All of us, at some point of time find ourselves in need of a good design software. There’s always a birthday or Christmas card that needs to be created or a fun party invitation that needs to be sent out with a personalized look. Similarly, in our professional work, there’s always a presentation that needs to be done in a hurry and coming up with creative ideas to make that data look good can start to get mind crushing. Photoshop for me is Greek and Latin and I’m sure that there are many of us who want to be able to design things intuitively without having to go through tutorials or trial and error methods. For people like us, there’s a super cool design tool called Canva.
Design Tool Canva : Amazingly Good
Canva is an amazing design tool that lets you create flyers, presentations, Facebook covers, Kindle eBook covers, Twitter headers, blog graphics, business cards, posters, invitations and more in a few quick steps.
To get started with Canva, you’ll first need to sign up with an email address or your Facebook credentials. You’ll then get a 23 second tour of how to go about creating designs. After that the canvas is yours.
The first step in the process involves choosing what you want to design. Let’s say you want to come up with a Facebook Cover image. Just select the option from the dashboard.
On the far right of the screen, you have the layouts, text, background, uploads, and zoom buttons. You can choose from a variety of layouts on the left panel, but if that’s too static, you can search for images and then drag one from your search results on to the work area. If you want to add your own image, just use the Upload button on the left to add it to the canvas. Not all images are free to use, although there are some free ones. Most of the images, though are available for $1 and you will be billed when you save your work.
After picking up an image you can stretch it out, rotate it, add colors and text. Clicking on a design element will open a pop-up box with various formatting options such as fonts, font sizes, colors, transparency, link, and so on. There are also advanced photo editing tools such as brightness, contrast, saturation, tint, blur, x-process and vignette available. All of this is pretty simple to play around with and you can get the right look and feel by choosing from among these options.
If you want to go completely creative, you can start with a blank canvas and then add images, designs, and backgrounds to create your products. When you’re all done, click Link & Publish to save the image. This will bring up the payment box where you can choose to pay for the number of premium images you picked up, or you could simply buy a pack of 11 images for $10.
You can also share your work with your social media followers and fans and if you like collaborate with them to perfect your designs. Canva’s controls are pretty much drag and drop so if you’re looking for more sophistication such as grids, guides and alignment tools, you may find it lacking. Adding more payment options (other than the standard credit card option) would be useful too!
That said, Canva is not only a great tool for the hopeless designer but it will also come in handy for tireless professionals who want a quick fix solution now and again.
P.S: If you’re a self published author, you might be keen on creating Kindle covers using Canva. This Pinterest Board holds a cool collection, in case you’re interested at taking a look.
Check out Canva and tell us what you think.
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