Canva can now build a brand kit from a website address

Canva's September release is a grab-bag, but a few of the changes will save real time for designers working with small clients.

Brand kits from a URL

Paste a website address and Canva will generate a brand kit from it. For freelancers onboarding a client who has a site but no brand guidelines, that's a useful head start. Treat the result as a draft: automated extraction can pick up stray colours or the wrong fonts, so check it before you share it with the client.

Frames from your own doodles

You can now draw a shape by hand and turn it into an image frame. It's a small thing, but it opens up more expressive photo layouts without opening another app.

Websites, sheets and whiteboards

• Canva websites get custom navigation, buttons and Google Analytics tracking.
• A PayPal app lets you embed payment links directly in designs.
• Sheets adds tags, filters and conditional formatting.
• Whiteboards gain sections and direct linking.
• A Code feature can generate visual dashboards from spreadsheets and web research.

Our take

Canva keeps moving from making graphics to running whole small-business workflows. If your clients already live in Canva, these updates make it easier to hand over files they can keep up to date themselves.