Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht, and Cameron Adams co-founded Canva in Australia in 2013.
Perkins and Obrecht had earlier created Fusion Books, an online yearbook-design business, while Perkins was still a university student. That experience led to the broader idea of making graphic-design tools easier for non-specialists. Adams, a former Google engineer, joined as the technical co-founder.
Canva launched in 2013 with browser-based tools and templates for presentations, posters, social-media graphics, and other visual content. Its model emphasized drag-and-drop design rather than professional desktop publishing expertise.
Canva is sometimes confused with Figma because both are browser-based design products. Figma focuses especially on interface and collaborative product design, whereas Canva’s founding proposition centered on accessible visual communication for a broad audience.