How to Use Canva: An Introduction to Canva

In this comprehensive introduction to Canva, I’m walking you through everything you need to get started, from choosing the right plan and navigating the homepage to setting up your brand kit and customizing templates.

Whether you’re new to Canva or looking to refine your design process, this video covers all the essential features you need to create professional and on-brand graphics.

Resources Mentioned

• Free Trial of Canva Pro (Affiliate Link)

Transcript

Hi there, I’m Brenda Cadman, a Canva Verified Expert, and I’m here to help small business owners like you make the most out of Canva. I know that the platform can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out, so today we’re going to walk through some of the key foundations to get you oriented and using Canva more effectively.

From choosing the right plan that suits your needs, to navigating Canva’s homepage and design editor, setting up your brand kit to keep designs consistent, and finding and customizing templates that make design faster and easier—I’ll guide you through each of these essentials to help you get up and running smoothly.

So let’s get started!

Choose Your Plan

Let’s start by walking through an overview of the differences between Canva’s free account and their Canva Pro account which is a paid service that you can pay for either monthly or annually.

I’m going to assume that you already have a Canva account, but if you don’t, the first thing you’re going to want to do is to set up that account and you would simply go to canva.com and then you would sign up ideally with email.

I don’t usually like to connect my accounts to other accounts in order to log in. I would advise you just set it up with an individual email address and you’ll simply click on here, enter your name and your email address and your password.

Be sure to make note of all that information and then get started.

You’ll start with the free account and you will still be able to do a lot of what I show you in my tutorials and videos with Canva’s free option. However, in the spirit of full transparency, I also regularly highlight features or tools that require a Canva Pro account. For example, features like the Brand Kit or various Magic Studio tools.

So with that in mind, I would highly encourage you to consider taking advantage of a free trial of Canva Pro so that you’re able to take full advantage of all of the features. You can find more information about that at BrendaCadman.com/pro.

So let’s talk about the differences between the two plans, and Canva outlines them quite nicely on their pricing page which you will find at Canva.com/pricing.

The cost you see listed for Canva Pro is going to vary depending on what country and what region you’re in.

I’m not going to go over every single feature here but I do want to highlight for you what I think are the most important features that are available to you regardless of the whether you’re on the free or Pro version of Canva, and I also want to flag for you some of what I consider to be the most significant reasons to upgrade to the paid Canva Pro.

Design & Publishing

Whether you’re on the free or Pro version, you will have access to a wide range of free stock images, videos, audio and fonts.

You’ll also have access to free Canva templates, over 100 different design document types, and the ability create designs with custom dimensions.

And all users have the ability to export their designs in a variety of formats.

What is only available on a Pro or Teams account in terms of design & publishing is:

• Access to Canva’s entire premium stock library, and this includes not just photos but also all sorts of icons & illustrations, video and audio. I know that a lot of the illustrations I have used in social media designs and various worksheets have all been part of that premium library.
• It indicates here that you can export designs as PDF, JPG and PNG files in both the free and paid plans, but what it doesn’t indicate here that is a key differentiator is that you can only download designs with a transparent background in the paid version.
• Also only on a paid account is the ability to save your designs as templates… and to access the entirety of Canva’s template library. You do have access to a wide variety of templates on the free plan, but significantly more on Pro, which will give you far more flexibility in terms of designing great looking content in Canva.
• You’ll have access to basic design insights in Canva’s free plan, which includes the ability to see how many people have viewed your design, but only Pro users will be able to access advanced design insights like the number of unique views and clicks.
• Plus you can only access sound effects on a Canva Pro account.

AI Tools

Under AI-powered design tools, you have access to a number of the features on both free and paid plans, though there are usage limitations that come with the free subscription.

However you’ll see here that quite a few of the Magic Studio features are only available on Canva Pro and Teams accounts, such as Magic Eraser, Magic Morph, Magic Grab, Magic Expand, and Magic Animate.

Additionally, the ability to resize a design into new dimensions included in “Resize & Magic Switch” is only available on a Pro or Teams account. You would use this if you wanted to quickly repurpose a design into multiple different dimensions. For example, if you wanted to take an Instagram post design and resize it for an Instagram Story or a Pinterest Pin or another social channel’s specific size requirements.

The resizing feature is one of the top features that had me willing to upgrade my account so long ago.

And if you want to be able to access Canva’s photo and video background remover, that is also only on a Pro account.

Workplace Tools

We’ll skip over Workplace tools as this is just highlighting the different document types that Canva provides, and you will be able to access all design types regardless of the plan you’re on.

