Hi Reader,

Once, I was handed a slide deck. A marketer at an agency had built it in Canva as reference material for the brand audit package I was putting together. It was tidy enough. It also could have belonged to anyone, and in a way it did. Even though the colours had been swapped out, the fonts adjusted, the content dropped in, something was missing. The thinking that makes design actually work for a specific organization, a specific community, a specific message, wasn't there. It couldn't be. That's just not what a template is for.

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​Read the full newsletter below.
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When “just use Canva” becomes the whole strategy

This is a newer problem. In years past I've been handed a logo sketched on a napkin, or built in PowerPoint—I am, regrettably, not joking about the PowerPoint. The ask was always the same: can you work with this? I don't take projects like that anymore, so: no. But at least everyone in the room knew what that was. A starting point. Something that needed work.

The Canva deck was different. It had been assembled into something that could read as finished, which made it harder to explain why it wasn't working, and harder still to justify starting over.
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But to me, what's being asked underneath any of these asks, is to reverse-engineer what was intentional from what was guesswork, do all the due diligence research you would have done anyway, and attempt to build a compromise on top of it.

You can't. Not well, anyway.

Canva is a genuinely useful tool for people who already kind of know, sorta what to do. It's fast, it's accessible, it removes a real barrier. What tools like this can't do is know your community, understand what your organization is trying to say, or catch that the template you picked sends a signal you didn't intend. It won't notice that the font pairing looks like someone without typography know-how chose it based on ✨VIBES✨, or that the contrast ratio wouldn't pass WCAG so your content is inaccessible. A tool has no meaningful relationship with context. But design thinking does.

So how did we get here?

The deeper issue is what the tool was supposed to solve. Look at what nonprofit communications roles are actually asking for right now. A single coordinator posting might require graphic design, short-form video production, web management, email marketing, photography, and social strategy, plus three to five years of experience doing all of it. The scope of that role belongs to an entire department, and the salary rarely reflects even one of those specializations. Canva (or Creative Cloud, or fill in the blank AI model, or...) got handed to the person living inside that situation as a consolation prize.
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From the outside, the tool promises a way of making an impossible workload look manageable. But on the inside, someone in a comms role at a nonprofit is already doing the work of several people!
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Treating a design tool as a substitute for design capacity is a decision with a cost, and that cost doesn't land on the person who made the decision. It lands on your materials. And then on the communities your materials are supposed to serve.
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Having Canva doesn't make you a designer. Knowing what design can actually do for your organization, your team, and the people you're trying to reach, that's where the right work can begin.
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Next month: what changes when the right person is doing the right work.

Rooting you on,
Reesa

• ​BURNOUT: Do You Feel Half Alive? with Glennon Doyle, Emily & Amelia Nagoski
  ​(We Can Do Hard Things, 2022)
  The Nagoski sisters join Glennon Doyle to unpack why resolving the thing that caused your stress doesn't actually complete the stress cycle in your body. And if you’re doing emotionally demanding work? In this political climate? In an under-resourced sector? Pal, beware the burnout.
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• ​The Nonprofit Communications Trends Report 2026 by Kivi Leroux Miller ​
  ​(Nonprofit Marketing Guide)​
  Miller has been surveying nonprofit communications staff every year for over a decade, and the findings keep saying the same thing: the gap between what organizations expect from their comms people and what is actually possible for one or two humans to produce is not closing.
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• ​What history's most ridiculous design brief can teach us today by Tom May​
  ​(Creative Boom)
  ​A book about Britain's forgotten matchbook collection is not something you'd expect to change how you think about design. And yet. These touchpoints were tiny, constrained, ephemeral, and somehow they're full of personality, wit, and point of view. Worth reading alongside everything else here as a reminder of what design actually is when it's doing its job.
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• Bonus: Too many tabs open in your brain/browser? Same. Try CMD + SHIFT + D (CTRL + SHIFT + D on Windows) bookmarks everything open in one move. You're welcome.
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P.S. If this resonated with you, here are three ways you can let me know:

• Reply and say hello—I read every one.
• Forward this to someone who needs to hear it.
• Bring me in as a design partner when your team needs someone who actually gets it.

About Reesa​
I work with nonprofits and social enterprises on accessibility-focused branding and websites, helping make sure your marketing shows how your message matters™. Member of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Parent of small humans, vernacular jazz dancer, weightlifter, and unreasonably attached to a sourdough starter named Pudding.