Counting down

Counting down to launch is one of the greatest and scariest things you can do. Just over 5 years ago we launched Canva and it was an incredibly exciting moment in time. Tensions were heightened by the self-imposed deadline that we’d forced on ourselves by providing a press embargo. And to help keep us focused on when that magic moment would happen we had a countdown timer on the wall, inexorably ticking down … down … down …

It sounds kind of depressing, but it was actually pretty inspiring. I coded up a nicely interlocking grid of numbers and did the basic maths to have it ticking down. I never got around to robustifying the code … until now. You can now visit it at countdowntimer.info and tune it to whatever deadline you currently have looming. We didn’t have any whizzy WebGL stuff back in 2013, but I’ve added some in this version just to give you the full tickertape experience.

If you do happen to use it to count down your launch, I’d love some photos of the party!

Cameron Adams is a co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, where he leads the design & product teams and focuses on future product directions & innovative experiences. Read a bit more about him ›