Collaboration

Under Collaboration, you’ll see that you have access to a variety of collaboration tools on both the free and paid plans.

Brand Management & Controls

The primary thing to note under brand management is that brand controls, templates and brand kits are only available on Pro and Teams accounts.

It says you have access to 1 brand kit here under the free plan, but the only feature you’ll have access to is the ability to add 3 colors in the colour palette area. You won’t be able to add any additional colours or to access any of the other core features of the brand kit.

Whereas on a Pro account, you can add up to 1000 complete brand kits.

The ability to setup and use the Canva brand kit feature is an *enormous* reason why I believe the Pro account is so important for business owners, and it’s probably one of the biggest reasons why folks using Canva to support a small business will end up choosing to upgrade from the free Canva plan to Canva Pro.

Team Management & Permissions

We’ll skip right over Team management and permissions as that’s not going to apply to the Pro account, only to a Teams account.

Apps & Integrations

You’ll be able to access the Apps marketplace regardless of which plan you’re on.

Storage & Organization

And then we have Storage and Organization.

On a free plan, you will only have 5 GB of storage space for your designs and media while Pro and Teams accounts allow for up to 1 TB of storage.

Depending on how much you use Canva, this may not be an issue. But if you do upload a lot of images or video, you may find yourself running into that storage limitation.

There is currently no feature available to indicate how much storage space you have left, but you should receive an alert message if you do hit that maximum allotment. Also note that media in the trash folder does not count towards your storage totals at this time.

In terms of creating custom folders, you can create an unlimited number of folders on all plans, though the number of items you can store in a given folder does differ. While it’s not indicated here, at last update, free users could store a maximum of 200 items in a folder whereas Pro users could store up to 1000 designs or images in a folder.

And finally, it has indicated Media tagging here, which is only available on the paid plan, but you can actually tag not just images and videos with keywords for easier searching, but also your designs.

Support

Then under Support, Pro plans will have access to support ticket and live chat, whereas free plans will only have access to Canva’s AI assistant and chatbot for support.

Non-Profit & Education

The last thing I want to highlight about the free versus pro account is that you might actually be eligible for a free Canva Pro account.

Canva Pro is available for free to nonprofits and K-12 educational organizations.

You’ll find that there are dedicated pages with more information for both of those categories, under the Plans and pricing option in the menu at the top of the page here.

So if you are an educator or part of a non-profit organization, check out the eligibility requirements and the process for applying for a free Canva account.

Navigating the Canva Homepage

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.

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.

Additional Homepage Navigation Notes

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.

Using the Canva Design Editor

Now that we’ve taken a tour of the homepage, it’s time to head over to Canva’s design editor!

General Overview of the Canva Editor Layout

Let’s start with a quick overview of the interface, and you’ll see that Canva’s design editor has four distinct areas that serve specific functions.

The Design Pages area serves as your primary workspace. Here, you interact directly with your design, making changes, arranging elements, and navigating between different pages or slides. It’s the area where you’ll spend the most time, actively creating your design.

Supporting this is the Object Panel, located on the left-hand side of the screen. This panel gives you easy access to all the tools and elements needed to enhance your design.

As you work, the Floating Toolbar will appear whenever you select an element within your design. This toolbar provides quick, contextual editing options that keeps your essential design features within easy reach.

And then at the top of the interface is the Menu Bar, which offers overarching controls for navigating your project and accessing key features. This area lets you manage project settings, such as resizing designs, switching modes, or sharing your work with others.

Working with Canva Design Pages

Every design will open up with a single design page and then you can easily add pages by clicking on the add page button at the bottom and it will then automatically add another page to the end of the design.  Or you can add a page in between existing pages by using this icon here at the top of the page.

You can duplicate a page design by clicking on this icon and you can move pages up or down in the design file by using these two arrow icons.

And then if I want to delete a page, I will simply click on this trash icon to get rid of the page all together.

If I want to change the background colour of a page, I’ll select the design page and then you’ll see that floating toolbar appear that I mentioned in the overview. The toolbar will only provide editing options that are available for the specific component that I’ve selected, so to change the background colour, I’ll select the colour picker and choose a different page colour.

I can choose from one of the default colour options, including solid colours or gradients. Or I can choose a custom colour, and again, I can specify a solid colour or I can create a custom gradient.

You can also give each page a title that describes the page, and then when you download a design that has multiple pages, rather than labelling the pages with numbers, for example, 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, etc., it will instead label the pages with the description that you have set for the title.

You can also add comments to a page in your design by clicking on this comment icon here. This can be very helpful if you are collaborating on a design with somebody else and you want to be able to leave comments or questions for each other about the progress of a design.

