How To Design on Canva — Designers’ Features

The best graphic design platform for even non-professional designers. How to design on Canva and futile the best of its features. This article gives you the Pros and Cons of what is the platform about and how you can benefit from using it.

Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app includes many professional templates for even ordinary users to use.

There are two options. You can use the platform for free with limited access to templates. Or you may opt for paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality.

Canva was founded in 2013 in Sydney, Australia by 3 founders, Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams.

Disclaimer: The article contains affiliate links and used to purchase I will earn a commission.

Content:

• What is Canva’s Platform About?
• Who will benefit from Canva the best?
• Canva’s Best Features You Will Benefit From
• Plans Available — Free, Pro and Enterprise
• Corporate Features
• Canva’s Educational Part — Learn About Design
• Canva’s Top Features
• Cons of Canva

What is Canva’s Platform About?

Canva is an affordable and easy to use design tool for anyone who isn’t an experienced designer. When you need to prepare designs for your business as a small business owner or even a large corporation, Canva is your option.

Most people see it as an image design tool, but it is about much more than just images.

You can design also printables to PDFs, invoices to flyers, prepare MP4 videos, Youtube Videos and also record yourself directly on the platforms.

As you see the Canva has a lot of pros. I hardly could think about any cons here.

Depending on your experience, you can either start from scratch and create your own design or just get help from Canva’s templates.

It has a web version and apps for mobile phones, laptops and desktops.

Who Will Benefit from Canva the Best?

Canva is best suited for all size business owners, especially online entrepreneurs, and marketers who want to design things quickly and with good quality. Canva is mainly used for example by bloggers and also also for people running their digital printables on Etsy shop.

You can also use Canva to create a book cover for your Amazon book, prepare presentations.

In addition, you can use also Video Creation tools for animated, doodly or Avatar Videos to enhance the visibility of your business.

Here are a few easy to use platforms for doodle animated videos or even modern avatar videos. You don’t need to be an IT expert to use these platforms. Also, another bonus is that they are a budget-friendly:

1. Doodle Maker
2. Avatar Builder
3. Video Builder
4. Video Maker Fx
5. Explaindio

Canva’s designs in combination with Doodle or Avatar videos will improve your financial earnings for your online business.

Features of Canva You Will Benefit From

Canva has many features that you can use and receive great benefits from. Depending on the programme you choose. The benefits of Canva Pro are bigger since you have access to the full database of templates.

Let’s see the features of Canva.

1. Photo Effects to Improve Photos

Canva has several effects on how you can improve and enhance your photos. You can add effects to photos that Canva provides and photos you upload.

You can see them at the top of the editor when you select a photo.

How To Edit

These will let you flip photos, crop them, add filters and adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, blur, etc.

There’s also an effects tab that lets you add effects such as Duotone, Background Remover, Liquify, and more.

Most effects are accessible with the free plan, though some features, including Background Remover, require a subscription plan.

2. Access to Photos, Videos and Templates

Depends on the programme you choose. If you want to get that first feeling about the programme, get the free version. However, in the PRO version, you gain access to 75+ million photos and videos and 420,000+ templates. Only a small fraction of these is available with the free plan.

To use the templates, click the Templates tab when you’re on the editor. Canva will automatically find templates based on the design type you selected.

You can scroll through, search for the right one. Or you search directly for the templates by colour or by description.

To find photos, click the Photos tab and choose photos in a similar way to the filters. You can also upload your own photos using the Upload tab.

Another place to find photos is the More tab (… at the bottom of the page).

What is actually great about this platform, that you can access photos and videos directly from Pexels, Pixabay, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more sites.

3. Elements and Access to Icons, Shapes, and Stickers

Canva has an elements’ tab where you can further find icons, shapes, stickers, charts, grids, gradients, and more.

You can add them to your images and adjust colour, transparency, and size.

4. Different Fonts Available

Canva has a font library under the Text tab where you can find dozens of prepared fonts, ranging from simple to sophisticated fonts, party and fun fonds, individual fonts or fonts in pairs.

You can also choose any of the three headings and then change the fond from the top of your dashboard. You can also choose a different colour for fonds, apart from the ones that are the ready fonds.

5. Canva Drag-and-Drop Editor

Online work has changed to the drag-and-drop world. Just be careful with the dropping. The drag-and-drop editor makes it very easy to work with the photos, videos, templates and all elements.

There is work on your side as you need to choose what you want to create, and Canva will display all the relevant items.

You can add items by the drag-and-drop method and make changes and adjustments. If you have used the templates before, you can probably make them in seconds.

Templates can be a great help at first so can start to get more ideas about the clear, eye-catching marketing material.

