Easy Canva Hacks to Boost Your Designs
The days of meticulously designing graphics in Photoshop and wishing you could make more eye-catching documents in Microsoft Office (or Google Docs!) are long over thanks to Canva! No matter what industry you’re in, if you’re creating any sort of graphics, documents, presentations, or the like, you have most likely heard of Canva. Having the ability to create beautiful (and professional!) graphics in just a few clicks is game-changing but not a lot of people utilize all of the features the platform has to offer.
What is Canva?
Before we dive into everything that Canva has to offer, let’s dive into the basics! Canva is an online graphic design program that can be used to create all sorts of social media graphics, presentations, marketing materials, and other visual content.
Canva has both a free and paid version (today we’ll be touching on the free version!) and also has an app for your phone, which makes it easy to create beautiful graphics, no matter where you are.
Six Hacks for Boosting Your Branding with Canva
Now that we have the basics covered, let’s chat more about how you can boost your branding and create graphics that show off your brand’s personality through Canva.
Set Up Your Brand Kit
Make it easy to keep a cohesive branding experience with all of the graphics you make in Canva by uploading your brand fonts and colors to the Canva Brand Kit. This will make it quick and easy to switch out fonts and colors in all of your designs, especially if you’re using any of the free templates Canva offers.
Utilize Templates
Creating graphics from scratch can take a long time but with Canva’s templates, you can create beautiful designs with a click of a button! And since you already have your brand fonts and colors in your brand kit, you can easily change the template into something that fits your brand.
Upload Your Brand Photos
Tired of hunting down your brand photos when creating designs in Canva? We totally get it! It can take a lot of time searching through the folders on your computer for a specific photo. To help save time, add all of your brand photos to Canva as you receive them so you don’t have to worry about saving the images and uploading them when you’re trying to get designs completed!
Access & Utilize Stock Images
One of my favorite features of Canva is the stock image access! It’s so easy to search and find exactly what you’re looking for and if you want to find photos that fall within your brand colors, all you have to do is search your brand color keys. It really doesn’t get any easier than that!
Utilize the Resize Tool
Instead of worrying about copying and pasting elements from one design to the next, simply use the resize tool to duplicate your design and resize it to easily repurpose your content! I love doing this when I’m working on social media posts to make sure all of the graphics I post are the right size for each platform, especially when I’m creating announcement posts.
Create Different Layers with Elements
Bring your design to life by creating different layers and utilizing elements! When you’re creating your design, simply click on the element you want and adjust the position (forward, backward, to front, to back) to create the look you like. You’ll see the different layers in the cheat sheet we’re sharing below!