Unleash your creativity and master Canva.

Guides

11 May

Canva came on the market as a tool that allowed non-design people to make beautiful assets. The user friendly platform makes use of drag-and-drop functionality to place things exactly where you need them.

With an accompanying app, using Canva means you can keep designing while on the go.

In this guide, we will talk through how to get Canva set up for work for you, and make your marketing life easier.

Why use Canva?

With so many options out there, it can be hard to find a platform that does everything you need in one. While not perfect, Canva certainly meets many criteria that you might need from a design platform, social media scheduler, and brand hub.

Which Canva plan is right for me?

The good news is that they have plans to suit most needs. From a free platform that allows you to create appealing designs, to a Pro plan (£99.99 per year) where you can schedule content and create a brand hub, and a Teams plan (£129.90 per year) for those requiring more input around the design table.

It’s promising a very versatile approach to bringing design to everyone. At the end of the day, which plan you choose depends on what other services you might use, and which functionality you’re looking for.

The Pro plan is great for solopreneurs and freelance designers looking for unlimited access to premium content and want to scale their productivity.

Canva for Teams allows your team to work more collaboratively with ease.

Getting started with Canva

Signing up for your plan is easy and straight forward, but how do you get into the nitty gritty and getting your worth from day one?

This guide is going to give you a short overview and check list of what to do when starting out with Canva. See this is your starting guide to the world of easy, functional and stunning design.

But first, grab your coffee or tea and get ready to make Canva work for you. And for those that love a good check-list - we’ve got some boxes that need ticking.

The Basics

Canva offers a wide range of features to help you create stunning designs with ease. With a vast collection of professionally designed templates for various purposes, including social media posts, presentations, posters, invitations, and more.

You can customise these templates by adding your own text, images, and branding elements. Canva also offers an extensive library of over 100 million design elements, such as icons, illustrations, stock photos, and graphics, which can be easily incorporated into designs.

With pre-selected sizes, they take all the guessing out of creating content for social media, posters, flyers, any assets you’ll be needing to build your business.

To get started, simply choose a template, create a new design or click the “Create a design” button at the top of the screen. Explore and try everything you can! This is the time to have fun and see what you like or don’t like.

Brand hub

One of the best features I’ve found with Canva, is it’s Brand Hub functionality. Designed to empower businesses and organisations in maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand identity, it provides a centralised place where brand assets, such as logos, colours, fonts, and templates, can be stored and accessed by authorised team members.

The Brand Hub ensures brand consistency by enabling teams to create and share customisable templates that adhere to brand guidelines. With the ability to set permissions and access levels, you can control who can edit and use specific brand assets, ensuring brand integrity.

This has been especially helpful when working with my clients and making sure I am representing them fully. It’s a great place to get a view of the visual side to your brand identity.

Brand Hub can be accessed from the menu to the left of your screen and is accessible to everyone from a Pro plan and above.

Content planner

Accessed via the “Apps” tab in your menu, Canva’s content planned is one of the best I have used throughout my career. It’s simple design clearly shows that’s been scheduled and for when.

The drop-and-drag feature makes it easy to reschedule content and, in my opinion, saves so much time.

The only downside to content scheduling in Canva, is that each design/post is scheduled for one platform only. So you end up with duplicates of designs if posting the same content across many platforms. Which this downside can be cumbersome, they do make it easy to duplicate your chosen content and then schedule it accordingly.

The upside, is that you are not designing content in one platform, to transfer it to another for scheduling. So in the long run, I believe this will save time and convenience.

Not only does the content planner give you a visual of what is being posted where (including thumbnails of the images) but you can also create events. This helps when making sure to schedule relevant content to build up to your events. Especially when wanting to make sure you don’t forget those important dates. Canva also pre-populates your calendar with events from around the world.

Bonuses

We’ve not covered the full gambit of what Canva can do for you, but I wanted to highlight a few more reasons to look into Canva.

Smartmockups is Canva’s mock-up tool for those that want to showcase their products, websites, contact details in situ. With templates ranging from wall hangings to smart watch faces - you may just find the mock-ups you need within Canva.

They also have integrations with services such as Hovercode (Dynamic QR codes for your brand), Sharepoint, MailChimp, and Google Drive.