Creating Designs in Canva
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Overview
Welcome to the Canva Design Essentials course! Led by professional designer Dan Scott, this course is your gateway to mastering Canva and building a strong foundation in design principles. Whether you’re new to design or looking to sharpen your skills, you’ll learn how to create impactful, real-world designs with ease.
With 17 years of professional design experience and multiple teaching awards, Dan has taught over a million students worldwide. His hands-on approach and industry insights make learning engaging and accessible, empowering you to reach your creative potential.
You’ll learn:
- - Design Fundamentals
This course is ideal for beginners in Canva and design, whether you’re a teacher, student, small business owner, or aspiring designer. With step-by-step instructions, you’ll gain confidence in creating visuals that communicate effectively and look professional.
Take the first step toward becoming a Canva Hero—sign up now to transform your design skills!
Requirements:
- - All you need is a free Canva account. You can get a free trial from Canva here to get started.
- - Absolutely no previous Canva experience is required.
- - This course is designed for newcomers to Canva and design in general, so no prior design experience is necessary.
- - This is a relaxed, well-paced introduction, perfect for producing a wide range of projects. Only basic computer skills are necessary - if you can send emails and surf the internet, you're more than capable of mastering this course.
- - Creating Designs in Canva
- Working with Free & Paid Images in Canva
- How to Crop Photos in Canva
- How to Crop with Frames in Canva
- How to Name Your Canva Documents Right
- Uploading Your Own Images into Canva
- Where to Get Free Photos for Canva
- Understanding Workspaces
- Squares, Circles + Layers & Position
- How to Export a JPG & PNG from Canva
- Mixing Colors in Canva
- Design Styles & Color Palettes in Canva
- Working with Text & Fonts in Canva
- Adding Drop Shadows to Text in Canva
- Curving Text Around a Badge
- Group, Lock & Aligning Elements in Canva
- Creating Dotted & Arrowed Lines with Text
- Modifying Shapes in Canva
- Changing Color of Graphics & Collections
- Editing the Background Remover Tool
- AI Image Generator with Magic Media in Canva
- Mockups in Canva
- Testing & Posting on Your Phone for Instagram
- Editing Canva Designs on Your Phone
- Using Canva Template Logos
- MoodBoard WhiteBoard Brainstorm
- Using Markup Tools, Stickies, Comments & Sharing
- Logo Competitor Analysis in Canva
- Designing a Custom Logo in Canva
- Picking Fonts for Your Logo
- Choosing Logo Colors
- Using Gradients in Canva
- Understanding Brand Kits
- Light, Dark & Stacked Versions of Your Logo
- Working with a Word Style Doc in Canva
- Font Combinations & Pairing in Canva
- Changing Text Styles in Canva
- Styling Tables in Canva
- Designing Header Banners in Canva Docs
- Using Highlight Blocks, Dividers & Quotes in Canva Docs
- Presentation Templates & Styles in Canva
- Using Layouts in Presentations in Canva
- Page Transitions in Presentations
- Animating Pages & Page Elements
- Creating Charts in Canva
- Adding QR Codes in Canva
- Adjusting Images in Canva
- Darkening Images for Text Overlays
- Using Magic Eraser in Canva
- Magic Edit in Canva
- Magic Expand in Canva
- Trimming Video in Canva
- Applying Video Filters & Adjustments
- Animating Text & Changing Timing in Canva
- Changing Stickers & Adding Motion Effects
- Animating Photos in Canva
- Finding Free Videos for Canva
- Exporting Video for Social Media in Canva
Daniel Walter Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
Certificates
We’re awarding certificates for this course!
Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.
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Transcript
And very excitingly, we're gonna create a big blank document. I'll show you how to make them and I'll show you how important it is to kind of pick the format first, because then Canva gives you relevant suggested templates that you can start from, plus a tiny bit of navigating the system. Alright, let's jump in and make a big blank document. Very exciting. Alright, let's make our post. Now I'm on my home tabs here on the top here, and I've clicked on the little home button as well.
We're kind of like this welcome screen. This will change. Literally last week the created design button was over there, so yours might be moved around as well. And one of the things that were a little bit confusing for me when I got started is say I want to create an Instagram square post. Oh look, there's a button. Yours might not be there.
