Canva is Letting Users Make Designs Using Disney Characters

Canva, Serif Affinity’s new owner, is adding a set of Disney characters to its content library for a “limited time” starting August 9, allowing paid, education and nonprofit subscribers access to use them for social posts, thank you cards, invitations, school lesson content, and more.

Update 8/2: Canva clarified that the terms of use that must be agreed to in order to access the Disney characters says that anything created can only be used in the limited availbility — including if it was uploaded to social media. More details have been added below.

The collaboration comes along with Canva’s participation in “D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event” which takes place in Anaheim, California from August 9 to 11. Available for a limited time through September 30, Canva subscribers will get direct access to 10 Disney characters ranging from Toy Story‘s Woody, to Mickey Mouse, and the Manadlorian. Canva says this is the most expansive collection of branded content it has offered to users to date.

Canva’s announcement doesn’t mention limitations on use other than what type of subscriber has access: use of content in designs will be available to Canva’s paid subscribers, education, and nonprofit users in the US, with plans to expand availability “in the near future,” which can’t be very long given the limited time nature of the availability. That said, there are rules, of course — this is Disney.

While the platform itself won’t know where a graphic is posted, Canva specifically calls out social posts, thank you cards, invitations, photo collages, and school lesson content as examples of how the Disney branded characters can be used. Most of these are non-commercial — using Joy from Inside Out to retain the attention of children during a school lesson is pretty limited in scope and innocuous — but the inclusion of “social posts” rides a line that is unusually close to commercial use. On that note, the terms of use with these Disney characters allows subscribers to incorporate them into designs for personal use only. They can’t be used to create merchandise and they can’t be used in any way to suggest that Disney or the characters endorse a business or person.

To that end, a note of the copyrighted nature of the Disney characters will appear on the works created in Canva and it is a violation of the terms to remove it. Canva will require users to agree to these and other terms in order to use the branded assets.

The other question is what happens to the content after it’s been made and the September 30 date passes. Unfortunately, once that date passes, so does the license. If an image was created in Canva, includes one of the Disney characters, and is uploaded to social media, according to the terms, it must be deleted by September 30.

The inclusion of Disney is meant to “spark joy” and inspiration among Canva’s subscribers and is part of a wider content goal at the company.

“We’re incredibly excited about the Disney D23 collection as it’s the first time we’ve brought characters from multiple different iconic films to Canva at once. The Canva content library is home to over 100 million assets, from templates to images to audio tracks. We’ve always worked with an array of partners, creators and content providers to ensure we’re offering content that’s diverse, localized, authentic and high-quality, to meet our users’ vast array of needs, but this is our most expansive collection of branded content to date,” the company tells PetaPixel.

“Disney has one of the largest and most passionate fan bases in the world, and we saw an opportunity to make it easy for them to access and incorporate their favorite characters in our designs. Partnering with entertainment brands and studios like Disney makes a lot of sense given the rich visual worlds they’ve constructed, and we hope this is the first of many opportunities to bring these worlds into our design platform. We see this as a stepping stone to help fans connect with their favorite content and look forward to increasing our investment in this area, making more iconic content available in Canva.”

A subscription to Canva costs $120 per person for single account access or $100 per person for teams of a minimum of three. Canva for Education is free for K through 12 educators, students, and “qualified” school districts and institutions.

Image credits: Canva