When it comes to marketing, a visually captivating graphic can communicate your message more effectively than a thousand words. That’s where Canva comes in—a beginner-friendly graphic design tool that can help you create professional-looking visuals with ease. Whether you’re a business owner, a marketer, or someone exploring the world of design, this guide will show you how to use Canva to create stunning marketing graphics.
What is Canva?
Canva is a user-friendly online platform that enables anyone to create beautiful designs without the need for advanced design skills. From social media graphics to posters, logos, presentations, and even videos, Canva offers a wide array of templates and tools to bring your creative ideas to life. It features a simple drag-and-drop interface and a rich library of templates, stock photos, fonts, and other design elements. Plus, while the free plan is robust, upgrading to Canva Pro unlocks even more features like Magic Resize and brand kits.
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Why You Should Use Canva for Marketing Graphics
Images and graphics are powerful tools for marketing and this is underscored by the fact that articles that contain an image for every 75-100 words are more likely to receive twice the number of shares compared to articles with fewer images. With Canva, you can easily create impactful graphics, saving time and money while delivering professional results.
Steps to Create Stunning Marketing Graphics Using Canva
Create your Canva account
If you’re new to Canva, head to canva.com and sign up for a free account. You can also upgrade to Canva Pro for added functionality, but the free plan has more than enough tools to get started.
How to Design Graphics Using Templates in Canva
If you’re short on time or design experience, Canva’s ready-made templates are a lifesaver. Canva has an abundance of fully customizable templates that you can adapt to suit your brand’s taste. For example, you can use your preferred options to adjust the colours, themes, images, and text.
Step 1: Choose a Template
Navigate to the template gallery and select one that aligns with your design goals. Canva offers templates for various categories, such as social media posts, presentations, flyers, and logos.
Step 2: Edit the Template
Once you open the template in the editor, the fun begins!
- Add and Edit Elements: Navigate to the side panel, drag and drop elements like shapes, icons, or graphics from the side panel onto your design. Resize, recolour, and reposition them to suit your needs.
- Change the Background: Navigate to the side panel and click on the ‘Background’ button. In the background library that opens up, choose your preferred background. Use solid colours, gradients, or images for your background. Canva also allows you to upload custom photos or select from its extensive stock photo library.
- Edit Text: Add headlines, body text, or call-to-action phrases by clicking the “Text” option in the side panel. Use the toolbar to customize fonts, sizes, and colours.
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Step 3: Download or share your design
Bravo! Your design is done. Your next step is to download or share it. Navigate to the toolbar and click on the “Download” button.
Click on the “Share” button to share the design with others through a link, email, or social media.
How to Create Stunning Graphics from Scratch Using Canva
Sometimes, it is far easier and more appropriate to design your graphic from scratch instead of templates. For those who prefer starting from a blank canvas, Canva’s intuitive tools make it easy to bring your unique ideas to life.
Here are some great steps to get you to your goal:
Step 1: Sketch a Rough Outline
It can be very useful to first sketch a rough outline of the graphic concept that you have in your head before you bring it to life. Note that you do not have to make it perfect. Committing your graphic ideas on paper can help you nudge your creative inspiration while providing a guide to your creative process.
Step 2: Choose Your Design Dimensions
Canva provides preset dimensions tailored for different purposes, like Instagram posts (1080x1080px) or presentation slides (1920x1080px). There are also great and optimal dimensions for designs like flyers, photo books, and other social media posts.
Alternatively, if you need custom dimensions, select “Custom Size” and input the dimensions in pixels, inches, or millimetres.
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Step 3: Choose and Edit the Background
Solid Colours or Gradients
You have the option of using a colour or image that complements your design’s theme. Canva’s colour palette tool offers great suggestions. For example, you may use purple to express individuality, green to project nature, or orange to communicate action.
The Color Picker tool is in the toolbar at the top of the editor. Simply navigate to it and choose a colour.
Overall, you should choose colours that meet your needs. Perhaps, you can choose the right colour combinations from Canva’s colour palette tool.
How to choose background photos
- Add a grid: If you wish to use a photo as the background, it is useful to first add a grid. This makes it easier to resize, layer, crop or flip photos for different visual effects.
- Add image: If you have your own image, you can upload it or, alternatively, search images and drag and drop it onto the grid.
