Being an SEO expert many people often think that automatically I'm going to be amazing with photoshop and tools that allow you to make great graphics. Sadly I'm pretty bad on photoshop, I'd love to be good and I've tried many times over the years to get my head around it but it is a nightmare for me to get my head around.
Which brings me onto Canva, I need to be able to create some type of graphics and banners as part of my job and Canva for me is a much easier or less technical bit of software that allows me to be able to make up some decent graphics and banners.
For those of you out there who need an easier solution than Photoshop to create any sort of graphic, Canva is the place to go. With both a free and a paid option at $12.95pm, it provides you with a great selection of design templates that look professional which are very easy to manipulate.
You can use Canva for a number of different things including twitter and Facebook banners, blog posts, Instagram, posters just to name a few.
You can sign up for a free account using your email address or through Facebook. When you have an account, any design you create will be saved and appear on the dashboard so you can come back to make changes at a later date if you need to.
Once you've signed up, there is a massive list of different design types available for free which you can start using instantly.
There are lots and lots of editing that can be done as you can see from the picture above. Every template that you select is completely customisable with the menus on the left-hand side.
- Search - Canva has over 1,000,000 stock images that you can search through, just type in the keywords for what you're looking for and you'll be provided with a massive list of options to choose from.
- Layouts - This is a list of all the templates on Canva. All of which can be completely re-designed.
- Elements - Lots of different features are available here including grids, charts, and photos for you to add.
- Text - Here is all of the different fonts and styles of text that Canva has, you can click and drag the text to wherever you'd like on the design.
- Background - You can choose the background design and colour in this section.
- Uploads - Import any other designs that you already have. Especially useful if you already have a logo designed etc.
Once you're happy with the graphic you've created you can then save and download it as a JPG, PNG or PDF file.
If you want to use any of the premium templates, you have the option to pay the recurring monthly subscription or you can purchase that particular template to download on a one-time basis.
Canva's easy to use layout is what makes it such an appealing design tool. For anyone that needs quick designs made for anything from a blog post to their social media but don't have the expertise in using tools such as Photoshop and Gimp then Canva is the place for you.