You can add notes by clicking on the notes option here and any notes you add in this area will be displayed in presenter view if you present a design in Canva.

And then down at the bottom section here, you can access the zoom settings, so if you wanted to zoom in closer to a design, you can zoom in… and you can zoom back out.

You also have different ways to view and navigate through your pages or slides, including Thumbnail View, Scroll View, and Grid View. Each of these views offers a unique way to interact with your design, particularly when working with multi-page documents or presentations.

The Thumbnail View displays small previews or thumbnails of each page or slide along the bottom of the design editor. It allows you to quickly navigate between pages and see a condensed version of your design. This is helpful for reviewing the overall flow of your document or your presentation.

In Scroll View mode, which tends to be the default display for many design types, all pages are shown in a continuous vertical scroll, one after the other. It’s what I’ve been showing you so far in this video, and it makes it easy to work on multiple pages without switching between them, so you can seamlessly move up and down through your design. It’s especially useful when working on projects that require consistent design elements across multiple pages.

Then there’s the Grid view option, which arranges all pages into a grid format, displaying all pages as thumbnails in one overview. It’s an efficient way to get a bird’s-eye view of your entire design at once, which helps in reviewing the structure and overall consistency of your project. And it also enables you to easily move pages around, placing them exactly where you want them.

Each view offers flexibility depending on how you want to navigate and interact with your multi-page designs.

Object Panel

So let’s move on to the object panel and the various options that are available for creating content in the design editor.

Design

Templates

At the top here, you’ll see your most recently used templates, so this can be very handy if you have a particular template that you like to re-use regularly as a starting point.

You can also search for templates here in the search bar.

Styles

And then you have Canva’s “styles” tool, which you can use to have Canva automatically change the colours and fonts used in a design.

You can shuffle through your brand colours and change the look of a design without clicking on each element and changing the colours manually.

However, I find that the way Canva applies your colour palette or fonts often won’t necessarily be in line with your consistent brand guidelines, so while this is a neat tool, I do prefer to teach business owners how to customize a template and make design decisions for their colours and fonts that will ensure their designs are consistent and cohesive.

Elements

Next in the list is elements, and it includes a variety of elements that are essentially the building blocks of creating designs inside of Canva, including

• Shapes, which also includes line options
• Graphics
• Canva’s AI image generator
• Tables
• Photos
• Video
• Audio
• Charts
• Stickers
• Frames
• Grids
• Mockups
• And Collections

Then when you are working with a design that contains combinations of these various elements, anytime you select a component of your design, your floating toolbar will appear with various ways to interact with and edit your chosen element.

Text

Next up is text and your brand fonts will appear at the top and then there are a bunch of font combinations that you can also select from. These are just kind of like text templates. They’ve already taken text and organized it into a predesigned template that you can modify from.

As with elements, anytime you select a text component in your design, the floating toolbar will appear with text specific editing options.

Brand

If you have a Canva Pro or Teams account, you’ll be able to use this Brand area, which enables you to access the contents of your brand kits, including your logos, colours, fonts, photos, graphics and any brand icons.

So this makes it extremely easy to access all of your brand elements so that you create consistently on brand marketing materials for your business.

Uploads

Next is Uploads. You can upload images here and you can also upload your videos here.

However, I would suggest that you only use Uploads as a temporary holding location for images, as you’ll be better off creating a custom folder system for your designs and images… and I’ll show you where to access that in the editor in a minute.

Draw

The “Draw” tool enables you to create freehand drawings and sketches directly within the Canva design editor, so this is a great option if you want to create custom illustrations or icons or other graphical elements to incorporate into your designs.

Projects

In the Projects area, you’ll be able to access from the design editor any custom folders you’ve created, including any of the images and designs contained within those folders.

Apps

And then we’ve got the Apps tab and this is where you’ll find access to a variety of Canva’s other apps and tools.

Menu Bar

To wrap up, let’s look at a few other features to be aware of in your design layout.

Anytime you want to go back to the Canva homepage, you can click here on this little hamburger menu — that will give you an option to return home or to one of the other primary areas of your Canva dashboard.

Clicking on “File” will tell you more information about your design.

As I mentioned at the outset of this video, Canva tends to update its platform fairly often, so the exact options you see under File may change, but as of this recording, the options include:

The file’s name, document type, owner and size.

You can create a new design or import files.

You can also access the document’s settings, including rulers and guides, margins, print bleed and more.

