As a small business owner, you will need to create various digital materials starting with designing your logo, banners for your social media channels, creatives for content, and photos for your blog posts.

Gone are the days of using Photoshop, which could easily feel overpriced and complicated to use if you only needed it for simple, small tasks, as listed above.

The Beginners Guide To Using Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform that you can use for your design needs, from logos, fliers, social content, lesson plans, Zoom backgrounds, presentations and more. It is straightforward and very intuitive to use. No layers, no complicated processes, just a free drag-and-drop interface and it doesn’t require you to master complex editing skills.

Let me share all the details that you should know about Canva:

1. Templates

If you are not experienced in graphic design and not confident in combining colours, fonts and images, Canva is for you because it has thousands and thousands of free templates that you can choose from. Pick the type of design you need, and on the left side of the navigation panel, you can pick from a lot of different designs. Once you select the one you like, you can easily personalize it with your brand colours, and changing images is just an easy click.

2. Use Your Own Photos

Although Canva has an extensive foundry of images, you can also use your own photos and easily add them to your designs or the template you chose. Simply upload your photos to Canva, and they are ready to use; just drag and drop them into your selected design.

3. What Type Of Design Can You Create With Canva?

• Logo
• Business cards
• Posters
• Invitations
• Flyers
• Infographics
• Social media banners
• Social media content
• Presentations
• Letterheads
• E-books and more

4. What Editing Tools Do You Have Access To? 

Canva is super-user friendly, and you can edit your design on day one with zero experience. You don’t need to be a computer whizz, and you don’t need any design experience.

• Crop images: you can easily re-size and straighten your images and cut out unwanted parts or just focus on one part of your image.
• Change colours: easily adjust the colours of your text and use your brand colours or any other colours you like. When using a photo in your design, the platform automatically offers you colours that go well together.
• Pick your font collection: you can choose not only from single fonts but from font combinations that allow you to perfectly match the font of your headline with the font of your body of text. The outcome? Everything will look harmonious and well-coordinated.

5. Free Tutorials For Newbies

If you are new to graphic design and would like to learn more about creating various designs, Canva’s free tutorial library is for you. The Design School is an extensive collection of courses on a wide array of topics to help you navigate through everything.

Conclusion

Canva is a free tool, and with a free subscription, you will always find enough design content to create engaging, beautiful and popping designs for all your needs as a small business owner. However, if you want a wider variety of images, more templates, and more, I recommend trying out the Canva Pro subscription. It is monthly $12.99, and the good news is that you can sign up for a free trial month.

Also, when paying yearly, you only pay $119.99, which comes to a monthly fee of $9.99. If you decide to pay month by month, you can also choose to go back to your free subscription if you do not use it enough to justify the cost. (Although I doubt you will want to go back to the free version. Canva Pro is awesome…)

Are you just starting your business and need more information about planning digital marketing, not sure what tools to use? Go check out our recent article about How to choose the best social media management software.

Let me know if you need help with your digital strategy, and I will be happy to help.

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