How Canva Featured Obvious Brand Partners — and What It Says About Empowering Clients

In 2023, Canva published a case study about Obvious Brand Partners on their global case-study site. The headline number, that we reduced proposal turnaround for our team and clients by 90% (from three to four days down to three to four hours) is the easy quote. The more useful story sits underneath it.

The short version

• Canva published a case study on Obvious Brand Partners in 2023, focused on how we use the platform to empower clients.
• Headline: 90% reduction in proposal turnaround time, from days to hours.
• Bigger story: brand partners should be designing systems clients can actually own, not deliverables clients have to come back for.
• The Canva relationship is one example of how we think about ongoing creative as a system, not a service the agency hoards.

What the case study covers

The published case study walks through how Obvious shifted from a fragmented, multi-tool design workflow into a single platform that lets our team and our clients collaborate on brand-controlled creative without revision-loop bottlenecks. The clients we set up in Canva get access to brand-locked templates, can produce on-brand assets independently, and only come back to us for the work that actually needs strategic input. The numbers (90% turnaround reduction, multi-platform consolidation, “I can whip a design out in five minutes rather than wait a week” from our Campaign Manager) are visible in the case study itself.

Why we agreed to be a case study

Brand agencies tend to be cautious about platform-vendor case studies. The reasons are familiar: don’t hand the marketing win to the platform, don’t look like you depend on a single tool, don’t signal that the work could be commodified. We agreed to participate anyway because the underlying story is one we believe in: the right way to be a brand partner is to design systems clients can operate themselves, not deliverables clients depend on the agency for.

That belief shapes a lot of how we think about ongoing creative. We are wary of retainers that quietly require clients to keep paying for asset changes the client should be empowered to make themselves. We are wary of identity guidelines that read like a one-time deliverable instead of a working manual. The Canva integration is one expression of a wider operating principle, not a tool-stack story.

What it means for clients

For most of our brand-engagement clients, the practical outcome is that the brand identity work we deliver is set up inside Canva (or, where appropriate, Figma or another platform that suits their team) so the client can publish on-brand creative without needing the agency in the loop. Editable templates, approved palettes, brand-locked typography. Strategic and bigger creative work still flows through us. The day-to-day output flows through them.

For the modern brand engagement to work, that handover has to be designed into the system from the start. We have written separately about what a complete brand identity actually includes and about why visual consistency outperforms visual cleverness. The Canva piece is one applied case of those principles.

Read the published case study

The full Canva case study, including direct quotes from our team and from one of our clients (Sam Hodgson at Modal Architecture), is available at: canva.com/case-studies/obvious-brand-partners.

Common questions

Do all your clients work in Canva?

No. Where Canva is the right tool for the team — small marketing teams, decentralised content production, in-house teams that need brand-locked templates — we set it up. Where the client’s team is more design-mature, we work in Figma or whatever platform suits their workflow. The principle is consistent: build systems the client can run.

Are you a Canva-certified partner?

We are a Canva-recognised case study and have a long-standing operational relationship with the platform. Our role is brand and creative, not Canva implementation as a discipline of its own.

Working through how to design a brand engagement that doesn’t leave clients dependent on the agency for daily output? Start a conversation, or read about how we approach brand strategy.