Canva’s Design Accessibility Tool is a feature that helps ensure your designs are accessible to a broader audience, particularly those with visual impairments or disabilities. These tools help creators design with inclusivity in mind, making your content more accessible to all users.

You can save your design here, although it does tend to save pretty frequently on its own.

You can also move the design to a folder or make a copy, or download the file.

Version History is a feature that is available on Canva Pro accounts. With Version History, you can view and restore older versions of your design, so that can definitely come in handy if you’ve made a variety of changes in a design and want to go back to a previous version of it.

You can move the design directly to the trash if you decide you no longer need it.

And you can also access the Find and replace text feature from the File menu, or open the design in Canva’s desktop app version.

Finally, you can suggest an improvement to Canva.

Resize gives you access to Canva’s Resize and Magic Switch features, which are Canva Pro features. If you have Canva Pro, you’ll have the ability here to resize an existing design into other dimensions.

Next to that is the sharing permission settings, which indicates what level of access you have to a design.

The arrows here enable you to undo or redo changes.

This just gives you the status of whether your updates have been saved.

Over here is the name of the design file. You can rename it anytime by clicking on it here and just retyping it in.

You’re able to control who has access to the design here.

The Insights feature provides performance metrics and data about your designs, giving you an overview of how your content is being received or interacted with. It is a Canva Pro feature and is particularly useful for tracking engagement on shared or published designs.

Next to that you can see the comments on a design.

The option next to comments will vary. On this design you can see that you have an option to publish the design as a brand template, which is a Canva Pro feature.

But on presentation sized designs, you will instead see a Present option.

When you click on “Present,” you can choose from different presentation modes, including Present full screen, Presenter view, and Present and record.

You will find all options for downloading and sharing the design under this Share button.

If you simply want to download your design, you can skip all the rest of of these options and click directly on the “Download” option here, and that will open up the download settings.

How to Download

You will have different download options available to you, depending on the file type that you select.

If you choose a PNG file, you will see these options, though most of these are only features that you can take advantage of if you are on a Canva Pro account, which is indicated by this crown icon.

Pro features for downloading include:

• The ability to download your design at a different size, for example, if you wanted to download your design at 2 times the design size, you can do that automatically here, you don’t have to actually resize your design to be twice as big, you can use this feature. And that will come in handy, for example with cover images on social media if you’re finding that the version you’re uploading is a bit pixelated and if you want a larger version of it to try to improve the clarity of the image.
• Canva Pro accounts can also download images with a transparent background
• And Pro accounts can also compress files by using this option here – that results in a lower quality version but will also be a smaller file size as well.
• Also, Canva has introduced an option to limit the downloaded file size when you’re downloading a single page of a design as an image.

And regardless of file type, if you have multiple pages in your design, you’ll be given an option here to select the pages you want to download, and you can choose specific pages to download, or you can stay with the default of “All pages”.

The download option for JPGs include size and quality, again both Pro options.

And again it offers the limit file size option.

If you are saving your design as an image, you will want to download either a JPG or a PNG. JPG files will usually be significantly smaller than PNG files.

PDF Standard and PDF print won’t offer size or quality options, but you will find an option to include crop marks and bleed on PDF print.

Additionally, if you choose either PDF standard or print, you will have an option to flatten the PDF so that all of the components in the PDF are flattened into a single image. This can be desirable if your printer asks for a flattened file, or if you want to ensure that recipients cannot extract any of the images or elements contained in your PDF design.

You will typically save a document as a PDF standard if you are sharing a slide deck, or a workbook or checklist, or any sort of document that you want your audience to be able to view on screen as a PDF. PDF files will also preserve any hyperlinks you’ve added to your design, whereas image files will NOT preserve linked text or elements.

SVG is a Canva Pro option only, and you’d use this option if you were trying to export a design to a vector format.

If the design you’re working with is a presentation, you will also see this Powerpoint format appear as a download option.

And then Video and GIF are the options you’ll be looking at if you plan on saving a design as a video or an animated design.

How to Share

If you’re looking to share the design, not download it, you have a variety of options available to you.

You can choose to share the design with individuals or teams here.

And you can adjust the link sharing permissions here to only you, or your team, or to anyone who has the link.

If I change the settings to anyone who has the link, I can then adjust whether the link will allow people to be able to edit the design or just view  the design.

Alternately, if I simply want to provide a “view only” link to this design, I could just click on this “Public view link” option in the row below the button.

If you want to print your design through Canva, you would choose this option and then continue on through the steps it provides you.

If you’re on a Pro account, you can publish the design as a brand template here.

And then you’ll see all options here, including all the various ways you can share your design, including as a template link, a website, or to share it to a variety of your social media accounts.

