Creating beautiful graphics for your business can seem daunting, especially if you are not a graphic designer and do not have the budget to hire one. Thankfully, Canva is graphic design software that makes it easy for anyone to create stunning graphics that would fool even a pro. I'm sharing some of my favorite tips and tricks I use in Canva to help build graphics for my business.
Canva: Opening Up The World of Graphic Design to Beginners
There’s no secret, I am no designer. Creative? Yes. Absolutely. Graphic Designer? 0%.
Unfortunately, the rude reality of today is that you have to have visually appealing designs for your website, social, proposals, email signature, business cards, and pretty much everything else.
In my dream world, I would hire a graphic designer who would be able to create everything for me to my heart’s content. Again, the reality is that my bank account does not allow for this luxury.
So, you can imagine my pure joy when someone introduced me to Canva back in 2017. There’s no word of a lie when I say this became a game-changer for my business. I went from struggling to add “design” to my word documents to building out beautiful customized proposals for my clients.
Today, Canva has become an industry leader in the graphic design space, competing with top players like Photoshop and Indesign. Those programs are amazing, but if you’re like me and do not have the time to learn how to use those programs, Canva is a dream come true.
My Favorite Canva Design Tips and Tricks
I’m sharing 4 of my favorite tips and tricks for using Canva for my business. Disclaimer, I use Canva Pro, which is the paid version of Canva. There is a free version of Canva that I used for the first few years of my business to create amazing social graphics but as my business expanded, so did my graphic design needs. Some of the features I talk about today are not available in the free version of Canva. You can compare the various Canva plans available here.
Storing Your Brand Kit Within Canva
If you are a business owner and want to ensure your graphics maintain brand consistency, then setting up your Canva Band Kit is a must.
The Canva Brand Kit allows you to save:
Logos
Brand Colours
Secondary Colours
Brand Fonts
The benefit of this is that when you are building any of your graphics, your colours, fonts, and logos, are saved and easily accessible so you don’t have to go searching for the right HEX code or try to remember the name of that font you really like to use.
Check out ours!
Using Canva To Remove Backgrounds From Images
As per my comment before, I am no graphic designer, and trying to use tools like Adobe sweet to do cool things like removing background images is way beyond my level of expertise.
Once again, Canva to the rescue.
Canva Pro allows you to do this with literally one button click (!).
All you have to do is upload the image you want to use, select Effects, choose “background remover”, and voila! The background is gone! Magic? I sure think so.
Check out exactly how to do it here:
Use Canva To Instantly Resize Your Images
Anybody who creates graphics for multiple places can attest to how annoying it can be to have to rebuild multiple-sized images based on what you are going to be using them for.
Canva Pro has a super helpful resize tool that allows you to create an image and then RESIZE IT FOR OTHER PLATFORMS.
Yup, you read that right.
So you can create your Instagram post, then resize it for Facebook, LinkedIn, or even a poster if you wanted to! It saves me so much time and energy.
Use Canva to Up Your Social Game
Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite aspects of Canva is the endless creative templates for social media. Trying to come up with visually appealing and unique social media posts can be tiring. Canva offers hundreds of templates for basically all of your social media needs.
Every template is super easy to edit and add your brand to. Whether you need ideas for Instagram posts, you want to create an interactive Instagram story post, you need some beautiful Pinterest templates, or a fun TikTok background, Canva has your back.
When I’m feeling totally uninspired on what to post, sometimes after a few minutes of scrolling through the templates I have an idea to run with and have no problem getting on a roll after that.
I could honestly write pages and pages on how much I love Canva but in the interest of my readers, I will spare you. But trust me when I tell you that whatever your graphic needs, Canva can help.