How to Insert Picture in Canva

As you see in the below picture, you have the uploads option where you can simply add your picture, whether it is from a website like Pixabay and directly insert it or you can find the file on your computer where you saved it and download it.

You can also upload your video and audio.

How to Edit Photos in Canva

On the left side, you have an option to choose different backgrounds so to add freshness to your designs.

When it comes to the actual editing of photos, you can adjust brightness, contrast and satiation.

And you can apply various filters. These options are available only with the Canva PRO.

A very cool feature is that you can add your photo into smart mockups and make them even trippy.

6. Speech Bubble

Canva makes it simple to drag and drop speech bubbles into your designs and quickly add your own dialogue.

With digital speech bubbles, you can always edit the dialogue, change the colours, or move and resize your bubbles.

7. Creates More Than Images

Most people think of Canva is only for creating images.

But you can create invitations, planners, business cards, blog banners, newsletters, menus, certificates, workbooks, websites, flyers, videos, posts on various social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and more.

You can use the drag-and-drop editor again. Choose the creation type and Canva will suggest templates. You can either go with the available templates or start from scratch.

8. Text Animation

You can let your words and letters with this the animation effect. Canva allows you to apply animation effects. Just click Animate and choose from various options.

This shows all the effects available and by browsing from one to another, you will see how the animation reflects on the dashboard. There are also a few free animations included such as Block, Breathe, Fade, Pan, and Rise. If you have a PRO paid account, all paid animations are available.

The animation is mainly based on fade-out, pop out and rising words.

I personally use these animations to create more lively presentations and videos. So you can play around with these effects. They will help you create beautiful and catching videos for Youtube, and also for other social media.

9. Images Animation

You can also choose to animate your pictures on the dashboard. Let’s say that you have multiple pictures on one marketing material so you can aminate them all or choose only one of a few of them.

There are two options, to animate pictures or the whole page.

10. Twist Using Curved Text

Using curves and shapes. By wisting the headline or description in your design, you will give your design an edge over the rest. You can curve your text as whole text boxes instead of letters in minutes.

Experiment with shaping your texts into circles or arcs, and add your flair to your design.

Canva’s curved text generator, the circular text isn’t the only text effect you can create.

There is more to it. You can further easily combine curved texts to form waves, swirls, and patterns–and you’ll get more variety to your quote posters, labels, wallpaper patterns, and social media story backgrounds.

You can experiment with different curved text directions, angles, colour schemes, layouts, and styles.

11. Charts Also ‘’IN’’

12. Audio Music for You

Audio is available on the platform. You can or use a search to type a description and or you have various categories where you can find music related to the categories’ names.

13. Publish to Social Media or Schedule

Apart from the creation process, Canva will let you share your images directly to some top social networks.

A convenient feature they added recently is scheduling your posts to social media, including Facebook pages, Facebook groups, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn pages, Slack, and Tumblr.

14. Custom Size

You can choose to custom size in px, in, mm. or cm and that’s directly from the main page.

However, if you have chosen a size and after you create your template you would want to change it again, you can do it directly from the main work dashboard. You don’t need to get back to the initial page and start all over again.

15. Crop Your Images for Trim

Suppose you’ve returned from a three-day hiking trip. As soon as you return to civilization you dump all your digital photos on your computer: some might need to be labelled, some might need to be retouched, but they’ll all look that much better with some cropping.

Crop your photos the simple way! After snapping a sizable stack of photos, our cropping tool can help transform your shots so they look gorgeous with your next project and are trimmed to just the right size.

Whether you’re putting together an adventurous photo collage or adding photos to an invitation or brochure, our image cropper will ensure all your designs look clean, trim, and splendid. You can even do it right on your phone or tablet

16. Content planner

Another new feature is the content planner. Here you can view all the images you have scheduled. If you find gaps in the calendar, click the ‘+’ sign to add a design you created earlier, or create one immediately.

17. Awesome Photo Frames for Your Pictures

From family photos to the artwork of great masters, a brilliant picture needs a tasteful and matching frame. Recreate the classic feel of oak or the curves of scrapbooking scissors!

Give your digital design work the masterpiece treatment with Canva’s drag and drop photo frames effect.

We have a wealth of frames to choose from in a staggering number of shapes and styles, all ready to frame any of your photos or to use with our vast collection of over 1 million stock photos.

18. Keep Your Photos and Layouts Crisp with Design Grids

From the cover of the famous albums to great books, grid-based and photo grid designs endlessly appeal to our sense of structure and form. Canva review of the platform, allowed me to find for you this feature.

You can experiment with photo grids by clicking the “layout” tab. There you can choose from one of our many grid layouts. Once again, drag and drop any design element into the open frames and you’re off and running.

