talk Canva’s Magic Studio.
We’ll say it until we’re blue in the face: Canva is one of the holy grails of design tools for digital marketing. CanvaPro keeps our business flowing and has for years, so we knew when the digital design platform dropped Magic Studio in May, we had to do some investigation. AI is scary territory so we had some of our team members test some of the most talked about features. We wanted to know: does this new suite of features make our lives brighter, better, and bolder, or is Canva falling off by jumping on the AI bandwagon?
Our queens come from every court in marketing so we dug through the suite of features to see which tools from Magic Studio are the best bang for the buck. Today, we’re highlighting the three that we think could help any marketing team of any size.
1. Magic Design – 4 / 5
Magic Design is the real showstopper in this suite. This tool is what would happen if ChatGPT and your favorite graphic designer had a very, very talented baby. Magic Design creates fly af templates for any marketing need or niche in minutes. Early-stage ideation has never been easier.
Great for creators and clients, Magic Design can help teams work together to bring their vision to life no matter what skill level everyone is on. With a well-crafted prompt and some creative direction, it translates complex ideas into real designs in record time. This gives graphic designers more direction to work with, leading to a result that everyone is happy with, faster.
Pros:
Quick and effortless design creation for multiple assets in minutes.
Stylish Professional layouts that incorporate brand kits.
Great for drafting creative ideas.
Cons:
Customization options can be a bit limited/repetitive.
Despite using brand kits, the temples can feel a bit “commercial,”
Uploaded content often needs to be edited after the fact (sizing, playback, etc)
Magic Design is perfect for those moments when you’ve got a tight deadline. That being said, the templates can come off a bit basic or commercial and will need quite a bit of tweaking before going to market. There were times when the templates offered were just plain ugly, but that doesn’t take away from the overall impact work Magic Design has on our workflow. 4 out of 5.
2. Animation Maker – 3.5 / 5
In the world of the 90-second attention span, animation is king. Static designs are less popular (depending on your platform) and, statistically, video or animated content attracts more engagement. Before 2020 or so, designers needed years of experience in complex editing software, or a 47-hour LinkedIn course on PowerPoint Graphics, to make professional-grade animations. With Animation Maker, those days are behind us.
This feature is very cool but it takes some pretty serious shortcuts to make engaging animations accessible. This feature is perfect for novice designers or beginners looking to spruce up social media posts and presentations. We guarantee that with enough work, your content will be more engaging and dynamic but the truth is, these basic animations won’t fool the pros.
Pros:
Great for beginners who need easy-to-use templates for animations.
Creating your own simple animations is easy and intuitive,
The animation options are universal and work well for different types of content - presentations, social media, anything.
Cons:
The animation templates are limited and can be difficult to customize.
UI panel for animations specifically is a bit clunky (and slightly buggy) making changing, editing or undoing an animation more difficult than necessary.
TBH, there are better animation apps, especially for social media.
This feature is great for editors who are part of small marketing teams or solo entrepreneurs running a one-woman show. Canva has always appealed to the novice market, so the limitations aren’t truly bothersome, but they’re not well suited for professional designers with tenure, experience, and an Adobe Cloud subscription. We’re giving it a strong 3.5 out of 5.
3. Content Planner – 4.5 / 5
All day, we dream of content calendars. We’re a digital marketing agency, so juggling multiple social media accounts and keeping content afloat between all the platforms is our bread and butter. The most difficult part of our operations is managing all the platforms necessary for success. We have a platform for scheduling, a platform for design, a platform for email marketing, a platform for planning content… you see where this is headed.
The Content Planner streamlines all of this, putting the design suite, the content calendar, and the publishing platform in one app. With the planner, you can create an asset on Canva, upload it to the built-in Content Planner, and publish it to your social media directly from the platform.
Pros:
Canva included helpful built-in features directly on the planner (Holidays and social media account integration are either automatic or prompted.)
For beginners, the content planner automatically suggests social media content classes.
Great features for marketers, (ie. multiple calendars, brand kit integration, etc.)
Cons:
Only available with Canva Pro.
The calendar view is limited making customization based on users' preferences impossible. (ie. Weekly view vs Daily vs Monthly.)
Digital marketers are always shopping around for software that makes our jobs more streamlined and simple. We’re obsessed with the potential of this feature and only have the nit-pickiest of criticisms. A strong 4.5 out of 5 from us!
Queens, if you’re like us, this update is the most exciting thing to happen in marketing this year. Canva’s Magic Studio is a major win in our book. There are so many more features to dive into and we’re excited to give you a full rundown of the suite in the future.
It’s been a while since we heard from the fans. Any queens out there tinkering with Canva’s new toys? Any favorites? Let us know, and keep an eye out for a future blog where we break down even more fun features in the Canva queendom.
And as always, we’re in your corner, Queen.
With Love,
The Team at TCQ.
