All About Canva - Your Virtual Graphic Designer
In today’s digital world, great branding is super important. Social media and the web are very crowded spaces, making it even harder to be noticed.
Your brand must be eye-catching, memorable and appealing, but above all - consistent.
If you continually push out higgledypiggledy design and content with little or no thought to the overall message and mission goals you are trying to achieve, your brand will come off as confusing.
Consistency is key. In your visual identity. In your voice. In your content.
If you work for yourself, or maybe your business comprises of a small team with an even smaller marketing budget, you’re unlikely to have the luxury of a graphic design team on call. Without the resource of a great graphic designer, how can you achieve all of the above?
Meet Canva…
This magnificent graphic design tool is not only free but super easy to use. Canva has recruited thousands of amazing graphic designers to share their designs and allow you to use them for your own visual content. Choose from a range of templates including Facebook and Instagram posts, presentations, infographics, brochures, newsletters, business cards - in fact pretty much anything!
You can even drive down each template by business sector, so you’ll find loads of beautiful, eye-catching designs used by other similarly appointed businesses.
You can create a brand kit too that includes your preferred fonts and colours, so you can easily update a template design with your chosen identity and allow it to start to look a little more like your business. Add logos and other brand collateral too, so you can quickly and easily grab all your visual identity at the touch of a finger.
When you are ready to publish your design, download it in a variety of formats including JPEG, PNG, PDF (even with crop marks if you are printing) and MP4 if you’ve elected for animation.
All your designs are saved in your free account and you can also choose from thousands of license-free images to pep up your design too.
There are paid options too, but loads of flexibility. You can elect to go Pro for less than £10 a month and switch the subscription on and off as you choose. Or alternatively, stay on a free account and only pay for what you use.
For example, if you choose to use a paid image, you can download your design with a Canva watermark while you sample/test it and then, when you are ready, simply pay as you go - meaning you only pay for what you use. A super cheap alternative when an image only costs 79p!
Canva gives you the gift of beautifully created graphic design and allows you to adapt it to suit your brand. Stay on point, stay beautiful and stay memorable.
Like what you’ve read?
Jo Buchanan, the author of this blog is the Founder and Director of TwitTwooYou Limited, a business growth strategic consultancy centred on getting brands noticed. TwitTwooYou offers a range of smart services to help businesses grow and achieve their aspirations and goals. Want to get your brand noticed? Get in touch for a free, no-obligation chat.
