Everyone who is running their Social media and websites know the hardest part is getting or creating the graphics. If you haven’t heard about canva yet then be ready to get to a completely new level.
A Brief Introduction – Canva
Canva is an online platform for creating Graphics & photos for free. Canva if filled with free resources that you can use right away from inside the app and start creating graphics for your websites, landing pages & Social media.
Who is Canva For ?
It’s a great tool for everyone who have to create graphics or edit photos in short time without any design skills.Whether you are a graphic designer or just starting out in design work, Almost all the images/graphics on this website are either created or edited on Canva because it is such a simple and great tool and I don’t have much knowledge of graphic design. It does not require much skillset and provide tons of resources also you can import images, Svg icons etc too.
What can you use Canva for ?
Once you create your account you will see this screen on this page a these options are for resolution a user can select the resolution specified for each social network I personally didn’t knew that I needed 828 x 315px image for facebook page cover. These are useful simple options which eliminate a google search where you have to search each time for the required resolution of facebook/instagram posts. Coming back to the question you can use Canva for creating graphics for your website, blog, social media and you can also create logos. You can also use canva on your mobile phones which mean once you get comfortable with it a train or uber ride will be much more creative than before.
How to use Canva ?
If you have previously ever used and image/graphic editing software then you are going to find canva super simple maybe you will be able to use it much better than me because I am not a professional graphic designer.
So to start I am going to pick the Web Banner resolution it will open your blank creative in new tab. On the left side there is a panel with layouts/templates. You can select one of these or use the search bar to search for the templates related to your industry. Some of these designs are paid but Canva also have a huge library of free creatives.
Once you select a layout it will be loaded in your editing panel. At the right side of Canva editing panel there are few options. These options allow you to create new pages duplicate the creatives and you can also delete the page.
To edit the text click on it and then you can type to change it if you want to change the formatting options there will be an option bar above the creative for any element you select. For text there is Font Family option, font size, font color, font weight, text case, and spacing.
Creating shapes
Create shapes like squares, circles, rectangles, triangles and other complex shapes like those swirls which are almost impossible to make on illustrator if you are a newbie but with canva its very easy because all these shapes are already available all you have to do is add them into your creative and edit to your needs. To add a shape click on the elements tab on left panel and the open shapes.
Then click on a shape to add it in your creative.
Once added then you can edit the size, position and color of a shape. In this example I select this shape and turned it into a sale badge by adding “Summer Sale” text on it and placing it on top corner of creative.
Once you have completed your design and wants to download it click on the download button placed at top right corner of page.
Select a single page by typing its number or download all the pages by selecting the all page option. Canva by default sets PNG format to export a creative but you can also export in JPG or PDF format.
Do let me know if like this article and comment below if you want to learn more about web design.
