3 Unbelievably Easy Things You Should be Doing in Canva Right Now
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A few years ago, I took a glance Canva, turned up my nose and thought: ‘Oh, this is for amateurs. I’m a designer, I don’t need this silly tool.
WRONG! In this post I’m going to give you a quick video overview of Canva. If you haven’t heard of Canva*, it’s a web-service that let’s you easily create graphics.
Now that I am generating piles of social media graphics each month (maybe you too?), I’m loving it. Traditional design software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) just isn’t designed for this kind of thing. It has too much firepower and gets too clunky.
Canva was specifically designed for everyday people to generate lots and lots of graphics, really fast. It’s got a ‘freemium’ model. There’s a free plan and pricing tiers with more features, but the free version should be enough for a small biz.
I’m a bit of an out of control swashbuckler in this video, but you’ll get the gist of it:
If you’ve got a small biz, you really need to check it out. Here are three features I especially like in Canva.
#1 Uploading images and using them with a Brand Kit
These features come with a Canva pro account, if you have a business with a visual brand, spend the money - it’s a game changer.
This feature allows you to upload all of your images (like photography from a professional branded shoot), lock in your brand colors and typography.
Whenever you want to create a graphic all your branding elements are at your fingertips.
I uploaded all the photos from my branded photo shoot, unoptimised, so the files were quite large. It was no problem. I created a brand kit which includes my word mark, brand colors and typography.
Now, when I want to create any kind of branded graphics it is astonishingly easy. All of the visual elements are right at my fingertips. I just pull in the image I want, and create a graphic using my brand colors and typography. You can easily duplicate a file.
This makes it easy to create graphics in a theme. For example I often create blog or LinkedIn posts with an image overplayed with a large multi-coloured headline.
I can just duplicate this graphic, swap out the image, change the headline wording and bam, new graphic in my brand style.
Another benefit of uploaded files, is that when you download the graphic you created using Canva, you get an option to compress the size.
So even though I’ve uploaded large, multi-megabyte sized brand images, I can download them optimised for the web or social media. I don’t have to go into another graphics program like Photoshop first to make all of my images smaller.
#2 Canva social media templates
Canva has pre-designed social media templates for all the big ones: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook in every imaginable size and for all kinds of posts.
My favourite thing to do is swipe a template, rework it with my images, fonts and colors, maybe futz a bit with the layout and go.
Over time I’ve created my own templates (which you can do so easily with an uploaded brand kit) which I use over and over again.
I just copy the post in the file, edit the text, change the photo or color and boom! New blog post (or LinkedIn or Instagram) graphic. So easy.
#3 Sharing Canva files with clients or team members
Whenever I create a mini-brand tear sheet for a client, I now just save it as a template and give the client access. The client can then edit herself if she’d like to. This is also a real game changer for graphics.
A client no longer needs me to update something I made in Illustrator. If she uses Canva and I’ve created a graph or chart, she can just make changes herself to the easy-to-edit Canva file.
This saves the client money too, they no longer have to hire me to update things created in expensive graphics programs that they don’t have access to or know how to use.
I also share and comment on Canva files with my VA. It makes collaborating on files ridiculously easy. Again, you need a pro account to access this feature, but as with a brand kit it’s a game changer if you have someone helping you produce your social media graphics.
Some Launch In A Day clients have already been using it and it makes transferring files a BREEZE. Pretty soon I’m going to recommend that all clients open an account before launching a website.
I’m still only scratching the surface with Canva but I’m constantly finding new features I love.
I haven’t opened Photoshop in months. I’m seriously considering cancelling my Adobe Creative Cloud account, which I imagine feels like leaving the Catholic church if one were Catholic.
Canva also has a multitude of other templates like PowerPoint style presentations and printed items like flyers or invitations. You can directly upload printed designs to a printer and have it delivered . I haven’t used either of these features yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.
Canva also offers scheduling options. I don’t use this since I already use Later for Instagram and I don’t like to use a scheduler for LinkedIn where I publish most of my content.
I’ve heard if a platform detects that a scheduler is used to post content, the algorithm may ding you, but I honestly don’t know if that’s the case with Canva.