How To Get Started With Canva

Are you ready to learn how to get started with Canva? Do you want to know why Canva is a favorite design tool used by graphic designers and non-graphic designers? Maybe you’ve never heard of Canva and are keen to learn more. 

Welcome! You are in the right place as I have been using Canva to design my graphics for years, and I love it. It’s simple to use, gives professional results, and is perfect for personal and professional projects. Below I will look at the elements within Canva which can help you create beautiful, professional results for all your design needs. 

In this post, I will be looking at ways a newbie can get started with Canva without feeling intimated or overwhelmed. It’s always a challenge to adapt and learn a new platform or program and what I love about Canva is that it’s so easy to navigate and has multiple design tools for any project you could imagine. 

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What is Canva? 

Canva is a web-based graphic design platform (graphics and image editing software capability) with both a free version and a paid version to create visual designs to use for all your offline and online needs. And plenty of ideas for everything else too! I’m talking about the pre-built templates for; 

• Posters  
• Flyers 
• Menus 
• Announcements (engagements, anniversaries, weddings)  
• Party invitations 
• Real Estate Postcards 
• Newsletters 
• Reports 
• eBooks 
• Social media graphics (every marketing visual you could ever need!) 
• Certificates  
• Lesson Plans 
• Video (YouTube intro’s, animated social media graphics, video collages) 

And that’s not all! There are an incredible 250,000+ Free templates to choose from, which you can alter to add ion your brand colors and fonts, 100+ design types, 1000’s of free photos to use, 5GB of cloud storage (essential!), and friendly customer support too. 

There are so many benefits to using Canva for your design needs, and the drag and drop tools are straightforward and user friendly for any skill level. Using Canva for my blog enables me to create any graphic design type easily and quickly without worrying about which sizes to use or more complicated designs.  

I’m not a graphic designer, and it can be very intimidating when faced with design projects to complete for your business with little to no design know-how. This is where Canva steps in and takes away the fear of making something for yourself instead of having to shell out the big bucks for a graphic designer. It’s so empowering to know if you need to create a design for; 

• Social media graphics 
• Brand identity board 
• Design worksheets 
• eBooks 

You can step into Canva and, in a few clicks, create a unique, bespoke design yourself using your own (or a client’s) brand colors and fonts that look professional and cohesive. 

What Can’t Canva Do? 

While Canva has so many design capabilities, it has its limitations, so it can’t help you to; 

• Edit your photos 
• Be able to adjust and correct very detailed work 

If you are going to use your own photos within Canva, or need detailed close-up work first, edit them first in Photoshop or GIMP, then upload them to Canva to work on the visual design.  

How much is Canva? 

Canva is accessible to everyone and has three structures: 

The Free Plan 

The Pro Plan 

The Enterprise Plan 

Most people, me included, start with the free plan. And there is so much to get excited about. All you fellow design DIYers out there will fall in love with the sheer capabilities of Canva. The free plan will give you everything needed to start and create incredible results.  

Canva will prompt you with tips and guides as you create your work, so don’t feel alone. If you do get stuck, all you need to do is check out the help section for every possible problem you could run into. Failing that, reach out to Canva support for fast and friendly advice. 

We’ve looked at the possibilities of the free version of Canva, so what do you get with upgrading to the paid versions? 

The Pro Plan 

You, of course, will get everything I discussed earlier in the free plan, plus 

• Brand identity section for you to add logos, colors, and fonts (for multiple brands) 
• Upload your brand fonts and logos 
• Magic Resize – invaluable time-saver to resize any design in one-click 
• Over 420,000+ free templates (new designs added every day) 
• 75+ Million free to use stock photos, videos, graphics, and audio (unlimited use) 
• 100GB Cloud Storage 
• The ability to save your design templates for your team to use 
• Background removal to create visuals with transparent backgrounds easily 
• Create animated GIFs easily and quickly 
• Additional file formats to use and download – JPEG, PNG, PDF, and GIF 
• Social media content scheduler for seven platforms 

The Pro Plan is £10.99 / $12.95 per month or £107 /$119 per year, and with the capabilities listed above, it helps you improve your workflow and the final designs for your business or your clients. 

The beauty of Canva, no matter if you choose the free version or the paid version, is that you can nail any design task that comes your way even if you have no design skills or feel like you aren’t naturally creative and not design-savvy at all.  

Having Canva pro on your side will help you achieve any design you need for your blog or website, social media platforms, Etsy shop banners, you name it. With your Canva pro account, you can nail it! 

