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The Best Free Online Tools. Part 1: Canva

August 12, 2017

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There isn’t always a good reason to buy software. Whether you’re part of a small-business, or you don’t need that particular tool on a daily basis, most of the times you probably want to hold on to your budget for something more important or unexpected. That’s perfectly fine, there are plenty of options out there that won’t cost you a dime.

In this series of articles I will go over some of the best free online tools available. I went through this exact research process you are undertaking right now, and to be honest, choosing to look for a free option was one of the best decisions I ever made. I know that sometimes you need to produce something remarkable, with little effort and no financial investment at all. That’s how I stumbled upon Canva, a tool that I praised so much over the past couple of years that my colleagues are starting to think that I might actually be a Canva operative on the side.

In this article I will explore some of the basic uses of Canva, with about 2 years’ worth of tips and tricks along the way. Let’s get started:

 

1. What is it good for?

Mainly, designs of all kinds: posts, covers, documents, infographics, presentations, headers, and many others. The great part about Canva (besides the free-online part) is that it’s very easy to use (drag-and-drop based), and you don’t need any design experience to handle your task – though I would argue that at least some sense of aesthetics is preferable if you need to make your designs as unique as possible. The provided editable designs have a professional touch, so as long as your edits use the same fonts, layouts, and a good color combination, your designs should turn out great.

Plus: free, online, easy to use, great design templates.

Minus: occasional crashes (saving often will help), some templates can be somewhat recognizable if you don’t make significant changes.

 

2. Requirements

Email-based user and that’s about it. Some of the skeptics will ask at this point – but how does this software make money in order to be sustainable? This is where our suspicious nature comes in, but it’s a good thing. Sometimes you might invest time to learn how to use a tool only to end up with most of its features blocked a month later, and an invitation to upgrade to the pro version. It’s a common strategy. In Canva’s case, there are templates and certain elements that are not free, and there’s also Canva for Work. That’s where some of the income comes from. Don’t worry, you still have plenty of great free options, and that hasn’t changed in the past 2 years.

 

3. Sections that you’re interested in

After you’ve successfully created an account, your main starting screen will look something like this:

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Everything is easy to use, and there’s an overall user-friendliness to the entire tool. Here are the main sections you will be interacting with:

> Create a design. This is where you select a design template from the different available options, and edit it to fit your needs.

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Useful tip: Don’t let a design’s type dictate its only usefulness. The only things you need to keep in mind are the dimensions of the design you need, especially for printing purposes. Recently, I ended up using a template in the Resume category for a user manual – basically unrelated. I strongly recommend you explore all your options if you have the time, or if you don’t find a good template for what you need. You will find that some categories have more free options than others, and even if the category isn’t related to yours, some designs from it might be useful with just a few tweaks, and as long as the format fits.

> Editing options. The options are fairly easy to understand, with the Canva menu displayed at all times, a simple text editor, some page editing options, and the elements/layouts sidebar. After you’ve selected your design type, your interactions with the design are quite simple:

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– Select a layout

– Edit the layout

  • Select a background (if needed)
  • Change the position, number, and content of the text boxes and existing elements
  • Add new elements to the template – you can upload your own, or select from Canva’s library

– Save, share (optional), download

Useful tip: You can share a design in its editable format with another fellow Canva user. Some of my content-design collaborations were made way easier by the Share button.

Useful tip: If you don’t have a strict brand book which absolutely requires you to use certain fonts, try to keep the font combinations the same. There’s more to font pairing than meets the uneducated eye.

Useful tip: If you need the same/similar design for something else (for example: reports), just go to the All your designs section, Make a copy of one of your designs that fits your needs, and edit that version to save precious time.

Useful tip: Here are some Canva tutorials that will help you master keyboard shortcuts, backgrounds, colors, fonts, and many more.

 

4. Bottom line

Cost-saving solutions will always be extremely valuable. I know that there are plenty of free tools that don’t offer much, therefore you might feel discouraged to try something else, but in Canva’s case you just have to try it and convince yourself. I’ve impressed plenty of people with well-thought, beautiful designs that took less time and effort than everyone assumed, and I did it all with a free tool. All it took for me to become a Canva fan was a similar decision you are facing right now, and I thought to myself “it couldn’t hurt to take a look.”