“Good design is about making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is about making something memorable and meaningful.” ~ Ditter Rams
Welcome to Episode 65: How to Design In Canva Like a Guru!
As the saying goes … “good designers don’t use Canva”. But that’s not necessarily true and a bit of a stigma in today’s design world. In my personal and professional opinion, fully trained designers should know BOTH! I truly do believe that graphic designers and Canva can (and should) coexist!
Think of things this way … Canva is like the McDonald’s drive-thru of design. It’s cheap, efficient, easy to use, and utterly satisfying when in a crunch for time. So, whether you’re a designer who needs a quick fix, or a newbie to the land of design and marketing for your business, today I’m going to share with you some helpful design “untangling” tips to give your designs the *POW!* they really need -- and in such a way that it’s not recognizable that you’re even using Canva at all.
Here's what we will be untangling in this episode ...
Are you ready?
Pop in your awesome earbuds and let's dive in!
“Good design is about making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is about making something memorable and meaningful.” ~ Ditter Rams
Welcome to Episode 65: How to Design In Canva Like a Guru!
As the saying goes … “good designers don’t use Canva”. But that’s not necessarily true and a bit of a stigma in today’s design world. In my personal and professional opinion, fully trained designers should know BOTH! I truly do believe that graphic designers and Canva can (and should) coexist!
Think of things this way … Canva is like the McDonald’s drive-thru of design. It’s cheap, efficient, easy to use, and utterly satisfying when in a crunch for time. So, whether you’re a designer who needs a quick fix, or a newbie to the land of design and marketing for your business, today I’m going to share with you some helpful design “untangling” tips to give your designs the *POW!* they really need -- and in such a way that it’s not recognizable that you’re even using Canva at all.
Here's what we will be untangling in this episode ...
Are you ready?
Pop in your awesome earbuds and let's dive in!
As the saying goes … “good designers don’t use Canva”. But that’s not necessarily true and a bit of a stigma in today’s design world. In my personal and professional opinion, fully trained designers should know BOTH! I truly do believe that graphic designers and Canva can (and should) coexist!
They should make Adobe Suite platform number one, and have Canva as a backup for those rush design requests needed on the fly with barely 5 minutes notice from the client. Any well-trained designer knows how to manipulate Canva to an entirely other level, one that most people don’t know how to do.
While this topic being highly controversial -- and a bit complicated – the truth of the matter is, it’s highly unlikely that any worthwhile professional designer would ever use Canva to create business-critical assets like logos, business card designs, or brochures from scratch. If a designer does so without a really good reason, that’s a huge red flag. (Trust me, I’ve seen it happen to fellow clients of mine, and it wasn’t a good situation – which we quickly rectified of course!) And let’s not forget that some designers won’t even touch Canva on principle.
Think of things this way … Canva is like the McDonald’s drive-thru of design. It’s cheap, efficient, easy to use, and utterly satisfying when in a crunch for time. Especially if working alongside a team or a VA who also needs access to the workable file but may not have (or be a guru) in Adobe land. But just like the McDonald’s drive-thru, if you as a designer, use Canva too much … you’ll get hooked! And once hooked, you’ll start using it more and more, even when you know you shouldn’t be. And the designs created will showcase a lot of the same stock imagery as everyone else is using and look and feel “samesy”. And that’s really not great – for the design, the client, and one’s reputation.
Free design tools are simply give anyone and everyone with the ability to create presentable professional looking graphics designs in minutes. These tools can be used in conjunction with professionally designed graphical assets, keeping costs low and brand recognizability high. So Canva doesn’t completely replace the work of a designer, in fact the two can jive n’ thrive together.
Our quick rule of thumb … if you need help creating something that is crucial and central to your brand, like a logo, a colour palette, packaging, signage, or something that is going to represent you for years to come, then get a designer on board.
However, if you need something smaller and more incidental like a post for social media, a blog or podcast graphic, or a simple infographic, then designing in Canva can absolutely be an efficient method. And don’t worry, as a designer myself, I won’t hold it against you for using Canva. I use it myself from time to time for a few basics. And if you’re a client of ours, and ask us nicely, we can even set up a template or two for you!
As a professional designer, some of the perks to using Adobe Creative Suite over Canva comes into play when you need a pleasing gradient flow, or a realistic shadow, gridlines to allow one to adjust exact angles, curves, and corners, and most common … creating print-ready files with crop marks and bleeds. Canva offers none of that. But the snap line-up feature does help a little bit!
But all this is beside the point. Today we’re here to talk about how to design in Canva like a guru! So, whether you’re a designer who needs a quick fix, or a newbie to the land of design and marketing for your business, today I’m going to share with you some helpful design “untangling” tips to give your designs the *POW!* they really need -- and in such a way that it’s not recognizable that you’re even using Canva at all.
Ready to begin empowering yourself through your designs?
Then let’s go …!
First and foremost …
8 TYPES OF CANVA PHOTO SEARCHABLE TERMS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
You’re hunting for THE perfect image but feeling stuck and don’t have all the fancy stock image subscriptions the average designer does. Well, all you have to do is type the following keywords into the “search photos” bar …
And VOILA!
Your Canva design life just got easier!
Next up …
4 MAJOR CANVA INTEGRATIONS TO MAKE LIFE EASIER (and speed up your workflow!
First to get to all the gloriously wonderful apps, just open a design or a fresh new page to create one and in the left-hand sidebar, look all the way to the bottom where you will see 3-dots and the word “more” then search for the app name. Once you click on it, the app will shoot itself to the sidebar as a shortcut for ease of use in all future designs.
There are hundreds of app integrations you can add based upon your marketing or AI design needs, so hop into that “app” feature and add whatever else tickles your virtual fancy.
Next up …
5 STEPS TO CREATING TRANSPARENT TEXT EFFECTS!
Next up …
CREATING TEXT MASKS FOR IMAGES!
Second last guru tip of the day …
DESIGNING A POWERFUL PRESENTATION (for final use in Microsoft PowerPoint).
This Canva tip is actually one of my most favourite ones of all, because as we all know too well, PowerPoint is not the most user or design friendly. Especially for creating grand visual impact and flow. So, what I like to do is create with the blank “presentation” page size in Canva … This way I can let the client’s brand shine and have absolutely ZERO LIMITATIONS to what I want it to look like. Or if more comfortable you can choose one of their professional “presentation” templates. Then simply just click the “share” button, rolling your mouse down to the “more” option at the very bottom, give it a click, then scroll down to the section where it says “save” and click “Microsoft PowerPoint”.
Once the file is done downloading, just save it to your preferred location of choice, open it up and do a few tweaks as sometimes during this transition, the font names are different from Canva to PowerPoint so double check all fonts and sizes are the same and done like dinner!
And last but not least, the usual bundle of need-to-know design tips …
In the end, whether you’re a designer or not, design plays a significant role in content success. You should not underestimate the power of graphics and visual content in today’s highly competitive (and overcrowded) environment. To grab the attention of your audience, you literally only have 8 seconds, so you must have an outstanding visual to make them stop and engage.
Designing creative, attention-grabbing visuals is most certainly not as easy as it sounds, but with the right approach, the right direction, and a little practice and play, you can learn it. Using Canva is easy -- but utilizing it to its full potential of it is difficult.
And not limited to everything I shared with you today … take some time to expand your mind – and your designs! – as there is a wide range of exceptional features in Canva – even with the free version.
I hope you feel enlightened to take on the design world in Canva after this epical “untangling” episode. And please, do let us know your queries or suggestions in the comments. We’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you’re intrigued to learn more.
HAPPY Canva’ing!