'Visual Communication Should Be Everyone's Right': Cliff Obrecht

Doha, Qatar: As Qatar positions itself at the forefront of innovation, creativity, and AI adoption in the region, global technology leaders are increasingly recognising the country's growing cultural influence and potential.

Among these leaders is Cliff Obrecht, the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Canva, whom regarded Qatar as an emerging design hub in the Middle East. With one in 15 Qataris using Canva each month and AI adoption in the country nearly double that of markets such as the US and Australia, Obrecht also discussed how local culture, heritage, and design sensibilities are shaping Canva's regional approach.

Speaking with The Peninsula on the sidelines of the Web Summit Qatar, he said:“We see huge opportunities. We see Qatar as the design hub of the Middle East. Your cultural 'design brand kit' has been entrenched for hundreds and thousands of years.”

He later added,“How we can show up and be truly local to this market and other markets in the region is incredibly important to us. And that really will be dependent on how we can work with local artists, communities, and to make sure the content in the Canva library is good.”

On the other hand, Obrecht also traced the company's journey from early challenges to global scale as Canva takes a step further into redefining the next phase of design and creative productivity with the recent acquisition of design software, Affinity.

“We believed in a world where visual communication should be everyone's right. And tools shouldn't get in the way of people's creativity,” Obrecht told The Peninsula.

The acquisition of Affinity further aligns with the platform's core vision of democratizing design, while addressing current challenges in the pricing models of traditional design platforms by committing to make Affinity 'free-forever.'

“We think professional designers are so important, and we really feel, for the last 20 plus years, that they've been really hamstrung by complex tools... incredibly powerful tools, but really expensive tools,” he stated.

“We've given the Affinity platform away for free, to everyone, to really unlock their creativity and to do what they want with it. And we got over 3 million downloads within the first month.”

Against the backdrop of rapid AI adoption, Obrecht affirms how Canva is deliberately using the technology to strengthen, not substitute or replace human creativity.

He stated:“We feel that AI is really a massive, compounding enhancer of people's creativity. And people shouldn't attach their creativity to a certain sense of tools.”

“In the early days, people would do cave paintings, and then that evolved to paintings on canvas, with oil paint. Then it was Photoshop, and Microsoft Paint, and Canva, and now AI lets you fully achieve and enhance that creativity even more.”

“So, really the best creatives don't bind themselves to a particular medium. They use the tools at hand of the day to be able to express themselves,” he added. In line with this, he underlined Canva's ability to do both - generate images, designs, videos, codes, and more - with an option to fine tune any project and let creatives design to their heart's content.

“It doesn't just stop that prompt to output. It allows you to actually engage with the design and really get it to that final finished product,” he explained. While embracing AI's potential, Obrecht clearly underscored that unchecked use of the technology is not an option, pointing to the need for firm safeguards around ethics and misuse.

“AI should definitely be moderated, because there's a lot of things that it shouldn't be able to do when it comes to people's likeness, when it comes to putting people in compromising positions, when it is around hate speech,” he stated.

He emphasized Canva's two-step plan which is to be able to build one of the most valuable companies in the world, and most especially, to do the most good they can do.

“We're all about propagating good in the world. And so we're not wanting Canva to be used for negative, evil things,” he stated. On another note, Obrecht also spoke about this year's edition of the Web Summit stating,“The Web Summit here is absolutely incredible. It's one of the best well run conferences in the world, and to see the scale of what's happening in Qatar is absolutely incredible.”

Obrecht further shared his interest in exploring some places in Doha despite his limited time in the country.

“I want to go see some design museums as well. There's such rich cultural heritage here that I'm excited to explore more,” he stated.

To a question about Qatar's potential to be in the next Canva World Tour calendar, Obrecht is thrilled to explore the idea in the future.

“I think it's a prime contender, particularly with the aesthetics and such a strong design focus on this region. So, yeah, let's make it happen!” he told The Peninsula.

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