From a student's frustration with complex design software emerged one of technology's most transformative success stories. Melanie Perkins, while teaching graphic design at university in Perth, Australia, observed her students spending entire semesters just learning where buttons were located in professional design programs. This pain point sparked a revolutionary idea: what if design could be accessible to everyone?

Along with co-founders Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, Perkins turned this vision into Canva, a platform that has democratized design for the digital age. What began as a modest solution for yearbook creation has exploded into a global phenomenon, with nearly 200 million users across 190 countries creating 15 billion designs in over 100 languages.

Canva's timing couldn't be better, positioning itself at the confluence of two powerful trends reshaping business communication: the dominance of visual content and the rise of artificial intelligence. The platform has become indispensable for professionals across industries, from marketing to human resources, who need to create polished visual materials without traditional design training.

While professional graphic designers remain essential for complex creative work, Canva has pioneered what it calls the "visual economy" – a world where basic design capabilities are becoming as fundamental as email skills in the workplace. Through AI-enabled tools and intuitive interfaces, Canva has transformed design from an exclusive professional skill into an accessible language that anyone can speak, fundamentally changing how we communicate in the digital age.

NOTE: This story about Canva is a summarization of the chapter-opening vignette, Communication Close-Up, that appears exclusively in Chapter 9 of Business Communication Today, 16th Edition, by Bovee and Thill (Pearson). At the end of the chapter is a Communication Challenge that gives students an opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to a real-world scenario at Canva, enhancing critical thinking and practical application skills while reinforcing the key concepts covered in the chapter​.
 

Business communication instructors and their students can step into the future of business communication with the new, groundbreaking 16th edition of Business Communication Today by Courtland Bovee and John Thill—where artificial intelligence meets time-tested principles. For the first time, artificial intelligence (AI) is seamlessly integrated into every chapter, making this the first business communication textbook on the market to offer comprehensive AI coverage.

Neuroscience Meets Business Communication Education

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