Innovative partnership provides visual tools to more than 500,000 stakeholders across 10 UC campuses

SYDNEY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Canva, the world’s only all-in-one visual communication platform, today announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with the University of California (UC) to provide Canva’s full product suite to more than 240,000 faculty and staff and 300,000 students across all 10 campuses. This partnership with the world’s leading public research university system will bring cutting-edge visual communication and design tools, including an AI-powered suite of products, to UC’s over half-million strong community.


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“From UC Berkeley to UCLA, we’re incredibly excited to be partnering with the University of California to bring the power of visual communication to more than 500,000 students and faculty across the UC system’s 10 campuses. In a world where visual communication has become the status quo in every industry and profession, ensuring we’re equipping students for an increasingly visual workforce is more important than ever. Through this partnership, we’re looking forward to rolling out our full suite of products to help the UC community achieve their creative goals,” said Melanie Perkins, Canva’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Transforming UC’s educational landscape

Under the new partnership, UC faculty, staff, and students will gain access to Canva for Campus, a powerful suite of visual communication products for college and tertiary students, administrators and faculty. From customizing content to make lectures more engaging to collaborating between departments, the Canva for Campus Visual Suite includes everything from Docs, Websites, and Whiteboards to Data Visualization tools, plus the newly launched AI-powered Magic Studio. Canva Shield, Canva’s suite of AI safety tools, aligns with the UC system’s approach of leveraging AI tools responsibly.

The new partnership also empowers UC to:

  • Enable single sign-on for staff and student access for deployment at scale
  • Streamline administrative and reporting permissions
  • Integrate with learning management systems such as Canvas, Blackboard, Schoology and more
  • Partner with Canva’s dedicated education support team to maximize the impact of the platform

Rollout of the platform is expected to be completed in stages, starting in January 2024. Canva and UC officials are also exploring course development, student training programs, and co-hosting future events.

Equipping students with critical workplace skills

The Canva-UC partnership highlights the importance of equipping higher education students with workplace tools and skills to prepare them for an ever-evolving job market. In addition to providing UC staff and students access to Canva’s full product suite, this agreement demonstrates UC's commitment to visual communication tools as a crucial factor in student success and an essential skill in today’s workplace.

“We always aim to meet our students, staff and faculty where they are and provide tools to further their success,” said Van Williams, Vice President of Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer for the University of California. “Our world today is a visual one. We communicate through presentations, reports and social media. Canva’s ease of use and ability to make complex things simple has made it a widely used tool by our students and staff. Now, everyone in our community will have access to this powerful platform, a key tool in an increasingly visual academic and professional world.”

Visual communication is now pivotal in both professional and educational contexts, with 94% of business leaders expecting employees to possess design skills as visual communication becomes required across every profession, according to Canva’s visual economy report. This demand has fueled Canva's rapid growth in education, with 50 million K-12 teachers and students around the world already using Canva to introduce visual communication and design literacy in the classroom. The same demand is present at the collegiate level, with colleges and universities looking to equip students for an increasingly visual workforce.

To learn more about Canva for Campus, click here.

Click here to download visual assets

About Canva

Launched in 2013, Canva is a free online visual communications and collaboration platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface and a vast range of templates ranging from presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel to videos, plus a huge library of fonts, stock photography, illustrations, video footage, and audio clips, anyone can take an idea and create something beautiful.

Canva for Education provides K-12 teachers and students free access to Canva’s full suite of visual communication tools, combined with extra features designed just for the classroom.


Contacts

For more information about this contract, please contact:

Hilary Steinman
UC Systemwide Procurement
Hilary.Steinman@ucop.edu
510-987-9691

For Canva press inquiries, please contact:

Grace Langford
glangford@canva.com

Heather Vega
heather@larsonpr.com