What happens is they kind of change it depending on your kind of use case. Let's say we do have it and we click on it, okay? It opens up in a tab and gives us a blank Instagram square box. Or if I go back to the home screen there and I go, actually, I wanna create a design this time and to be under social media and I want it to be an Instagram square post. You're like, oh, which way is better? It doesn't matter.
You end up at the exact same place. There are so many ways of making a document in Canva, but they all lead to the same place. Same with this. If I go hit this little plus button and I go, oh look, Instagram Square Post is that different? Nope, same, same, same, same. There are a couple other ways of doing it, but we end up in the same kind of finished result part now.
Um, before we get in and make our own stuff, one of the first things you're kind of shown is templates. What it does is it looks at the size of the page that you've made and goes, Hey, you want an Instagram post? Guess what? I got loads of templates that fit that shape and a kind of suitable for, you know, an Instagram post. So these templates here will change depending on what you've created. If you said, I wanna make an Instagram post, Hey Presto, we've got a whole bunch of templates for Instagram posts if you want something different, okay?
You gotta just be very intentional when you make a new document and you say, all right, I want a phone wallpaper. It's gonna give you templates based on what might be a very good phone wallpaper. If you can't see the templates, okay, if I click on the word design, okay, there is an option to click on it and close it down. You wanna open it back up, you just hover above it. Or if you click it once it opens for good and you gotta close it down with a little cross. So if you can't find it, match away at this.
You'll eventually see it. Now to apply a template, let's go back to one of these first ones I made. Let's go through and let's do a search. Let's do say cafe. Okay? And it's gonna give me templates based on cafe.
So I'm gonna click on this. Ooh, that looks cool. Okay, so I've got my cafe templates. I can now go through, click on it, start changing the text to okay, our own brand and we can start making adjustments. Now, while templates are great to get started, they can be a little bit confusing as well 'cause you don't really know how things are created. So we're gonna go through, make stuff ourselves, build it all up from scratch so that You can make your own templates and so that you can start using other people's templates like a boss.
Lastly, before we wrap up, let's close down all of the tabs that we've opened up. You just hit the little cross in the corners here, or Ctrl W on a Mac, CTRL W on a PC to close 'em all down. And we should only have the Canva tab open. I've brought you back to here because can you see here a whole bunch of untitled documents? Okay, that's 'cause when I was clicking on Instagram post the few times it's gonna made a whole bunch of documents, okay? And they're just called untitled, not very good.
So it's gonna clean everything up by going to, let's do this first one here is a move to trash button, okay? And you can do it all for the ones that we just created. If you are following along, I'm gonna hit the ticks in all the corners to say I want all of these, these are lots of things I was messing around with, okay? All of them. Can you see it on the bottom here? I'm gonna hit the trash can so that all of these go into the trash.
Now we're nice and tidy again, and we can get started. Alright, I'll see you the next video.
How do I create an Instagram square post in Canva?
From Canva’s home screen, choose Create a design, open Social media and select Instagram Post (Square). Canva opens a blank square document with relevant template suggestions. You can also use an Instagram post shortcut or the plus button if those options appear in your workspace; they lead to the same result.
How to Create Your First Instagram Post in Canva
Key Takeaways
Create a blank Instagram post without worrying about which shortcut you use.
Choose the right format first so Canva suggests suitable templates.
Find, apply and customise a café template.
Understand why starting from scratch helps you use templates more confidently.
Clear away unwanted practice documents when you finish.
Our first project is an Instagram post for a client. Nothing too complicated yet: a blank document, a little navigation and a quick experiment with templates. A big blank square. Very exciting.
Even if social media is not your thing, these are useful foundations. Creating documents and finding your way around Canva are skills you will also use when working on print designs and video.
1. Create a Blank Instagram Post
Start on Canva’s Home screen. The layout may look slightly different in your account because Canva moves things around, and the shortcuts it shows can vary depending on how you use it.
If you can see an Instagram square post shortcut, click it. Canva opens a new design tab containing a blank square page.
No shortcut? Use this route instead:
Click Create a design.
Choose Social media.
Select Instagram Post (Square).
You may also find the same format through the plus button used to create another design.
