Introduction to the Canva Homepage
Overview
In this training, you’ll get a guided tour of the Canva dashboard so you can confidently navigate your workspace and find exactly what you need. You’ll learn how to locate existing designs, explore templates and brand assets, and understand what each section of the interface is for.
Whether you’re brand new to Canva or just need a refresher, this walkthrough will help you feel more at home in your Canva account.
Canva Training Transcript
Creating & Finding Designs
When you log into your Canva account, it is going to look pretty similar to what you see here and I’m going to start by walking you through the options here on the main Home landing page.
For some of you, the quickest way to find an existing design that you’ve already created in the past may be to use this search bar at the top.
So for example, if I wanted to find the Lead Magnet Icons design I’ve already created in the past, I could search on “lead magnet icon” because I know I included that in the title of my designs and then that shows up here to choose from.
So this is a really quick way to find the specific design you might be looking for.
You will also see that you can navigate through these icons here, which make up Canva’s Visual Worksuite.
So we have Docs… Whiteboards… Presentations… Social Media… Videos… Print Products… Websites… and then you can also click on More in order to find other types of design documents.
It may also include one of your commonly used design sizes at the front of the list here.
Or you can choose to start a new design with custom dimensions.
If you know that you need something with very specific dimensions, you can create a design that has those specific dimensions.
You can also start your design by uploading an existing document or file, for example if you have a PDF or Word document that you want to modify inside of Canva.
Before we talk about this Recent Designs area, you’ll see an area on the left here where you can star folders and designs. Your own starred space will be empty unless you’ve already starred files here.
By clicking the star icon on any of your folders, designs or brand templates, you can add it to the “Your Starred” collection which is available in the left side navigation.
This makes it convenient to find your preferred items without having to search through all your folders and projects. Essentially you’re bookmarking or favouriting items here for quick access.
I’ll link to an additional video in the resources about how to use this area for improving organization in your Canva account.
You’ll also see that you can access all of your recent designs in this area of the homepage, but this is not the best place to go looking for your designs, as you can see how you could spend a lot of time scrolling and searching for a design you created awhile back.
Instead, you’ll want to explore the Projects section to find and organize your designs and images.
Projects
So on that note, let’s turn to your left hand sidebar navigation.
The first option here is Projects, and the Projects area is where you’ll be spending most of your time when you’re looking for your designs, as this is the area of your Canva account where you’ll be able to create an organizational structure.
You’ll be able to create custom folders in this section and you should definitely be utilizing folders in order to properly organize all of your designs and images.
Note that you can only create folders and organize your designs and images in the Projects area… you can’t organize the designs on your home screen, so that’s why I always recommend that you jump right into the Projects section immediately if you’re looking for something you’ve already created.
Templates
When you click on Templates, it’s going to take you directly to Canva’s template library which will look something like this.
You can look for templates in a variety of ways, including using the search field at the top of the page, browsing through the various choices that are presented to you here in the main feed area of the templates library, or by using the options presented to you in the templates navigation on the left hand side.
Brand
Brand is a Canva Pro feature and it enables Canva users to store and manage their branding assets in one centralized location inside of Canva.
This area is where you’ll go to upload your brand’s logos, colours, fonts, photos, graphics and icons, which can then be easily accessed when you’re working in the design editor.
Plus it can also be accessed by any of your team members, which helps ensure that all designs adhere to the brand’s guidelines and maintains a consistent look and feel.
In addition to brand assets, the Brand area also houses your brand templates and various brand controls to ensure that any new designs created by team members adhere to your brand’s guidelines.
Though if you’re an individual business owner, you’ll primarily be using just the brand kit component for the most part.
Knowing how to use the brand kit in Canva is typically the focal point of a LOT of what I teach in Canva and the reason I focus a lot of time on this component is because I believe it is so central to being able to create consistently branded graphics in Canva that look professional and unique to your business.
So you’ll want to ensure that you add your own brand kit components into this area of your Canva account.
Apps
The final section is Apps, and on the Apps landing page, you’ll see all of the various third party apps that Canva integrates with, and this basically just give you access to a variety of content apps, image enhancement apps, and publishing apps.
For example, you might want to be able to integrate your Canva account with Dropbox to have easy access to images you’ve saved in your Dropbox account, for use in your designs in Canva.
You will also find some Recommended Apps already featured here for you.
For example, they have included Content Planner here.
When you click on the link, a calendar will appear and you can use this tool to create posts that can be directly scheduled to many social media platforms. That said, I personally don’t use this scheduling tool myself as I feel that it still requires a bit more polishing on Canva’s part before I will be replacing my existing social media scheduling tools with the content planner.
You can also access the Product Photos app here, which enables you to bulk edit photos to prep your product imagery.
And then below that is mockups.
Canva’s Mockups app is a feature that allows you to create realistic mockups of your designs on various real-life objects, like computer screens or clothing or all kinds of other things.
Trash
Then at the bottom, we have the Trash folder, which will contain any of the designs or images that you have recently deleted.
Other Homepage Features
There aren’t a lot of options up at the top of your workspace but it’s good for you to know what’s here.
There’s the Canva logo, which you can click on anytime if you want to return to the main dashboard.
You’ll find your account settings under the gear icon, including your profile information, your workspace theme, that is whether you want to use Canva light or Canva dark, as well as settings related to login and security, privacy settings, team details, billing and plans, and more.
The bell icon in your Canva workspace is the Notifications feature and it will alert you to updates related to your designs, collaborations, and account activities.
And then finally, if you click on the Profile Photo in the top right corner, that will give you access to any teams you belong to, any accounts you have connected to your Canva login, as well as options like your settings, plans and pricing and various other options. Plus you’ll be able to sign out of all accounts under this area.
Finally, you can access Canva’s help and support features when you click on the purple question mark icon in the lower right portion of your screen.