What Is Canva? a Guide to the Graphic Design Platform

Table Of Content

• How to use Canva for professional graphic design
• How to curve text in Canva's graphic design software using built-in tools
• What are the paid-for Canva options?
• How to change the background color of your photos in Photoshop to make your images more striking
• What is Canva? A guide to the graphic design platform's features and capabilities

If you click the three-dot "More" menu at the top right of your screen, you'll see even more advanced options to change the transparency of the text and where it is positioned on the design. Then you can overtype the pre-loaded text with your own choice of wording. Once you've clicked the text element, you'll also see all your text editing options appear along the top of your screen. The Canva concept came from Perkins, who realized there was a gap in the market for an easy-to-use graphic design platform. As a commerce and communications student at the University of Western Australia, Perkins was frustrated by how complicated and hard to learn mainstream design software was. You can create design content for the special occasions and memorable moments in your life using the free platform too.

How to use Canva for professional graphic design

For free Canva users, this is whether you want to download your creation as a PNG, JPG, PDF, or GIF file. Use the drop-down menu to change from the default PNG option. Once you've signed up for a Canva account, you're ready to start designing. From the home page, hover over the "Templates" menu and a window will pop up with popular options. Once you've made a Canva creation, the platform makes it very simple to download it to your computer, share it with others, and, in some cases, post it directly to other websites.

How to curve text in Canva's graphic design software using built-in tools

Start this process by clicking on the "Elements" menu option to the left of your screen. The next thing we're going to change are the colors on the page, as this works in a similar way. Click on your screen when there is a design element, such as a shape or patch of color, to highlight this element. You will see a blue box appear around the selected element and a small corresponding square of color at the top of your screen. They allow you to change the font type, size, and how the text is aligned, and add effects such as drop shadows and glows.

What are the paid-for Canva options?

It's a graphic design platform lets you create everything from Instagram posts to business logos, for absolutely no cost. Using it is simple and painless thanks to all the preloaded templates, images, fonts, and graphics, and it offers a very well-designed, intuitive, user interface. All you need to use it is to sign up with Google, Facebook, or an email address.

Going "Pro" allows you to create a "Brand Kit" to upload your own fonts, brand color palette, and logos to use across the entire Canva platform. You’ll also get access to Canva's impressive "Magic Resize" tool, which, with a couple of clicks, allows you to change a post you've created for Twitter, for example, to a perfectly sized Facebook post. Other templates that professionals from all kinds of industries might find useful are presentations, invoices, business letterheads, logos, proposals, flyers, brochures, newsletters, and flyers, among many, many others.

You can click to change each element separately, including the background color, this way. As we've already explained, Canva's design process breaks things down into elements. To change the image element, you can click on the template's image and hit the delete key. Now, if you click on the Photos menu on the left, you can see the photography available to you within Canva.

How to use Canva: A simple guide to the graphic design platform

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With this free tool available to everyone, there is no excuse for sub-standard social media posts ever again. Below the "New color" picker tool, Canva gives you exact matches of colors that are in your design. This includes a selection of colors that already appear in your document, and even more cleverly, colors picked out from any image you're using, even if it's one you've uploaded yourself. On a basic level, you can use Canva's pre-made templates to make a business card, to create your resume, and to write professional-looking letters. Next, should this suit your design, you can add in some free icons and shapes.

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We're creating a standard Instagram post, so that's what we click on to see the templates available to us. Along the top of the screen, you will see trending search terms, in this instance coronavirus, food, sale, birthday, and summer. There is also a color menu you can click on to narrow down the search results to search your preferred palette.

To change the text element, simply click on it to highlight it.

This opens the template in a new editing window, which has your design on the right of the screen, your editing options in a bar on the left of your screen, and your download and share options to the top right. In addition, there is the choice to create your own Instagram post from scratch using a blank template, but we're going to use one of the pre-made templates. To open a template for editing, simply click on it and then click "Use this template."

All the design content on the platform will be unlocked for you to use as often as you like, which means you'll have unlimited access to over 420,000 templates with new designs added daily. You can also enjoy working with more than 75 million premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics. When you've finalized your design, look to the top left of your screen for your sharing and downloading options.

There are plenty of personal graphic design options on the Canva platform, as well. In some cases, you can save money by making your own personalized versions of products you'd normally have to buy. If you click on the small square, you'll see the same color menu appear as for the text color options, allowing you to choose from existing colors in your design, or add in fresh new ones.