No problem, if you’re printing garage sale leaflets, party invitations or school assignments at home. However, if you want to design a leaflet or business card for a commercial printer to use, forget it. Canva, Publisher and Word don’t have the extra features that are required for professional print production, and contrary to how Microsoft and Canva promote them, were never designed for this purpose. Microsoft Publisher retails for roughly $180 while Canva is free, but they do have a paid version with extra features. In contrast, Adobe Creative Cloud starts at around $80 per month on their subscription. Furthermore, colours in Canva, Publisher and Word are always RGB (web colour), but printing companies use the CMYK format (four colour process). Templates are usually the wrong size (eg American letter instead of A4), with fold and trim lines in the wrong place, while images and fonts are usually low in resolution. These problems all result in a poor quality print job. Expecting Canva, Publisher or Word to do the same job as a professional graphic arts program is unrealistic. When we receive Publisher, Word or Canva files, it’s usually faster to re-design the job than to fix the file, and in most cases the problems can’t be fixed. To save a lot of time, money and frustration, my advice is to let a graphic artist do the artwork. After all, I’m not a mechanic so I don’t service my own car.