Organizing in Canva

I know that getting organized in Canva is a big source of stress for a lot of Canva users, and that it doesn’t feel intuitive for many of you.

In fact, a lot of folks don’t even realize that you can get organized in Canva!

You’re in luck, because it is my favourite thing on the planet to talk about. In addition to being a Canva Verified Expert, I’m also a former professional organizer who specialized in organizing paper and filing systems, so this is my sweet spot.

I don’t want you to just be relying on using the Recent Designs list on your Canva homepage.

While it might feel manageable with just a handful of designs, if you suddenly had hundreds of designs to sort through, perhaps certain designs with multiple versions, then it will get very difficult, very quickly to find what you’re looking for.

Folders & Subfolders

If you’ve never created folders before in your Canva account, you can do so by using the “Add New” button in the top right corner.

Now if you’re new to Canva, it’s the perfect time to set up your system before you get to the point of feeling overwhelmed by all of your designs and images.

And if you’re already a veteran user of Canva, you may be feeling like it’s already out of control but I promise that you can still create a system and get things back on track. It’s never too late.

At the end of the day, you’re going to want to create folders that make sense for you, and ultimately the most important thing is that you have a home for everything and then stick to using that system consistently once it’s working for you.

For example, maybe you’ll have a folder for your Social Media graphics you’ve created, and that folder might be broken down into various subfolders for each social platform like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.

I also definitely want to encourage you to create a custom folder system to organize your images as well, so one of your custom folders may be called Photos, and then broken down into categories that make sense for you.

For example, you could have a styled stock photo folder that is broken down by source website, and then further broken down into subfolders by subject matter or colour palette.

Whatever works best for you to intuitively browse and find it in the future when you need a particular image.

The Uploads Folder

A lot of people don’t realize that you do not have to store all of your images in the Uploads folder, and to be honest, I would strongly advise against doing that because it just becomes a bottomless pit of images that makes it practically impossible to find what you’re looking for over time.

I do Organization VIP Days and I have seen Canva uploads folders with so many images in them that the account holder had re-uploaded the same image half a dozen times because they couldn’t find it any of the other times they’d uploaded it.

I’m going to encourage you to think about your Uploads folder like the in-tray on a physical office desk. Use it as a temporary holding place, and once you’ve used an image, file it away into an images folder system.

And then when you’re working on a design in the Canva design editor, you can access your folders through the Projects tab in your left hand editor navigation, and you’ll be able to much more easily find the specific image you’re looking for, without wasting a ton of time.

File Naming

Also, I would encourage you to be mindful of how you are naming your designs.

You want to name your designs consistently, ensuring that the design name is descriptive and that it includes any keywords you might search to find the design, and that’s because while having an organized folder system is really important, one of the fastest ways to find a specific design is to use the search field at the top of your page.

That said, Canva has made searching even easier for you now with the introduction of the ability to search for keywords that appear not just in the name of your file name, but also any keywords that appear in the design itself.

Canva Organization Roadmap

If organization is something you are particularly interested in, I have a free resource that you’ll want to grab.

The Canva Organization Roadmap is a quick 5-minute video and worksheet that will walk you through a 5-step framework to tackle your own Canva clutter.

the Canva Brand Kit

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.

Now I am making a bit of an assumption here that you already have some sort of visual branding in place and you’re in a position where you simply need to carry that into Canva so you can utilize it across your marketing materials… and I’m going to talk about what components you’ll need to add into Canva and how to do that.

That said, if you don’t already have some sort of visual branding set up, I’ll also touch on a few resources in Canva to help you create your visual brand assets, if you’re not in a position to hire a graphic designer at this time.

What is a Brand Kit?

In Canva’s words, a brand kit is a “short, easily digestible guide to your brand’s visual identity”.

It assigns a visual identity to your business, which makes it more easily recognizable, and the reason that’s important is because a brand must be recognizable in order to develop loyalty and build trust.

A brand kit is a foundational step towards building that loyalty and trust, such that people come to trust you enough to want to do business with you.

6 Elements of a Brand Style Guide

So in a nutshell, there are 6 elements of a brand style guide.

First is your Brand Voice, which is your style of communication. I’s the way you talk to your customers, so for example, the types of words and phrases you use or avoid, the tone you use, and so on; for example, my own brand voice is always straightforward, helpful, hopeful and positive and it is never ever snarky or negative.

Next is your Brand Story, which would include your business’s mission, vision, audience, personality, values, and so on.

And then we get into the more visual elements including your Logo, your Colour Palette, your Typography and your Imagery.

