Canva appoints Neighbourhood Strategy to lead global brand architecture

Canva has appointed Neighbourhood Strategy to lead its global brand architecture strategy as the Australian-based design platform continues to ramp up its efforts to engage with large organisations and enhance its enterprise capabilities.

Cat van der Werff, Canva’s executive creative director, said: "As Canva continues to scale globally and expand our enterprise capabilities, it was crucial for us to bring a fresh perspective and rigour in how we build a brand architecture that sets us up for the future."

Jacqueline Witts, Neighbourhood Strategy’s founder and chief strategy officer, said: "we couldn’t be more delighted to partner with such a progressive and inspiring brand like Canva. As a start-up ourselves, helping to shape their brand architecture after a decade of immense growth has been exciting."

The partnership has also seen Neighbourhood Strategy, an independent collective of experienced strategists specialising in brand strategy, research, and marketing support, work, and collaborate entirely off the Canva platform.

Witts added: "Not only is the platform disarmingly easy, but we’ve enjoyed the more iterative nature of things like Canva Whiteboard to show thinking as it evolves. The work is definitely better for it, and Canva has influenced how we work, encouraging the sharing of ideas and thinking early and holding onto them lightly.

"It’s no longer about one big laboured presentation, but a series of moments in an ongoing conversation, proving out what Cat said at Create, ‘Canva makes more time for creativity.'"

The appointment also coincides with the annual Canva Create event held last Thursday in Los Angeles, during which the design platform revealed how it will supercharge workplaces.

Van der Werff said: "Neighbourhood has been instrumental in bringing expertise and freshness to our architecture strategy - ensuring it makes room for our enterprise ambitions and future capabilities, whilst not forgetting the customer or the very core of our offer."

See also: Canva unveils enterprise offering to ‘redefine the way millions work’