Which route is better? For this task, it does not matter. The same format produces the same starting document, whether you select it from a home-screen shortcut, the Create a design menu or the plus menu. There is no special version hiding behind one of those buttons.
A blank square page is the same starting point, whichever creation route you choose.
2. Choose the Format Before Browsing Templates
The important choice is not which button you click. It is what kind of document you create.
Canva uses your chosen format to suggest templates. Create an Instagram post and it offers layouts suited to Instagram posts. The suggestions fit that page shape and are intended for that type of design.
Choose Phone wallpaper instead and you get a tall page, along with a different set of templates suited to a phone background.
So be intentional at the beginning. If you want an Instagram square post, choose that format first. If you want phone wallpaper, choose phone wallpaper. You are giving Canva the information it needs to offer a useful starting point.
Where to Find the Templates Panel
Templates appear in the Design panel on the left of the editor. If they seem to have disappeared, the panel may simply be closed.
Hover over Design to reveal the panel temporarily.
Click Design to keep it open.
Use the panel’s close control when you want more room for the page.
You have not lost the templates. You just need to open their panel again.
3. Search for and Apply a Café Template
With the Instagram square document open, you can narrow the suggestions to something relevant to the client. For this example, we will use a café design.
Open the Design panel.
Enter cafe in the template search field.
Browse the matching designs.
Click a template to apply it to the page.
In this example, the chosen design is a colourful caramel latte promotion. Selecting it replaces the empty page with a ready-made layout.
A café template gives us a ready-made layout to begin customising.
Now click the text and replace it with your own wording or the client’s brand name. In the example, the original heading is changed to a name while the rest of the layout remains in place.
That is the basic template workflow: find a relevant design, apply it, then start making it your own.
4. Use Templates, but Learn How Designs Are Built
Templates are a great way to get started. They can also be a little confusing when you are new to Canva, because you can see the finished design without understanding how its parts were created.
Changing a heading is straightforward. Understanding how the whole layout works takes a bit more practice.
That is why building designs from scratch is worth learning too. It helps you understand how a page comes together, create your own templates and make more confident adjustments to somebody else’s design.
The aim is not to avoid templates. It is to use them like you know what you are doing, rather than feeling stuck whenever something needs changing.
5. Close Practice Tabs and Tidy Your Workspace
If you have tried all the different ways to create an Instagram post, you may now have several design tabs open. Close the practice tabs using the small cross on each tab, leaving Canva’s Home tab open.
You can also close the current tab with Command + W on a Mac or Ctrl + W on a PC.
Back on Home, you may notice several untitled designs under your recent designs. Each time you created another Instagram post, Canva made another document. Closing its tab does not remove that document from your workspace.
Remove One Design or Several at Once
For a single unwanted practice design, open its options menu and choose Move to trash.
To tidy several documents together:
Select the tick box in the corner of each unwanted design thumbnail.
Check that you have selected only the practice documents you no longer need.
Click the trash can in the bottom action bar.
Confirm the move to trash if prompted.
Select unwanted practice documents together to clear them away in one go.
Nice and tidy again. The useful habits are simple: choose the format deliberately, use the matching templates and clear away experiments you do not need.
Key Terms
Design format
The type of document you choose when creating a design, such as an Instagram square post or phone wallpaper. It determines the page shape and influences Canva’s template suggestions.
Template
A ready-made design you can apply to your page and customise, starting with elements such as its text.
Design panel
The area on the left of the Canva editor where you can browse and search for templates.
Untitled design
A document that has not been given a name. Practice documents can remain in your recent designs even after you close their tabs.
FAQs
Does it matter how I create a new Canva document?
No. Selecting the same format through a shortcut, Create a design or the plus menu leads to the same kind of document. Choose whichever route is easiest to find.
Why are my Canva template suggestions different?
Canva tailors template suggestions to the document format you selected. An Instagram square post and a phone wallpaper have different shapes and purposes, so they receive different suggestions.
How do I bring back the templates in Canva?
Open the Design panel on the left of the editor. Hovering can reveal it temporarily, while clicking keeps it open.
Does closing a Canva design tab delete the design?
No. The document can still appear in your recent designs. To remove an unwanted practice document, use Move to trash or select several documents and use the trash can.
Written by Daniel Walter Scott — Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
