Breaking Down Canva Licensing Terms: 2022 Update
According to the terms of Canva’s most recent license agreement in 2022, we're going to talk about what you can and can't do with the free and the pro content that you find on Canva.
What does Canva's License Agreement cover?
photos
icons
illustration
video
audio
fonts
templates
pro music too
The first thing you must do is hover your cursor or arrow over the content itself (see the video above for a visual), and click the little info icon in the toolbar. Go over to the item and you can see if it’s free content or not. Click on the ellipse, and you’ll see a breakdown of what you can and can't do.
What license applies to free content?
If you click on a piece of content and find out that it comes from Pixabay, or another stock photo site, that site’s License Agreement will apply. So forget about Canva's license, you need to go to Pixabay or whatever stock photo sites website and look at what license applies to that photo.
If in that process, all of that content is labeled as “Creative Commons Zero” or another creative commons license, then license applies or whatever Creative Commons License applies.
Things that you can only do with free content (not pro)
You can use it in more than one design without having to get an additional license.
You can download free content on a standalone basis. That means you can just slap it on a blank document and download it you don't have to add any kind of value or anything else to it don't have to change it up.
You can use it on websites and merchandise and projects and things for sale to others.
And you can use it in templates for sale. So maybe you create Canva social media templates, or website templates for sale, for example.
Things that you can do with free and pro content
First, what's pro content? You have access to pro content if you have a subscription, or if you have a free account, but you purchase that individual pro item. You can do or make these things:
invitations
advertising and promotional projects, including printed materials product packaging, presentations, filming video presentations, commercials, catalogs, brochures, greeting cards and postcards for promotion and or resale without any reproduction quantity limit
school or university projects
social media posts or profile image
decorative background on a personal computer or mobile device
designed templates solely for use on Canva
entertainment applications like books and book covers magazines, newspapers, editorials, newsletters, and video, broadcast and theatrical presentations of unlimited prints
online or electronic publications including webpages, blogs, ebooks, and videos.
In the case of pro content, there are size limitations unless you're using the dedicated Canva website publish endpoint, or using a Canva hosted and embedded design. So remember those size limitations if you're using Pro content.
And any other uses approved in writing by Canva.
So hit them up if you have any questions you never know!
What is Canva for Education?
Canva for Education has its own special permissions, but know that this only applies to non-commercial education. So education in the truest sense when you think of a public school, for example. Your course that you're selling probably doesn't fall under this umbrella.
Here are the things you cannot do on Canva as of April 2022
Use the content outside of the permissions that we just talked about, without approval from Canva.
Use something designated as editorial use only unless it's relating to newsworthy events and specifically says you can't use this type of content in sponsored posts. They point out a specific credit that you have to use if you are using it for editorial purposes so a lot to remember there in terms of editorial use only.
You can't remove copyright or trademark notices present on any content.
You can't use content on a standalone basis. That means, you know, by itself in connection with a platform that allows you to sell or distribute on demand products, like postcards, mugs T shirts, not completely clear what this means. But I take it to mean that you can't use content on its own without changes or without being compiled with other elements to sell on demand products.
You can't use content in a way that's obscene, immoral, infringing, defamatory, or libelous.
You can't use photos in a way that places the person in the image in a "bad light, or insinuates that the person engages in any immoral or illegal activity suffers from a physical or mental issue or condition," and they specifically call out adult videos or something similar. Ads for tobacco ads for nightclubs, escort dating, or similar services, political endorsements, ads for health care, herbal or medical products.
You can't use content in a way that competes with Canvas business, you can't use it in a way that allows for the content to be extracted or able to reproduced as an electronic file.
You can't reverse engineer any source code.
You can't use or display content in a way that allows it to be downloaded or exported via peer to peer or similar.
You can't use or display content in a manner that gives the impression that the content was created by you, or a person other than the copyright holder of the content, including claiming ownership of or exclusive rights to the content.
Now here comes a big one that makes some people mad and it's very confusing because Canva has logo templates, and why would they have logo templates if you can't create trademarks on Canva. But guess what?
You can't trademark designs with any Canva media, period.
However, this excludes fonts, you can use fonts that you found on Canva to create a logo or trademark.
The last rule of thumb is that if you create a design on Canva, using free content and pro content, the stricter than more strict license, and that would be the pro license dictates what you can do with that final design.
I hope that all of this helps and that it's detailed enough to answer all of your questions about what you can and can't do on Canva. And remember, when in doubt, either look on each individual item, or contact Canva yourself to find out more info.