Canva – a Guide

I absolutely love free tools and Canva is rather high up on my list of favorites! Find it here. No, I’m not being paid to punt this stuff to you (I wish) – but I do think you should know about this awesome tool! Though I do recommend sticking to the PC version as the mobile app is not nearly as great or easy to use.

In this post I’m going to walk you through using Canva by creating an Instagram Tile with step by step instructions, the same concept can, of course, be used for other layouts.

Why Canva?

I know a lot of professional graphic designers absolutely loathe Canva and we can’t blame them. But, realistically, a start up business cannot always afford to hire a graphic designer for every bit of content that they need to put up. That’s where Canva comes in handy.

Enough Talk – Let’s Get To It!

To start – you’re going to want to go to the website and sign yourself up (you can login using your Facebook account if you’re lazy like me) by clicking here (this link will open in a new tab so don’t stress).

Next you’ll need to look at the menu and click “templates” – I’m going to show you how to do an Instagram Tile, but you can really take these instructions and apply them to any format you’d like.

Once you’ve opened the Templates Menu, go ahead and click the option that says “Instagram Tile” (or whatever you want to create). You’ll then be lead through to a page containing various template options. For the sake of fun – I’m going with a blank template – meaning I’m going to start from scratch and walk you through the entire process.

Step 1 – Create your blank Canva

Step 2 – Change you canvas color

Only do this step if you want a different color background, if you prefer a white background – please feel free to skip this step. I just need to show you how to change the color.

As you can see in the image above – the little rainbow colored square in the top left hand corner of your workspace will allow you to change the color of your canvas. Click it.

You can either manually pick a color or use the search bar to enter your color code.

side note: If you are in search of a really good color picking tool try – Coolors.co – it’s completely free and really easy to use, no sign in required!

Step 3 – Add some words

You can’t just stick a color tile up (unless it’s a political statement, in which case – go wild!) so it’s time to add some cool looking words to your tile! Canva has a bunch of templates that you can choose from – let’s use this cool looking one that says “Huge Sale” – but we’ll change the wording.

Next we need to align it – I’m going to add in two of these template words so that I can do something cool. You can achieve this simply by dragging the object to where you want it to be. Then double click each word to edit the text. Resize where you need to in order to make things fit nicely by using the Font Size adjust tool.

Next I place another one – it’ll start looking cool just now, for now we just need the base in place to achieve our cool design! Drag that one to the bottom to ensure that it isn’t overlapping – unless that look is working for you.

Edit the second set of text to form something coherent.

Step 4 – Change your font

Canva uses Google Fonts – if you’d like to browse a bunch of font options – click here. The Google Fonts website allows an option whereby you can type out your chosen phrase and see how it looks in the various different font options. In this case – I’m going with Quicksand, because I use it throughout my website and in all my social media marketing, so I like to stick to that to keep things looking cohesive.

Step 5 – Change your font color

Our tile is looking good – but I want white font on a pink background to really make it pop – so I’m going to show you how to change the font color.

To achieve this, simply click the little “A” located in the top bar, where you can also find your font choices, though a little more to the right; then choose your color. Again, you can pick a preset color, or use a code. and then do this for the rest of your words.

Step 6 – Download your tile

This you must do if you want to keep your work and post it to your social media. It’ll already be set to the correct size simply choose your format and click download – in my case I chose to go with a .jpg format but you can use .png – or if you’re feeling wild, animate your new creation and save as an .mp4. DO NOT ADD SOUND – EVER! People get really annoyed at sudden sounds and you don’t want to drive your audience away.

Well done! you’ve created your own really cool design!

Next, I’ll teach you how to post to both your Facebook and Instagram simultaneously using a really cool tool that also allows you to plan ahead! stay tuned! ;-P

Would you like a one-on-one lesson with Dani on Canva and how to schedule your social media posts? Get in Contact today!