What can be very attractive and attention-catching is photo grids for the foundation of your project.

There are options for the double, simple three-frame designs and eventually, complex arrangements perfect for mood boards.

19. Export Options

Instead of sharing or publishing, if you want to download a design as usual, Canva gives the following options:

• JPG
• PNG
• GIF
• MP4
• PDF

The Corporate Features

1. Branding and Logo Creation Kit

The Brand Kit is a personal storage area for your brand materials, assets, including fonts, brand colours, and logos.

The main benefit is that you can easily access the assets while designing. It saves time and helps you maintain a consistent look across all your designs.

The Brand Kit is only available in Pro and Enterprise accounts. You can create one Brand Kit with a Pro account. To create more, you must upgrade to Enterprise. It’s better suited for agencies that design for multiple clients or corporations that house several brands.

2. Edit and Convert PDFs into online designs

So how does the conversion work? You will first need to import PDF files right into Canva for free. Then Canva will manage to break these PDF files down into editable elements and you can then convert, annotate, and customize them instantly, just like any design asset within the platform. You can download your work as SVG, PPT, or print-ready PDF files. These are all shareable online from the same Canva dashboard.

3. Prepare a Quality Presentation

4. Youtube Videos

5. Ordinary Videos

The Way How Your Upload Your PDF to Canva

Drag and drop your PDF to the homepage. Click on the imported PDF to open it in the Canva editor.

From the homepage, click Create a design on the top corner. Click the Import PDF button at the bottom of the options window.

3. Create Presentations

You can create your presentations using the live presentation option. You can organise and run live sessions while presenting to your audience.

You will receive a simple 6 digit code, that you share with your audience so they can go to canva.live and join the conversation, send reactions, comments, and questions as you present.

4. Create Your Team

You can set up teams of people on your account by inserting their email addresses and inviting them to your Canva team. You can coordinate work and designs within the group.

The Enterprise account is great when it comes to organising teams since you have the fully functional built-in workflows to get approval on your designs. with the Enterprise account, you have unlimited storage and folders for organising your designs.

Canva Plans Available - Free, Pro and Enterprise

If you just starting up and you want to try the platform and its functionality first, you can opt for the version for free.

There are three plans: Free, Pro (USD12.99 per user per month, $119.99 if billed yearly), and Enterprise. The price for the Enterprise account is tailored to your needs and so you need to contact the sales department.

How is Canva Free? Canva Free Account Review

The free version provides you with 250,000+ free templates and 100 design types. You will have hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics and 5GB of cloud storage. You can also create your team, but there is no workflow and no approvals available.

Benefits of Canva PRO

In my experience of using Canva, I had a free trial of the platform for a few days and then bought and started to use the benefits of Canva Pro. The price for Canva PRO is affordable even for smaller businesses. $119, when billed yearly. You will all the templates available including all the premium designs, templates and videos. You can easily save and apply your brand too. Resizing is available here, as you won’t have this tool in the free plan.

Storage is 1,000 GB of cloud storage. You further have a scheduler for 8 main social media platforms.

Canva Enterprise review

Canva Enterprise is a tailored option. The price will be catered to your needs and so contacting Canva is necessary when applying for the Enterprise account. apart from all features for PRO account, you will get the platform that is more adjusted to the corporate needs and management of the teamwork, approval of the team progress and built-in workflows. The storage is unlimited and you will also have 24/7 enterprise-level support.

Canva’s Educational Part — Learn About Design

Even though that you don’t need a university degree for using the Canva platform, if you are interested in learning a bit more about how to use the Canva platform, what are different available features are, you will find many tutorials under the learn Tab.

Apart from learning how to use the Canva platform, you can watch various online courses on interesting topics as graphic design, social media mastery, personal branding and more.

Disadvantages of Canva

As discussed, Canva offers so many pros. But there are also a few disadvantages of Canva too. Here they are.

You cannot create unique elements

Canva doesn’t let you conjure elements. These are prebuilt designs and design enhancing items such as lines, frames, icons, shapes, and stickers you can add to your creations.

Disadvantages of Canva App

There’s a mobile app, but it is harder to use on the small screen. Since you are designing your marketing material, the experience on the computer is much better. More clarity. The disadvantages of Canva app are purely from the practical perspective since it is better to use the programme on the bigger screen.

Conclusion

So now you know how to design on Canva. Overall, the experience of using Canva is very positive. It is a great platform for non-professional but also professional designers and marketers. Mostly positive experience and really can’t see many negatives to this platform.

Obviously, you can use the platform for free time if you want to create some nice designs, but the platform is 100% useful for business owners. This platform saves me a lot of time, especially for my Pinterest marketing.

So if you need to get your designs ready, get your PRO account with Canva.