Canva is a graphic design platform you can use to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, menus, and other visual content. You don’t need a graphic design background to make beautiful images with Canva, which makes it perfect for small business owners with limited resources. Canva is free to use, but also offers a professional version for added functionality. Let’s dive into the ins and outs of all things Canva.
Why use Canva?
If you’ve ever struggled with designing compelling and attractive marketing materials for your small business, Canva can help you upgrade your graphics. It’s easy to use and more intuitive than other graphic design tools, plus you can use it for free. While professional graphic design software tools like the Adobe Creative Suite may allow for a bit more customization and illustrations, the learning curve can be quite challenging. Canva is quick to pick up and full of incredible tools you can use to take your marketing to the next level. Even trained graphic designers turn to Canva for certain projects. With thousands of templates, there’s no shortage of beautiful graphics you can make.
How can I sign up?
You can create a Canva account in less than five minutes. Open your preferred internet browser and go to canva.com. Once there, click on the “Sign up” button. A dialog box will pop up and prompt you to sign up with Google, Facebook, or your email. Simply choose your preferred method and complete the signup process to get immediate access to Canva and all its design features.
What can I create?
Small businesses can use Canva for almost all their graphic design needs. Use it to create an arsenal of social media graphics for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Design stunning presentations and pitch decks. Make amazing flyers and postcards that showcase your business beautifully. You can build graphics from scratch, using photos, shapes, and illustrations to make your image, or use one of Canva’s templates and simply change the colors and words.
One thing we don’t recommend using Canva for: Logos. The platform has lots of premade logo templates, but it also has over 75 million users, making it basically impossible to use a logo template that other businesses haven’t used. If ever there’s a time to hire a graphic designer, logo design should definitely be at the top of your list. You can find a specialized logo designer for a reasonable price and oversee the creative process to make sure you get a unique logo you love.
Canva vs Canva Pro
The free version of Canva is great! Yes, you read that right. It is an absolutely dependable tool for small business owners on a tight budget. The free version offers over 250,000 templates, hundreds of thousands of free stock images, 5GB of cloud storage, and tons of different marketing graphics. If you’ve been struggling to create awesome graphics, the free version of Canva will help you upgrade with ease.
With that being said, there are some amazing features in Canva Pro that you don’t have access to in the free version. Along with over 600,000 premium templates and 100GB of cloud storage, some of our favorite Pro features include access to over 100 million quality stock photos; Magic Resize, which allows you to resize any graphic to a new size instantly; and Background Remover, which gets rid of an image’s background. Canva Pro also allows you to create Brand Kits. The kits let you save a color palette, fonts, and logos so you ensure cohesive branding in all your graphics. If you have the extra cash and think you would benefit from Canva Pro, you can upgrade for $12.99 per month or $119.99 for the year. It’s also easy to switch from Canva to Canva Pro, so you can always test out the free version and see if it works for you!
How Can I Learn More?
If you want to learn more, please join us for Canva Basics to Digital Marketing Design on August 4th! Starting with a walkthrough of what Canva does and how you can make an account, we will show how to make digital marketing content, add and edit pictures and text, and how to use Canva for all types of marketing. Register now!