An evergreen campaign platform to celebrate our LGBTIQA+ community and champion diverse content.
Every June, the LGBTQIA+ community celebrates across the globe, with various events held as a way of recognising the influence LGBTQIA+ people have had – and continue to have – around the world.
We wanted to build the Canva brand's association with a community of LGBTQI+ allies. With Sydney being the home of Mardi Gras for nearly half a century, it felt fitting for us to take over the city to celebrate our own LGBTQIA+ community. We rolled out an OOH campaign to transport sites, billboards, and digital screens across Sydney heroing diverse content from our creators.
ACTIVATION
As the official Design Partner of Sydney Mardi Gras Festival, we launched the Canva ‘Drag and Drop Studio’ made in collaboration with Melbourne-based artist Callum Preston and our experiential partner Amplify.
For the first time, the Canva team also joined more than 5,800 marchers across hundreds of floats in the festival's world famous parade. We partnered with Brendan de la Hay, a performance artist and designer from the community, to create costumes that had extra creative flair. To celebrate this collaboration, we captured how Canva helps Brendan bring any vision to life.
GIVING A VOICE TO OUR COMMUNITY
For many parts of the world, LGBTQIA+ communities deserve a voice more than ever. Canva's templates and elements give them a starting point and a helping hand, so they're empowered to design with pride and, in doing so, speak with pride too. We wanted to give our LGBTQI+ community a platform to speak so we engaged with creators and contributors to tell us how they see diversity in content. We’ve also created Giphy stickers so anyone across the globe can show
their pride, thier way on Instagram Stories.
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IDENTITY
Pride month is an important time to recognise the spectrum and diversity of voices & identities that make up the community. Our design approach seeks to highlight this diversity in expression, by taking flags from the spectrum of LGBTQI+ world and creating gradient backgrounds. Being yourself takes courage, creativity, and authenticity. Whatever the message or medium, we designed diverse content frames to help anyone express themselves with Canva.
Gradient
Choose a gradient for background. Remember different gradients have different meanings so make sure you choose one that is appropriate or go with a traditional rainbow one.
Image
Pick an image of a person. Choose someone that represents part of the LGBTQIA+ community and has lots of color. Also make sure the person is relevant to the gradient you have chosen.
Content frame
Choose a content frame that works well with the image that you have chosen. Make sure that the frame doesn't cut out any of the important parts of the image and works harmoniously with the composition.
Type
Design
with
Pride
Be playful with type and create dynamic headlines. All headlines should be easily
legible and use Canva Sans Display Bold.
Templates/Stickers
Add in any relevant Canva templates or Stickers. The colours and designs of theses elements should work harmoniously with the colours and composition of the design.
“Canva has always been extremely supportive of its team and creator community. This campaign has been an opportunity to externally express that and show how proud we are as a company to celebrate the beauty of diversity and the importance of inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ people in the workplace.”
Hugo Welke (he/him)
Design Ops & Internal LGBTQIA+ Community Lead , Canva
We acknowledge Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. Our Sydney studio sits on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and we pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. Canva is a proudly and intentionally inclusive company and supporter of the LGBTIQ+ community.