For the longest time, Canva’s brand kit feature only incorporated 3 of these components, but in 2023 they updated the brand kit with a variety of new ingredients to accommodate your brand imagery.

So let’s look at each of these brand kit components.

Your Logo

You’ll want to make sure that you upload your logo as well as any variations of it.

For example if you have it in both a vertical and horizontal orientation, a reverse logo, any icon elements or monograms or illustrative components.

I don’t usually like to use my full logo on my social graphics, but for those I will use just the B icon.

Now, if you are new to business, some of you may have started using Canva to begin with because you want to be able to use it to create a logo.

I truly believe that once you are ready to take the next step with your branding, it’s very worthwhile to invest in hiring a graphic designer or branding specialist to help you.

But I know that not all businesses are ready to take that step right out of the gate.

So, you can use Canva if you want to create a logo to market yourself, but it’s important to understand some of the limitations when you’re doing that.

Logo Limitations

I want to draw your attention in particular to this area on one of Canva’s licensing pages regarding creating logos that you can register as a trademark, and it says:

“In creating a unique logo in Canva from scratch, you can use basic lines and shapes from our Free library. You can also use all of our fonts.

However, you can’t use stock content (e.g. photos and graphics) as we only give you a non-exclusive license to this. Other Canva users are free to use the same content which means that using stock content for your logos isn’t suitable for use in a trademark. Elements in a logo need to be exclusive to you.”

In other words, if you want to have a logo that you can officially register as a trademark, you can’t use the icons or illustrations that you find in Canva’s elements library, but you *can* use fonts and basic shapes and lines.

Or, if you have a graphic that has been custom created for you to create your logo, then you can absolutely upload that into Canva as well and that would also be trademarkable.

Alternately, if you’re just starting out and you’re not worried about having exclusive rights and if you don’t have the time or budget to design a unique logo, using one of Canva’s logo templates can definitely be a simple way to create some basic branding to market yourself… but it’s important to understand that you won’t be able to trademark it.

Creating a Logo

So let’s assume that you do want to create a logo in Canva.

If you go to the Templates area of Canva and search for logo templates, you will find quite a lot of them to use as a starting point.

But ultimately, you’ll find a template that you like, and then customize the contents of the design to fit your own name and desired branding.

So for example, something like this logo template would be a very simple one to customize the text and font if you just wanted to have a personal brand logo consisting of stylized initials plus your name.

Or if you wanted something with a more illustrative component, you’ll likely be able to find a starting point as well.

Transparent Background

Once you have your logo ready to upload into Canva, make sure that the version you’re adding has a transparent background so it looks more seamless on your designs in Canva.

You can see a logo here on the left that does not have a transparent background, it has a white box behind it and that’s because it was uploaded as a JPG file.

And then the one on the right side has a transparent background and it blends more seamlessly into the background.

So if you do create your logo in Canva, make sure to download it with a transparent background, and as I noted when I talked about the differences between Free and Pro plans, you’ll need the Pro account to be able to download your logo with a transparent background.

When you have your logos ready to upload, you can do that in this Logos area of your brand kit, but a reminder that the brand kit is a Canva Pro or Teams feature only, so if you’re on a free subscription, you won’t have access to this area.

At the end of the day, you want to make sure you always have all of your logo versions easily at hand, no need to hunt for the right version or to waste time… it’s there waiting for you when you need it.

Your Colour Palette

You’ll also want to set up your brand’s colour palette, and then it’s going to be really important moving forward that you stick to just using your brand colours.

I know that some of you may feel that is stifling your creativity but in reality, it reduces confusion and overwhelm, not just for you (because you don’t have to make extra choices about what colours to use, you can just stick with your set brand palette), but also for your audience.

If you stick to your brand palette, it’s going to create a sense of cohesiveness across all of your graphics, it’ll feel less visually cluttered, and it’ll result in much less brand confusion for those who follow you.

And again, if you don’t yet have a brand kit and if you’re not in a position to hire a graphic designer or brand designer, Canva has options for you.

Try searching in Canva’s template library for a brand board template and you’ll get lots of results to use as inspiration for your own brand colors.

And then once you have your brand colour values ready to add, you’ll be able to add those to your brand kit in this Colours area, and you’ll see how I’ve added a very specific 6 character colour hex value for each colour, to ensure I always use my precise colour values and not just an approximation.

Your Brand Fonts

Next up is your typography or font choices.

You should be using a consistent set of fonts not only in your Canva designs but also on your website and any other marketing materials that you use.

And if we go back to those brand board template results I just showed you regarding colours, they also include suggested fonts, so this might be helpful for you as well.

