The first time I took copy and placed it into a design for a printed document, I used Adobe Illustrator. I didn't know any other design solution. So I designed the document and then took the text and placed it onto the design.
Then I learned Aldus Pagemaker and did multi-page layouts using it. This was in the early days of desktop publishing. We still printed out black and white separations and took them to a printer.
The entire 1990's and 2000's were years where I had Adobe products on my computer for everything – photos, illustration, motion graphics, video production, and even page layout (InDesign).
So tonight when I went to do the layout for a new eBook that my coworker created, I decided I would try to do the layout and design in Canva. And it won't surprise you that it worked. And came out great!
But imagine telling me, at any point before 2014 (which is when I first heard of Canva because of their hiring of Guy Kawasaki), that people would do design work in their browser without Adobe software. I would have laughed. And I was a big believer in software running in a browser.
Just not design software.
The Market is Never Too Crowded
The market in WordPress for forms was completely wrapped up by GravityForms in 2011. But then Ninja Forms stepped into a market that there was no room for. Right?
Then five years later, WP Forms stepped into a market that was completely saturated, right?
And just recently FluentForms entered a market that surely didn't need another player. But it's now here and growing rapidly. Right?
My point? The market is never too crowded.
Tonight I worked in Canva and it was not only fast but it was easier than InDesign. And the PDF export didn't require any complexity or pre-flight work.
Of course I wasn't creating a huge book. And I wasn't printing the document. But that's part of the point. The world keeps changing. What I used to need to do, I no longer have to do. And what I have to do isn't nearly as much as I used to want to do.
So don't look at the competitors. Look at customers. What they want and need to do. And give them the tools that make things easy.