Overcoming the Canva free-for-all with Ashgate Hospice
Canva makes design easy — but easy isn't the same as on-brand. Here's how Lis Harding, Graphic Designer at Ashgate Hospice, ended the Canva chaos and brought brand control back in-house with RightMarket.
Why Ashgate moved beyond Canva
Most marketing teams have heard of Canva. It puts design tools in everyone's hands — but for an SME or larger organisation, that freedom is often the root cause of a creative team's headaches.
Canva lets you set some brand elements, but there's still every risk someone goes rogue and creates a ClipArt-esque design they think is brilliant. Hear from Lis on why Ashgate needed a Canva alternative that keeps everyone on-brand.
Draining capacity and design headaches
One of the biggest difficulties creative teams face when managing their brand is time — either disrupting the day for last-minute requests, or spending it governing the designs other people make themselves.
If you've spent time and money creating brand guidelines, everyone should use them. But with a DIY tool like Canva, the risk that someone goes off-brand is too big — it means constant monitoring of your account and users, which eats into capacity and causes stress.
The Canva free-for-all created a cycle of problems:
- 1Last-minute design requests disrupted the team's working day
- 2Time was lost governing and policing the designs other teams made themselves
- 3Little capacity remained for larger tasks or strategic goals
- 4DIY tools gave people confidence to design, but not the guarantee it was right
Draining capacity
Responding to ad-hoc requests or monitoring Canva users ate into the team's time
Off-brand risk
With a DIY tool, the chance someone goes off-brand is simply too big
Constant rework
Designers still had to approve and edit work to avoid on-brand mishaps
An artwork tool should complement your guidelines
If you've invested in brand guidelines, everyone should use them. The right tool aligns teams and delivers the benefits of a strong, reliable brand — instead of leaving it to chance.
Canva gives people the confidence to design — but that doesn't mean the end result is on-brand. We needed something that keeps everyone right, always.
Lis didn't need to educate people on the brand — she needed a way to guarantee consistency without policing every request. The goal was simple: keep everyone on-brand, always, while still letting anyone design regardless of skill.
Stay on brand, always
RightMarket brings Ashgate's brand guidelines to life by guaranteeing everyone sticks to them — giving Lis confidence that every piece of content is on-brand, consistently.
Guidelines brought to life
RightMarket's templates embody your brand and make it easy for anyone — and we mean anyone — to create great marketing materials.
No room for error
Everything is kept as it should be, from the position of your logo to the fonts used. There's simply no room to go off-brand.
Real-time guardrails
If someone does go wrong, RightMarket alerts them before they even think about pressing save — so mistakes never make it out.
The result: a Canva alternative that keeps everyone on-brand while still allowing easy design, whatever the user's skill level.
Get your precious marketing time back
By giving everyone the power to create on-brand designs, marketing capacity is freed up to focus on the goals that drive results:
Time given back
“If only there were more hours in the day!” — RightMarket hands those hours back to the marketing team.
Non-marketing teams self-serve
Colleagues create the materials they need without waiting for the design department to do it for them.
On-brand by default
Every piece of content stays consistent, so customers always leave with a great impression of the brand.
Focus on the big wins
Freed-up capacity means the team can focus on the strategic goals that actually drive results.
From Canva chaos to complete brand confidence
With easy-to-use templates that enforce brand guidelines, Ashgate empowers anyone to create great designs — and wins back marketing and design resource ready to tackle the big wins.
- Anyone in the organisation can create on-brand designs
- Marketing capacity is freed to focus on strategy, not requests
- The brand is represented well at every single touchpoint
See the Ashgate brand in action
There's nothing like coming into work to see your brand represented well. Materials created in RightMarket simply look good — hear it from Lis.