Canva has quickly become one of, if not the most popular design tools for small businesses. If you haven’t heard of Canva (I might question where you’ve been for the past few years), it's an easy to use online tool that allows you to create a wide range of designs including flyers, social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, booklets - the list goes on.
It also has an app that allows you to quickly edit and download your designs on the go which is super handy.
While most of my designs are created using the Adobe Suite with tools such as Illustrator and InDesign, I find Canva to be useful for creating easy to edit templates (e.g. social media posts, presentation slides) for my branding clients. Plus it’s great for creating quick social media posts for my own biz.
If you’re new to using Canva, or are looking to get started, here’s my favourite features!
Keep all of your branded assets in one place with the brand hub
If you're new to Canva, one of the first steps I recommend taking is to set up your brand hub (previously known as brand kit).
This is where you can collate logos, colours, elements and fonts that represent your business, making it easy to create on brand projects.
Here's a quick tutorial to help you get started.
Upload your own editable graphics
Canva has a wide range of editable graphics within their free and pro plans that are customisable to suit your project.
What's even better is you can actually upload your own editable graphics (i.e. icons, elements, logo) in SVG format, which allows you to adapt the colours to suit your digital project.
Just remember, if you're adapting any branded elements it's always best to stick with colours that are consistent with your branding.
Here's a quick tutorial to help you get started.
Remove backgrounds with the background remover tool
Want to remove the background of an image but don't have access to, or the skills to use a program like Photoshop?
Removing the background of your images is super easy in Canva with their background remover tool. All you have to do is choose your image, click on the background remover tool and it'll work its magic!
Depending on how busy the image is, the tool may keep or delete certain sections. If that's the case, you can use the brush tool to either erase or restore the desired section.
Here's a quick tutorial to help you get started.
Edit Canva templates to suit your brand
Canva have a range of free and pro templates to suit your project, whether that be a poster, document, social media post etc. This can be a great starting point for creating branded collateral that fits the look and feel of your brand.
Once you've created a design that you'd like to replicate and adapt, you can also save it as a brand template. This means it will retain the elements of the original design so it can be used over and over again, which is super handy for things such as presentations and social posts!
Resize your designs to any dimension
There's nothing worse than creating a beautiful design, only to find out the dimensions aren't quite right. If you've got a Canva Pro account, you can easily change your designs to whatever size you'd like using the resize tool.
All you have to do is click the resize button which is located on the top tool bar. Then you can either choose from a list of predetermined sizes, or input custom dimensions.
I find this tool great when creating social media posts as it allows you to resize the design for all relevant platforms i.e. Facebook, Instagram post / Reels, LinkedIn.
Sure it might need a bit of tweaking once resized depending on how significantly different the dimensions are, but it's great to have a starting point to work from!
Want to start designing with Canva? Check out their free and Pro plans below.
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