Canva Makes The Netherland's Ugliest Designs Sing

Comic Sans. Pixelated portraits. WordArt still stuck in 2003. The Netherlands has been living with its design crimes for years. Now, in Canva's first Dutch campaign, developed by lead creative partner DEPT®, they'e finally speaking up. Or rather, singing. And all they want is a Canva-worthy makeover.

"Jaloersmakende Canva Designs" rewrites a much-loved Dutch classic "Ik wou dat ik jou was" by Veldhuis & Kemper for a cast of singing design disasters. A wedding card in clashing fonts pines for a better-dressed one. A cringe social post watches a better one get all the likes. On a presenter's slide, a clip-art light bulb with a not-so-transparent background comes to life and gazes at the designs it will never be. Then it escalates: badly cropped cat posters, a wave of brain rot and a pigeon with a surprisingly good voice, until every bad design in the country joins one chorus aimed at a polished Canva design.

Behind the chaos sits a simple observation: The Dutch love making things themselves, not to show off, but because being resourceful and doing it your own way is part of the culture. Canva fits that instinct, making everyday making better, from a birthday invite to a Monday-morning deck. Hence the platform line: "Je maakt het, met Canva".

Pol Hoenderboom, Executive Creative Director at DEPT®, said: “The Dutch love to create things, but they've been using the same Word template and the cringy PowerPoint slides for years. Telling them that felt a bit rude, so we decided to rewrite a Dutch classic and let the ugly designs sing it instead. It turns out making something truly ugly takes a lot of craft.”

Andres Boot, General Manager, Canva Benelux, said: "Canva exists to make design something everyone can do, not just designers. In the Netherlands, it grew because people shared it with each other: a colleague showing a teammate, a student helping a friend. We wanted our first campaign here to feel just as local, so we took a song every Dutch person knows and let the designs we've all made at some point sing it back to us.”

Directed by Yousef Thami and produced by 100 prcnt, the campaign runs across linear TV, cinema, social and OOH. It follows Canva';s hyper-local launches in Italy, France, the US, the UK and Thailand, and a second phase is already in the works.

DEPT® won the Canva account in summer 2026 after a competitive pitch, part of a run of Dutch wins including Praxis, Wero and Grolsch. In just over 10 years, DEPT® has grown from a local specialist to a global technology and marketing company with 4,000 specialists across 30 offices, and has been named Webby's Agency of the Year five years running. The recent launch of Deptify, DEPT's AI orchestration platform, reflects its continued investment in growth for clients.