For example, here’s one of the brand board templates and you can see that it has included suggested heading, subheading and body copy fonts.

Your brand fonts will need to have a visual hierarchy set up for them, so for example, you should have one font treatment for your headings, another for your subheadings, another for body copy, and so on.

And with the 2023 updates to the brand kit, you can also now set a wider selection of font styles, including title, subtitle, section header, quote and caption.

I still strongly advise only having a maximum of 3 fonts in use in your designs, but for example your titles might be a different sizing than your headings, while your captions might be the same font your body copy but smaller and always in italics.

The specifics of your font formatting will depend on your unique brand kit.

Once you’ve established your fonts and font hierarchy, you can add that into your Canva brand kit, but this is where you’ll run into limitations if you aren’t on a Pro account, which I talked about earlier in the training.

Unfortunately on the free account, in addition to not being able to access the brand kit feature, you’re also not able to upload fonts, which becomes problematic if your brand fonts aren’t included in the free fonts that Canva provides. So there’s another incentive to give the Pro subscription a try.

If you have a set of brand fonts, you can give yourself permission to ignore all of those beautiful fonts that you may have collected in the past, or that you may be seeing across the social channels of other businesses.

But as pretty as all those fonts may be… if they aren’t part of your brand fonts, you should NOT be using them in your graphics and marketing materials if you want to create consistently on-brand images.

Your Brand Imagery

The final piece of your Canva brand kit is your brand imagery, and Canva now enables you to add brand photos, graphics and icons into your brand kit as well.

Brand Photos is fairly self-explanatory, but a few examples may include photos from brand photo shoots, your head shots or even styled stock imagery that you regularly use for your designing.

Then we have Brand Graphics, which you may or may not have. Those could include patterns, textures and illustrations that you use as part of your branding and design.

And finally Brand Icons, again which you may or may not have.

Once you have all of your brand kit elements in place in your Canva account, you’ll want to consistently use them on all of your future social graphics and marketing materials and by doing so, it makes using Canva so much easier and more efficient to create new graphics because you will already have a guide of what to use and what not to use.

Using Canva Templates

Now let’s turn to using Canva’s templates.

You’ve probably seen other business owners creating all sorts of beautiful designs in Canva, whether it’s social media graphics or e-books or workbooks or whatever it is.

You may have had the experience of opening up a new design in Canva and trying to create all of those things yourself and found it feeling next to impossible to do.

Or everything you create looks like cookie-cutter templates.

They’re definitely not the beautiful, branded images and designs you want to create. You know, like the ones your favourite influencer has, that you badly want for your own business.

As a small business owner, you’re likely in a position where you need to create at least some, if not all, of your social graphics and online marketing designs.

Or, if you’re a course creator, you likely already know that you need to create a wide variety of course materials.

But you’re likely wasting too much time inside Canva trying to create your social media images and lead magnets, when you’d rather be promoting your business or digital course.

So I want to invite you to shift your mindset about how you approach Canva.

Please take the pressure off of yourself.

You do NOT have to design from scratch.

I officially give you permission to never have to create a design from scratch again.

No more staring at a blank Canva design editor page.

Use templates. Templates are your best friend, and you have so many of them out there to choose from.

There is zero judgment if you don’t create from scratch… in fact, it’s often the very best decision you could make in terms of your Canva time.

So why is a template so helpful?

Reduced Frustration

First, they can save a TON of frustration. If design isn’t your zone of genius, having to create from scratch may leave you wanting to tear your hair out, burst into tears, or throw your computer out the window. It’s how I feel if I have to do my own accounting… which is why I haven’t done my own accounting in many, many years.

Save Time

Next, it saves SO much time – otherwise you could spend hours creating a design… back to that “how much is your time worth” question; using a template frees you up to work on the roles and tasks in your business that make you money and that fall within your zone of genius.

More Professional

It often results in creating a more professional looking design – because it is designed by a professional designer who understands layout, balance, spacing, and so on. And I know you’re looking to create content in Canva that looks less DIY and more professional, so this can be a massive shortcut to achieving that goal.

Design Inspiration

And finally, templates can also provide you with plenty of inspiration for how to use Canva in ways you hadn’t previously thought of. For example you may see elements combined in ways you wouldn’t have thought to do yourself.

Categories of Templates

I like to break templates down into 2 categories.

First you have Canva’s own template from their template library, many of which are free regardless of whether you’re on a free or pro plan.

But an increasingly popular option is to purchase a template pack or membership from one of the growing number of template shops out there.