- Crop images: Note that your background image need not be too busy because you still need to overlay texts or illustrations on them. As such, you may decide to crop images if it will improve the texture and remove unneeded spaces or features.
Step 4: Add and Edit Elements
You can use the wide range of elements that Canva offers including photos, graphics, shapes, text, backgrounds, and video.
Adding and Editing an Element
- Navigate to the side panel and drag and drop the element onto your design canvas.
- Click on the element
- Navigate to the element editor that opens up and adjust its size, colour, or position
Adding Text
- You can navigate once more to the side panel to add text and effects.
- A text box will be added when you click on the ‘Text’ button. Type in your text and format it by navigating to the toolbar and using the text formatting options.
Adding Photos
- You can head on to ‘elements’ within the side panel and choose a frame.
When Adding Feature Images
- A feature image can act as the focus of your design and draw attention to your content. Remember to use the grid when placing the feature image.
- Visual Hierarchy: Remember to pay attention to the visual hierarchy. Do not stack your design with too many elements, but maintain a good visual hierarchy. You can also try out various sizes, colours, and placement combinations.
- Visual Combination: Marketing graphics usually contain text, images, icons, illustrations, and custom emojis. You certainly want to combine them in a visually appealing fashion.
- Striking a Balance: However, you have to make sure that you strike a good balance as you lay out the elements. For instance, they should not be too close to each other or to the edge of the page. They should also be well-centred.
How To Add Filters
Add filters: it is possible to change the image’s clarity, tone, brightness or saturation by adding filters. This is quite useful in the process of layering text and other elements. Here are the steps to apply a custom filter:
- Click on the image
- Select the filter button
- Choose from one of Canva’s 14 custom filters
- Control the filter’s intensity using the slider
- Adjust settings such as contrast and brightness or add effects using the advanced options
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Step 5: Choose The Right Font Combinations
While it makes sense to limit yourself to no more than two fonts in your design so that it doesn’t look ‘messy’, you still have to choose complementary fonts. Whether you’re looking for a fun and playful typeface or a serious and professional-looking one, you need to ensure that the overall output generates visual interest.
- Choosing Font Combinations: Begin by picking your starter font and then navigate to the side panel and click the Text tab to choose from Canva’s many pre-set font combinations.
- Alternatively, you can use your own font combination.
Step 6: Resize For Multiple Platforms
Great! You’re done with the marketing graphic. You’ll now want to ensure it is rightly sized to suit the dimension requirements of social media and other platforms. Use the following steps to make use of Canva’s free tools to resize your designs and make a copy of the original visual:
Click “File,” and choose “Change Dimensions”
Choose the format you are resizing your design to.
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How To Use the Magic Resize Tool
Canva’s Magic Resize tool is a great tool here although it requires a paid plan. With it, you can copy and resize your design into the required formats for multiple channels.
- Click on “File”
- Head on to “Magic Resize” and choose your preferred formats
- Click the “resize” button
Step 7: Collaborate On or Share Your Marketing Graphics
If you need to get feedback on your designs or you need further collaboration on it, you can share a link to it with an activated option to edit.
- Click on “Share”
- In the “Link” section, select the “can edit” option
- A link will be generated, and you can share it.
- Alternatively, select the “can view” option to let others only view the design without editing it.
- In another vein, just post your final copy of the design straight up to Facebook or Twitter.
- You may also use the “embed” option to generate a code and embed the design into your blog or website.
- Furthermore, simply download the image file as JPG, PNG, or PDF as an offline copy.
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Special Canva Design Tip for Beginners
- Leverage Canva’s Design School: Canva offers free tutorials to help you refine your design skills.
- Experiment with Filters and Effects: Use Canva’s advanced settings to adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation for photos.
- Use Grids for Alignment: This ensures your elements are evenly spaced and balanced.
- Stick to Two Fonts: Keep your designs clean and cohesive by using no more than two complementary fonts.
- Review Your Design: Before publishing, ensure everything aligns with your brand’s guidelines and resonates with your audience.
If you wish to hone your graphic design skills, you can visit Canva’s Design School. There, you can take advantage of free interactive courses and resources such as 30 “Design Essentials” tutorials and Canva’s Design School blog.
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Improve Your Marketing Graphics with Canva
With Canva, creating visually stunning marketing graphics has never been easier. Whether you’re customizing a pre-designed template or starting from scratch, the platform offers tools and features that make graphic design accessible to everyone.
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