Zach Perrier
Viewpoints Editor
If you’re reading this in print or as a PDF, the article you are reading was laid out in a program called Adobe InDesign. This article is typed in 12-point Times New Roman font. The typeface for the article’s headline and my name underneath my picture is called Bookman.
These visual choices are just some of the many decisions we make at the Voice when using InDesign. Like most Adobe programs, there is a steep learning curve, but once you become acclimated with the program, it becomes much easier to manage; it is a versatile tool whose use can extend past college.
I feel I should stop and say that I genuinely dislike most of Adobe’s business practices. But the issue with my distaste is that the programs — despite these flaws — are extremely helpful in allowing the tools to create and make effective design choices. It’s these strengths that I feel Canva, the increasingly popular online design platform, lacks.
Founded in Australia in 2013, Canva has become integral to the design and advertising for individuals, corporations, and yes, college student organizations like those at Wooster. Canva has since gobbled up the infrastructure for artificial intelligence tools, but for the most part many use the carousel of preset templates provided.
One could go to any building on campus and feast their eyes on Canva’s visual conformity. With their templates being so widely copied and used, it can become a very easy game to point them out. Bubbly, corporate-friendly clip art mixed with stock fonts. Colors that are somehow muted and bright at the same time.
Despite the attempts of design and appeal, when I gaze upon all of these posters, my eyes glaze over. Very little truly ever stands out to me. And I really don’t think that this is the fault of the people who make it; often, students — especially leaders of student organizations — simply do not have the time to learn complex design programs. I get that entirely.
Regardless, I still don’t think it has to be this way. Don’t get me wrong, I have used Canva when needed for projects, but I often try to use Canva in a way that is conducive to my own design choices. I reject templates. I wrestle with the empty, white box in order to create something unique.
Or maybe digital tools themselves have become the issue. Working in Digital Collections and as a history major in Professor Hettinger’s History of C.O.W. class, I have seen the creativity that did blossom on this campus. I have seen hand-drawn posters, engaging zines, all sorts of handmade ephemera that reflect real choices in design made by students.
I think about the time when I was looking through old editions of the Voice and saw a story on when the student organization k(no)w ran into trouble when their hand-drawn logo for Sex Week — which featured a nude person spreading their legs — was posted on the Art Wall of Lowry. This fracas, although slightly ridiculous sounding in hindsight, points to questions of creative liberty and how student orgs can guide their own optics and image. Members of k(no)w would go on to argue for their case, citing administration’s hypocrisy in focusing on logos rather than issues such as rape culture on campus.
And even now, I stare at Adobe InDesign for another week, bombarded with pop-ups asking me to use their new generative A.I. tool. Great. Just what I wanted. I still think that presets and plug-in templates have had far-worse reaching consequences than anything A.I. has offered to the world so far. Discrediting what’s pushed onto us by corporations like Canva is one step further to making your work your own, especially since the work done at student orgs is often so unique and personal.
See this as a call to action for creativity. The next time you want to advertise, try to start from scratch. If you’re really feeling able, bust out sharpies and construction paper. Try your hand at arts and crafts again and let off some steam from studying for an exam or punching out more I.S. pages. Whatever you try to create will certainly stand out from the neon cursive lettering and cacophony of corporate art spewed out by Canva’s algorithms. And don’t ever think that it’ll come out terrible. Even if it isn’t the greatest or the cleanest, you might inspire people to at least try and be terrible too.