The Enterprise Plan  

If you are using Canva as a small business, the Free plan or the Pro plan are perfect for all your design needs. The enterprise plan is ideal if you have a larger company and need to focus on the team as a whole, plans are UK £24 / USA $30 per month for each person, and in addition to all the great tools you have on the Pro Plan you also will get; 

• Full control of the team’s access to apps, graphics, brand colors, logos, and brand fonts 
• Staying on brand is easy as you can set up which elements your team can edit, locking vital brand elements 
• You have control over your team uploads to the Canva platform  
• You have control over your team’s apps, graphics, brand colors, brand logos, and brand fonts 
• Your storage is unlimited  
• SSO – Single-Sign-On 
• You can set which elements within Canva your team can edit and lock templates as you need to 
• 24/7 Enterprise Support 

How Do You Access Canva? 

You can either use Canva on your PC or laptop with your account or download the app to your phone IOS or Android. I prefer using Canva on my laptop or PC for ease of use as I find the app on my iPhone is just too fiddly. Having an app on your phone is a useful tool, especially when you are on the go, as most of us have our phones on us all the time.  

Who Is Canva For? 

Canva is user-friendly and accessible to everyone. Having a free and a paid version makes it ideal to try out the free version first to see if that is all you need for your creative projects. Upgrading as and when you require to take it to the next level, especially if you are using Canva regularly for your business or to create graphics for clients.  

So, who is Canva for? It’s an essential tool to create visually stunning graphic designs quickly and easily for small business owners, social media managers, bloggers, designers, and influencers. There is some severe snobbery between Canva and Adobe Products. Many professional graphic designers don’t like Canva and feel the ‘look’ is too samey and safe. Designers will usually use Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop to create their designs, but for us, non-designers, Canva has it all, and as a bonus – it’s easy to use too.  

Canva is aimed at non-designers who want great design results quickly with drag and drop features. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are made for professionals and give exceptional results with features to add minute detail and beautiful fonts, to name just a few. 

How Do You Use Canva? 

1. The first step is to decide on what size you need for your project. Canva can help you with this choice as there are handy templates to select. If you feel confused by the sheer amount of template choices, don’t worry, there is a feature to “start with an image” first. Canva will then prompt you to choose what you want to create. 

2. Now you have either a blank canvas to begin your creation, or you have started with an image you can work with as your background. If you have a blank canvas, go ahead and add a background, image, or a block color. 

3. Next, add in your text over your background; you can include text boxes too. 

4. Don’t forget to add your web address and brand name. 

5. Once you are happy with your design, name, save, and download to any format you need. 

6. That’s it! You can create visual content again and again for all your projects. 

The Last Thing You Need To Know About How To Get Started With Canva 

Creating beautiful, useful, and purposeful digital designs, even for non-professionals, doesn’t have to be difficult and out of reach. What I love about Canva is its accessibility. Everyone can get started, even with zero knowledge of the ins and outs of graphic design and create something unique.  

The beauty is there are so many templates to choose from, even on Canva’s free plan. I have created so many graphics with Canva over the years for my blog, my small business, clients, my daughter’s birthday parties,  family events, and even for Zoom meetings! The list is endless, and with your creativity, with a little help and guidance from Canva, you can create any visual graphic design you need for your business or personal use. 

Even if you run into stumbling blocks in your Canva designs, you can get plenty of help and tutorial advice from Canva Design School to get you back on track. There are so many tips and hacks to make Canva a breeze to use. From creating a transparent background, adding a link to your website, using the magic resize feature to speed up your workflow, and the new curve text added most recently, which everyone is loving. 

Getting started with Canva is so fun and easier than you think. In a few clicks, without having to navigate complex graphic design hurdles, you will find yourself producing eye-catching: 

• eBooks 
• Social Media Graphics 
• Design Worksheets 
• Detailed Brand Identity Leaflets 

With so many Canva ideas, it’s easy to find yourself brimming with content at your fingertips, and workflow will never be so enjoyable once you get started!

Do you want to find beautiful FREE photos to add to your Canva Designs?

Click the link below to access your guide to the best FREE websites to find professional, on-brand images to add to your designs today.

Psst. I have added some bonus content to show you where you can go to get free beautiful images if you sign up as a subscriber, these are amazing websites that really do give.

Let me know if you find any more fantastic resources for free photos that you think I could add to the helpful guide!

Click the link below to access the guide.