Introduction to Canva for Beginners

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Today I’m going to be sharing one of my favorite design programs, something that I use every single day in my business, and that is…Canva.

Introduction to Canva Design for Beginners

I am a graphic designer. I graduated in 2009, so I have been doing design work for clients as well as for my own business for over 10 years now.

That being said, I know my way around Adobe Creative Suite…Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, all those good things.

I still use Photoshop and Illustrator every once in a while if I have a little bit more advanced design work or photo editing to do.

But for the most part, Canva is a program I use more often. I use Canva every single day to create designs for my business.

Canva is a FREE design program

The first reason I love Canva is because it’s FREE.

And when I say free…If you’ve used any online software or programs and signed up for these “free trials,” then you know that normally with a free trial, you get a very limited amount of features and capabilities that you can actually use without buying the paid version.

Canva is not that way. So, I hope this is not something that they change in the future. But as of right now, most of the features of Canva are available with the free version.

As a matter of fact, I used the free version of Canva for probably 6 months before I upgraded and signed up for the paid version.

It’s amazing the amount of features and capabilities that you get with just the free version of Canva.

Canva makes designing beautiful graphics QUICK and EASY

Canva is so quick and easy to use! They’ve got hundreds and hundreds of templates that make designing graphics super easy. You just choose a template, plug and play, and your design is ready to go.

Click here to get started creating beautiful graphics with Canva right now!

Introduction to Canva design program for Beginners

Ok, so after you create your free account and sign into Canva, this is the Homescreen you’re going to see.

You’re going to automatically see all these design templates that they’ve got right here on the home screen.

Canva has pre-made templates for posters, logos, videos, presentations, fliers, all types of social media graphics (Pinterest pins, Facebook ads, Instagram posts), ebooks, calendars, planners…it’s all in there.

Templates make design work so fast and easy! You choose a template, plug in your image, colors, and text, and boom…beautiful graphic ready to download.

So, let’s say we wanted to choose this St. Patrick’s Day social media template.

Just click on the template you want to use, and it will open up in a new canvas.

If you click on the text box, you can type your own text here.

You can also change the font, color, sizing, and spacing of your text.

You can click on the shamrock element, and change the color over on the left.

So, using and editing templates in Canva is super easy to do and customize to fit your needs.

From the home screen, you can also choose to create a design from scratch, instead of using a template.

Click the “Create a Design” button on the top left, then scroll down to choose the type of graphic you want to create.

For this demo, I’ll choose “Pinterest Pin.”

Another cool feature in Canva, is that they have most of your graphic sizes preloaded.

So you don’t have to go look up “What size should a Pinterest pin be?” Because when you choose “Pinterest pin,” Canva will automatically size your canvas to 1000 x 1500 pixels for Pinterest.

If you choose “Photos” from the menu on the left, you can choose from Canvas library of stock photos.

Pay attention to the small symbols on the bottom right of these images. Images with a crown are only available with paid Canva accounts, and images with a dollar sign have to be purchased in order to use them. Most of the paid images are pretty reasonably priced, around $1-2.

Click and drag an image to insert it onto your canvas.

If you choose “Elements” from the menu on the left, you’ll see a variety of shapes, symbols, grids, and clip art images.

Click on one of the elements and drag to insert it onto your canvas, such as this square.

Once you’ve inserted your shape, you can click on the white points to resize it, change the color, or even rotate the shape.

You can choose “Text” from the menu on the left to add some text to your graphic.

Once you’ve added a heading, you can change the font, color, sizing, and spacing of your text.

You can also create short video and audio clips by selecting “Music” or “Video” from the menu on the left.

If you choose “Background” from the menu on the left, you can add different colored and textured background images.

Again, be sure to pay attention to the label on the bottom left of the image (free, paid, or upgraded account).

If you have a specific photo, color, shape, or element in mind, you can type it into the “Search bar” at the top of any section.

Once you’ve finished your design, you can click “Publish” to download your file.

You can choose to download your image as a PNG, JPG, PDF, video, or animation.

Saving files as “Animation” or “Transparent PNG” are only available with a paid version of Canva. But you can still download as a PNG, JPG, PDF, or video file with the free version.

Again, I always recommend you start with the FREE version of Canva. There are plenty of features available with the free version to create some beautiful design graphics.

But, if you decide you are ready to upgrade to a paid account, Canva Pro costs $9.95 per month of you pay for the whole year OR $12.95 if you choose to pay monthly. The cost is pretty inexpensive, and I love the ease of use with Canva to create designs for my business.

Love templates for quick and easy design?! Check out this post for more beautiful design templates.