Brands over time

Canva
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

203 of Canva's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2026, measured sentence by sentence, 91 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 15 other software companies, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
203
Years covered
2015–26
Archived before ChatGPT
91
Blog · press
120 · 83

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Canva's homepage from 2013 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026canva.com1 Jul 2026
Canva homepage, 1 Jul 2026

Screenshot of Canva’s homepage (canva.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 1 Jul 2026. © Canva or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Canva.

Homepage

2026

“What will you design today?”

Page title

Canva: Visual Suite for Everyone

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2013Design for everyone
  2. 2016Beautiful design in 30 seconds
  3. 2026What will you design today?

5 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
6
12
18
Software avg 13.3
14.7
13.3
13.0
13.9
14.2
15.9
14.1
12.2
11.3
12.7
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
201512 pp
201611 pp
20171 pp
20186 pp
20197 pp
202018 pp
202120 pp
202214 pp
2023no pages
2024no pages
20253 pp
202610 pp
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201514.712
201613.311
201713.01
201813.96
201914.27
202015.918
202114.120
202212.214
202511.33
202612.710

Years with pages: 2015 (12), 2016 (11), 2017 (1), 2018 (6), 2019 (7), 2020 (18), 2021 (20), 2022 (14), 2025 (3), 2026 (10). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Before and after

2019 to Nov 2022 against 2024 to 2026

The same measures on 59 pages from before ChatGPT launched and 13 pages from 2024 on. A change here is a change in style. It does not show how any page was written: people used every one of these words and shapes long before 2022, and SGR-011 found most of the shift across brands was a trend already under way.

Measure2019 to Nov 2022 · 59 pp2024 to 2026 · 13 ppChange
Sentence length
14.212.3−13%
Sentence rhythm
0.780.94+21%
Contractions
18.318.4+0%
"You"
61%53%−8 pts
"We"
35%46%+12 pts
Questions
2.80.2−94%
Exclamations
1.880.68−64%
Long words
25%24%−1 pts
Em dashes
2.943.43+17%
AI-associated words
2.902.70−7%
AI-era marketing words
2.492.60+4%
Quieter LLM-favoured words
1.011.16+15%
AI-associated sentence shapes
0.210.11−50%
Page length
1,5341,517−1%

Each row is scaled to its own larger value, so rows compare within themselves, not with each other. Before = 2019 to Nov 2022 (59 pages); after = 2024 to 2026 (13 pages). Method: SGR-011.

04 · Against its sector

Canva among software companies

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. Long words

    20% less than its sector

    23% against a sector average of 29%; lowest of 16.

  2. "We"

    20% less than its sector

    26% against a sector average of 32%; 4th lowest of 16.

  3. Questions

    16% less than its sector

    2.6 against a sector average of 3.1; 5th lowest of 16.

Sentence length5th lowest of 16
Canva 12.8
10.415.7
ContractionsMid-table, 8th of 16
Canva 16.3
8.519.6
"You"3rd highest of 16
Canva 70%
39%78%
"We"4th lowest of 16
Canva 26%
12%49%
Questions5th lowest of 16
Canva 2.6
1.65.1
Long wordsLowest of 16
Canva 23%
23%34%
Em dashesMid-table, 8th of 16
Canva 2.74
0.216.56
AI-associated words3rd highest of 16
Canva 2.95
1.033.27
Exclamations4th highest of 16
Canva 2.27
0.155.13
Page length4th highest of 16
Canva 1,784
7403,377

Pages measured: FreeAgent 266 · GoCardless 217 · Xero 328 · Sage 229 · Intercom 204 · HubSpot 190 · Canva 203 · Figma 222 · ClickUp 203 · Miro 14 · Notion 30 · Slack 270 · Asana 223 · monday.com 266 · Airtable 299 · Mailchimp 258. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

05 · Vocabulary

Words Canva uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

design151.1 vs 20.8
brand66.1 vs 9.0
color28.9 vs 1.5
designs25.6 vs 1.4
fonts33.6 vs 0.3
font23.7 vs 0.3
visual29.8 vs 5.3
colors16.0 vs 0.8
icons15.6 vs 0.6
graphic14.5 vs 0.8
style15.5 vs 2.2
CanvaSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 203 pages. Checked for product names and page furniture.

06 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

2018Feb (archived by) · BlogArchived copy
“If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect pattern, the finest font, and the coolest color combo. What if you could bookmark one page that contained all of the design resources and references you’ll need?”
Design Resources
2019 · PressArchived copy
“It’s been a big year for us, and we hope it’s been an even bigger year for you. 2019 has seen Canva grow from the most accessible professional design platform on the market to a collaborative workspace for the most innovative organizations in the world.”
A big year comes to a close: Canva by the numbers in 2019
2025 · Press
“In 2025, our community grew to 260 million people using Canva every month, a milestone shaped by millions of classrooms, small businesses, nonprofits, teams, and creators who trust us with their visual communication needs.”
A transformative year for Canva: 2025 in review
2026 · Press
“There's something about Spider-Man that makes people want to create. He's been the most-searched entertainment character on Canva globally for years, with nearly 10 million searches in 2025 alone, and behind every one of those searches is someone with an idea they want to bring to life.”
Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day template collection is here

07 · Every page

All 211 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 203 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (8 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

202610 pages
20253 pages
202214 pages
202120 pages
202018 pages
20197 pages
20186 pages
20171 page
201611 pages
201512 pages
In the overall numbers, no year101 pages
Not measured8 pages

08 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Canva's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.