In those third party template shops, a lot of wonderful designers have done the heavy lifting for you in terms of designing templates for the kinds of graphics and documents that you may be wanting to create, so that you don’t have to spend hours designing that perfect e-guide layout or whatever it is you’re trying to create.

While this is a paid option, whereas the templates Canva provides are included in your Canva subscription cost, ultimately it can often be a much more effective solution if you’re not finding quite what you need in Canva’s template library.

How to Find Templates in Canva

But assuming you want to stick with Canva’s own template library, let’s take a super quick look at how you can find templates that fit your needs.

When you’re on your main Canva homepage, you will see a Templates option here in the left hand navigation.

And when you click on “Templates” you will open up a template library that looks something like this.

So let’s do a search for an Instagram Post template… and now it’s going to give me some results.

If I wanted to just create a blank instagram post design, I could click on this option with the plus sign, but if you’re in the templates library, it’s more likely that you’re looking for a pre-designed template.

You’ll see an option at the top of the results page called “all filters.”

When I select that filter option, it will pop up a variety of filters that you can use to narrow down your template results.

I’ve already selected the category, so now I might want to significantly narrow the options by choosing the Portrait format size to only show me Instagram post templates in the new, taller sizing.

Then I could narrow results further to only those tagged as “Elegant.”

And then I’ll choose to apply those filters.

From here, I could browse the results until I find what I want to use, or I could go back to filters and further narrow the results.

What’s great is that once you find a design that you like, you can click on that template to see more details about it, and when you do, you’re going to be able to not only choose to customize that template, but you can also see who the template creator is. Then,  by clicking on their name, you can see all templates in Canva that have been created by that creator.

This way, if you like the design style that a particular creator has, you can likely find more designs in that same style by clicking on their creator name.

Customizing Canva Templates

Let’s talk about what it looks like when you *customize* templates for your own branding.

It’s important to understand that not all templates will work for every brand, and part of the fun of using Canva is the experimenting and playing and figuring out what feels like a fit for your brand, but you need to ensure you choose a template design that is at least generally in line with the aesthetic of your branding.

For example, a template like this is never going to be one that I choose to start with because I don’t use shapes like this in my branding.

To make it usable for my visual brand, I’d need to delete all of the shapes and then I’m not left with much of a design, so I might as well choose something else to start with.

Similarly, I wouldn’t start with a template like this, because while it’s not using any funky shapes in it, it’s meant to work with a dark, bold background, which is also not consistent with my visual brand.

I could still customize this and end up with something that looked professional, but if you choose something that has a very different aesthetic to begin with than your own visual brand, it’s easy to end up losing the look and feel that you were attracted to in the first place.

So when you are looking for a template for your marketing materials, take some care to choose something that already has the general look and feel of a design that would work well with your established visual branding.

So I might start with a template like this from Canva’s template library, and then by removing elements I don’t need, replacing the background image, updating the text colours and formatting, and adding my own visual assets like my logo and my pattern overlay… I can turn it into this.

Steps to Customize

In a nutshell then, whether you are creating a social graphic for Instagram or another social platform, a lead magnet to build your email list, a workbook for a digital course, or something else, the process you follow when customizing your Canva templates will be the same.

First, find an appropriate template to start with, or you can design from scratch if you’re so inclined.

Then, update the template with your logo, your brand colours and fonts, and swap out any images to reflect your own brand imagery. This will be made much easier by using the Canva Brand Kit feature.

And then step 3 is to modify the actual text content of the design to reflect your own content.

Customization Inspiration

Let’s wrap up with a bit of inspiration about how the same Canva template could be customized for different brands.

First, these are templates for a few different social graphics… and then here are those templates customized for a brand.

Here is an e-book template example… and then here are a couple of customized examples.

Now over to a workbook template, so here’s the before, the original template, and after.

Here’s how a checklist template could be customized.

And here are a couple examples of how you could customize a slide deck template, which you could use as a starting point for webinar slides or course lessons.

So here’s the original template, and here’s what a customization could look like.

Finally, here is a set of customized promotional graphic templates, so the before and some after examples.

At the end of the day, the key here is to use your brand kit in Canva and to make customization choices that are always consistent with your established visual branding.

Wrap Up

And that’s it for this video!

I hope you’re feeling more confident about navigating the Canva platform and using its tools, from setting up your brand kit to organizing designs and customizing templates to match your brand.

Remember, Canva is here to make design accessible and fun—so whether you’re creating your first graphic or building a library of branded assets, take it one step at a time, and let yourself experiment.

And if you want more Canva tips, be sure to subscribe to this channel.