I recently had a conversation with a designer who was creating a set of new designs in Canva for one of her clients.
She had saved the new designs as brand templates in her own account but couldn’t figure out how to share those brand templates into her client’s account.
The solution is actually very straight forward, but it requires understanding the difference between Canva Brand Templates versus Canva Template Links.
So in this video, let’s talk about what each of these are, when you’ll want to use them, and how to set them up.
Resources Mentioned
- Free Trial of Canva Pro (Affiliate Link)
- Can I move my Canva designs to another account? (Tutorial)
- Canva Lifetime is a Scam (Tutorial)
Transcript
First let’s do a couple of Canva definitions.
What is a Brand Template?
In Canva, a brand template refers to a customizable design layout that incorporates your brand elements such as your logos, your brand colors and fonts, and other visual elements like photos, patterns, graphics and so on.
By using brand templates in Canva, you ensure that all your designs maintain a cohesive visual identity that aligns with your brand guidelines. This consistency helps in reinforcing brand recognition and building a strong brand image across various channels.
Additionally, brand templates can save you time and effort by providing pre-designed layouts that you can easily customize to fit your specific needs.
Plus it also ensures that you or a member of your team will never accidentally overwrite your original design.
What is a Template Link?
Whereas a template link in Canva refers to a shareable link that allows you to share a specific design template with others.
This feature is extremely useful when you want to share a design with someone who doesn’t have access to the Canva account where the design was created, whether that’s a suite of designs you’ve created for a client, or a set of templates you’re selling to your audience.
It’s also the feature you’ll need to use if you want to migrate your designs from one Canva account to another, which is something I’ve talked about in previous videos like “Can I move my Canva designs to another account?” and “Canva Lifetime is a Scam.”
Now that you know what each type of Canva template is, let’s do a quick tutorial on how to set up each of these.
First, let’s look at the steps to follow to create a brand template.
How to Use Canva Brand Templates
First, you’ll open the design that you want to save as a template and then click on the share button in the top right corner.
You may see an option in this area below the purple button that says “Brand Template” and that’s what we’re looking for here, but if you don’t see it listed, you can find it by going to the More section here… and then you should see the Brand Template option, so let’s click on that.
You’ll see that you have the option to publish your design as a brand template, but before you do that, make sure to update the destination folder.
I’m going to select the appropriate folder and then I’ll publish the template.
So now when I open up that destination folder, and click on that design, rather than having it open up automatically as a regular design, it is going to instead give me an option to either use this template, in which case it will make a copy of it … Or I can choose to edit the original template itself.
You can also use this template link to share a link to the brand template with other members of your team. But this is not the same as a general template link to share with Canva users outside of your team.
How to Use Canva Template Links
In order to share a copy of a design as a template for others to access, you’ll want to come up to the share button in the top right hand corner of your screen, and click on that. Then you’re going to click on the option called “More,” and from here you’ll want to click on this option called “template link.”
As it says, anyone with this link can use this design as a template. So you’ll copy this link and that’s what you’ll share with your audience and then when they go to that link, they will see something like this.
It will indicate that a template created by you was shared with them and that they can click on this purple “use template” button if they want to create a copy of it. They will *not* have access to your original design, so they can’t overwrite any portion of the design. They are simply going to be prompted to create a copy of it.
Recommended Steps
So let’s go back to the scenario that opened up this video.
What was the best approach for the designer to share brand templates from her own account to her client’s Pro account?
My recommendation would be:
Step 1: Share the design as a template link so that the client has their own copy of the design.
Step 2: The client should rename it to be easily identifiable and help keep an organized Canva account, and
Step 3: At this point the client could save that design as a brand template in their own account, to ensure it is never overwritten.
