Canva Goes Big with Playful Takeover at London Waterloo

Canva, the global visual communication platform, has unveiled its latest major creative campaign in partnership with Stink Studios, following their recent appointment as Canva’s creative agency for the UK.

The campaign takes over all 14 billboards at London’s Waterloo gallery, transforming the space into a live demonstration of Canva’s design capabilities. It’s a bold, tongue-in-cheek celebration of how Canva empowers anyone—at any skill level—to design with ease, creativity, and impact.

"Our latest UK campaign features some very special builds, letting the Canva product loose in the real world. This is all about showing the power of Canva with a touch of our playful spirit and a dash of British tongue-in-cheek humour. Make the logo bigger, you say? How about one too big for the billboard. Oh, the 16X9 was supposed to be 9X16? Try Canva’s Magic Resize. Drag and drop almost anything? Yes, even a Forest Bike. Our hope is that these billboards make passers by smile half as much as they did when we were designing them," said Tom Carey, creative director Europe, Canva.

Running from June 16th, each billboard is both a showcase and a statement: playful in concept, yet grounded in real features that users rely on every day.

Each billboard spotlights one of Canva’s core workplace tools exaggerated in form to create a moment of surprise and delight:

• "Make the Logo Bigger" – supersized: Answering the age-old creative request with flair, one billboard features an oversized Canva logo breaking out of its frame.
• Magic Resize in Action: A landscape-format ad squeezed into a portrait space vividly demonstrates how Canva’s Magic Resize adapts content for different formats in a single click.
• Drag-and-Drop: A 3D replica of a Forest e-bike appears to have been dragged onto a billboard, physically showcasing Canva’s famously intuitive interface.
• Background Remover – Erasing the Ordinary (and the Billboard): A special build styled like a whiteboard brainstorm appears to erase parts of the billboard itself, revealing the structure underneath. A second execution mimics the wall texture behind it, highlighting Canva’s precise background removal capabilities.
• The Creative Journey Visualised: One ad charts the often-messy path from “brief lands” to “humbly accept standing ovation,” capturing the spirit of collaboration and iteration at the heart of every creative process.

"Gallery-wide takeovers like this are rare, which is exactly why we saw the opportunity to do something extraordinary. By transforming a high-traffic transit space into a fully branded environment, we’re not just creating visibility - we’re creating impact. This is about media as theatre: from large-scale special builds to subtle contextual touches, we’ve used the space not just to advertise, but to tell a story. This gallery takeover is a conversation starter, a selfie backdrop, a shareable moment, crafted to live as powerfully in the environment as it does beyond it," said Melissa Cosneau, marketing director Europe, Canva.

The campaign is the result of a close collaboration between Stink Studios and Canva’s in-house marketing team. Together, they developed a design language that flexes across formats—physical and digital—while staying true to Canva’s accessible, witty voice. The Waterloo takeover is also supported by a wider digital rollout across YouTube and LinkedIn throughout the summer.

The Waterloo campaign follows a broader London-wide OOH campaign launched in May which included a notable installation at Old Street featuring a giant Canva-themed display animated with hundreds of collaborative cursors, highlighting the platform's real-time design functionality.

Stink Studios is continuing to partner with Canva on a wider brand campaign extending into 2026. Media was handled by OMD. Talon and Grand Visual handled special build constructions.

"Canva tools are enabling the world to become more creative, and creativity should be fun. This work is designed to bring that to life in the most Canva way possible - by bringing a smile to people's faces whilst showing off the power of the product. When you're starting out in advertising, this is the sort of work you hope you'll be making," said Cameron Temple, executive creative director, Stink Studios.

Image credit: Simon Knox