Canva’s ode to ugly design

With this fun new campaign created in collaboration with Dept, online graphic design tool Canva is gently letting the Dutch public know that their homemade designs could use some work. 

From ugly fonts to cringe-worthy, word-art-cluttered presentations, the ad, produced by 100%, urges DIY designers to leave these terrible choices in the past. And who better to deliver the message than the artworks themselves? 

The film reimagines Dutch song Ik wou dat ik jou was by Veldhuis & Kemper, with characters embodying familiar design disasters. A wedding invitation struggles with clashing fonts, while a sloppy social media post watches a better-designed rival rake in the likes.  

Pol Hoenderboom, Executive Creative Director at DEPT, said: “The Dutch love to create things, but they've been using the same Word template and the cringy PowerPoint slides for years. Telling them that felt a bit rude, so we decided to rewrite a Dutch classic and let the ugly designs sing it instead. It turns out making something truly ugly takes a lot of craft.”