What is Canva?

 In this post, I am going to introduce you to a must-know graphic design tool Canva! Easy to learn, fun, and with a vast number of templates and resources, Canva is the perfect choice for beginners and professionals who are looking for a drag-and-drop solution to streamline their projects. Follow along and find out why millions of users worldwide can’t live without Canva!

This post is based on my new Canva course! I’m very excited to share it with you and help you get started with this game-changing design tool! When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to my Canva Design Essentials course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Illustrator,  Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Let's get started!

What is Canva?

Canva is a versatile graphic design tool suited for students, professional designers, online content producers, and anyone who wants to create and share images and videos with friends and family. Founded in 2012, Canva has been around since 2012 and has over 170 million monthly users worldwide.

From traditional graphic design to social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated content, you can use Canva to create:

• Personal and Business documents

• Whiteboards

• Presentations

• Social Media posts

• Image and Video Editing

• Print products, like T-shirts, posters, mugs…

• Websites

• Brochures

• Newsletters

• E-books

• Labels

• Infographics

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Whatever you need to design, Canva will most likely have a feature or plugin app that can help you get the job done! 

Why is Canva a popular design platform?

User Interface

Canva’s interface is incredibly intuitive and the learning curve is quite quick. Most features are clearly identified and the drag-and-drop approach allows you to create, edit, and share visually engaging designs even if you are a beginner. Canva has some design limitations that might be limiting for advanced designers who prefer designing from scratch or fine tuning details, but it’s still an incredibly powerful tool. 

Templates and Elements

In Canva it is easy to design from previously created resources, like templates and elements. Templates are fully editable layout models to which you can add your own images, text, or color palettes to best fit the brand or project you are working on. You can also use templates for inspiration before starting a new design from blank. Either way, templates will save you valuable time and resources.

Elements are a massive collection of icons, graphics, shapes, photos, video and audio material that you can drag into your blank canvas or template as a building block for your design vision, strategy, campaign, branding project, whatever you can think of.

Pro Tip: It is important to note that Canva offers a Free version and a Pro version that allows you to access not only additional templates and elements, but also some other tools and features that can improve your design game. Have a look at both options and choose the one that better suits your needs and budget.

If you want to sign up for my Canva Course and get to know all of Canva’s resources and tools, you can try the 30- day trial Pro account and, once you complete all the lessons and earn your certificates, decide if you want to keep the Pro subscription or go back to the Free version, considering your current needs and available budget. 

You can use this exclusive BYOL link to create your free or 30-day trial Pro Canva account.

AI Generative Tools

Canva offers powerful AI generative tools that add a whole new layer of creativity and magic to your designs. Let’s have a quick look at some of these game-changing features:

• Magic Design – You can create customizable design layouts by simply describing what you want to see on your screen.

• Magic Write – An amazing writing tool to review and inspire all your copywriting content. You can say goodbye to Lorem Ipsum placeholder text and add extra realism to your projects.

• Magic Media – Generating images and video from a text prompt? Check!

• Magic Grab – Remove and edit elements from images in just a few clicks. Real magic?!

• Dream Lab – Canva’s AI tool for image generation that allows you to transform text prompts into amazing images, illustrations, and even 3D renders. There is a limit to the number of designs you can generate monthly with Canva (the Pro version is strongly recommended for working with AI), but there are no limits for what you can imagine and bring to life!

Brand Kits

Whether you are creating a new brand or working with an established brand, Canva’s Brand Kit feature will streamline your workflow and creative process. Once you set up a new Brand Kit (including different Logos, Font styles, Color Palettes, Images, Graphics, and Icons), you can drag-and-drop these saved elements directly into your new projects, ensuring consistency across all designs, saving you incredible amounts of time and reviews. 

Design for Social Media

Canva’s popularity is often associated with its Social Media design-friendly features. Being a browser-based tool (and a mobile app), Canva is accessible anywhere, from your office or home computer to your tablet or mobile phone. The drag-and-drop interface is also perfect for on-the-fly and quick content creation and publishing.

Canva also integrates with some of the top social media platform’s scheduling tools to help you plan and manage your social media posts and content publishing.

App plugins in Canva

If the seemingly endless array of templates, elements, and productivity tools is still not enough for your design needs, there is a huge collection of third-party apps to further enhance Canva’s features and potential. If you need to add something special to your project, there is an app for that!

I can’t possibly describe them all in this blog post, that is something you will have to explore for yourself, but I can point out that many of these apps bring additional AI features to Canva, can link content from popular platforms like YouTube to your projects, create design elements like QR codes and mockups, help you with image or video editing, among so many other possibilities.

 A Canva for All Artists?

What is truly remarkable about Canva? The platform’s accessibility and versatility. Canva is a tool for everyone, beginners or experts, for all graphic design trades and trends, from traditional print-outs to modern social media posts.

• Do you need to type a letter? Canva can help you do it.

• Do you want to share the most unbelievable sunset? Canva can help you do it.

• Are you designing a website? Canva can help you do it.

Fast-paced designers will love Canva and benefit from all the available templates, resources, and productivity tools like Brand Kits that can kick start any complex project and drive it to conclusion in record time. Digital and Social media run on rocket fuel and using Canva can help you quickly and efficiently create fantastic assets with a low budget and a tight schedule.

Seasoned designers will be able to use all of Canva’s features to speed up their work but professional designers may also struggle with some of the tool’s limitations, especially when there is the need to go that extra mile and create a project, a brand, or a design from scratch.

There are limited drawing and editing tools in Canva. Original vector-based designs or complex image effects must be designed on other platforms, like Illustrator or Photoshop, and then uploaded to Canva to complete the project. If you have the chance – and budget, of course – to combine these different tools, that’s excellent! If you are still taking your first steps or want to work mainly on social media and business projects, Canva alone can be an ideal design platform as you get started.

BYOL Canva Essentials Course

What can you expect from my new Canva Essentials Zero to Hero course? First of all, the usual awesome and fun stuff: exclusive briefs and course resources, certifications, a dedicated support team, a growing and engaging community of students and friends, monthly creative challenges, and so much more!

As a BYOL member and Canva student, I’ll walk you through:

• The essential Canva tools 

• The design fundamentals for creating professional, real-world designs

• Canva’s Multimedia Templates and Element resources

• How to working with incredible Canva Generative AI tools

• Best practices for creating documents, posters, presentations, and social media posts in just a few minutes.

And there’s so much more!

• Design professional logos and brand kits, including color and text styles

• Apply your designs to mockups with basic drag-and-drop actions

• Edit awesome videos for social media and marketing campaigns

• Export and share your designs

Throughout the course, I’ll also share time-saving productivity tips, my favorite shortcuts, and challenge your skills with some not-homework Class Projects, designed to upgrade your portfolio to Hero level!

And There We Have It!

Ready for Canva? I hope you are as excited as I am about this unique platform and that you will join me at BYOL for an awesome learning experience! Now that you know what makes Canva special and how you can use its potential to power your journey as a designer, it’s time to take your imagination and creative skills to a whole new level! See you there!

What 's Next?

Join BYOL to access my Canva Design Essentials course and explore other incredible graphic design tools! When you join BYOL, you will gain access to my 30+ courses on Illustrator,  Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan