How to Create Images in Canva for FREE

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What can I design in Canva?

You can design pretty much anything in Canva. The Canva library contains many design elements such as icons, photos, and templates - the combinations are endless! You can easily create custom templates, images, infographics and other visual content including:

• Social media posts
• Optimized Images for web
• Logos
• Posters
• Infographics
• Brochures
• Certificates
• Newsletters
• Invitations
• Business cards
• And much more endless choices!
  

How to use Canva step by step

The great thing about Canva is that anyone can be a graphic designer, even without experience! Getting started is quick and easy.

You can explore and start using Canva templates in a few ways:

• Start by typing keywords in the search bar or you can select from the menus at the top
• By clicking templates at the top

The top menu has several tabs:

• Templates - Browse by document themes
• Explore - Look at Photos, Icons, Print products and Apps
• Learn - This is the design school where you learn how to use Canva

On the right are the links to Home, Recent Designs, Shared with You,  Invite Members and more.

Note: Some features are available only for paid accounts.

Let’s explore Canva!

Go to Templates  then select a blank template.

This is where you design your graphics. This is called the Editor. The Side Panel is where you can find all the things you can click or add to your page.

• Templates – In the templates tab there are thousands of templates you can pick to get you started
• Upload – Here you upload your own photos and videos.
• Photos – Here you can browse millions of photos to download. Type in a keyword like ‘dog’ You can add ‘+” and another keyword like ‘brown’
• Elements - Here you will find illustrations, shapes, animated stickers charts and graphics and so on.
• Videos – Here you find videos you can use.

Click on a Template, then start customizing it. The templates that have a little crown graphic on them are not FREE.

Note: If you select a template that has an image with a Canva watermark on it, you an remove it and upload your own image. 

Click on a text object, and the tool bar will appear at the top. Here you can modify styles, alignment, add effects and position objects. Type in your own text, change font size, color, alignment and spacing. Here are the options on the text tool bar:

Fonts - You can search by category or style. You can select ‘serif’ or ‘script’.

Color - To change color, select an object, then the colored square above. Change to any color you want using the spectrum tool. If you are after a specific color, you can paste a Hex code.

Position Button – Layer and align objects on your page.

Replace Image – Just drag and drop over another.

Undo Action – Just click the undo button if you make a mistake or you want to revert to the previous step.

Animate – Click the Animate in the top tool bar, then select animate style.

In this tutorial we are going to make some the following quick graphics:

1. Blog Graphic
2. Facebook Post Image 
3. Banner or Header Images for a website

1. Create a Blog Graphic

• Log in to your account (Watch the short video to see how easy it is to customize a blog graphic.)
• Click 'Create a Design' button in the top right-hand corner as shown below:
  

• Search using the keyword 'blog', then select 'Blog Graphic' as shown below:
• Click to select a template on the left. In this example we are looking for a 'dog' template. 
• Update the template with your own text and photos as needed.
• Note: (If your template has a Canva watermark, just click on the image and 'Detach Image', upload and replace the image)
• Give your blog image a name. Canva will default to the name ‘untitled’. (It is difficult to recognize the files on your computer that all named 'untitled')
  

• Download the image, by clicking on the download button as shown below. More download options are available by clicking the ••• button in the corner, so look for the option that best fits your needs. Canva offers many file formats including high quality print file formats, PDFs, etc.

Now we have changed the template (which had a paid image associated with it) and made it our own, for free. You got this!

2. Create a Facebook Post Image

• Log in to your account  (Watch this short video to see how easy it is to create a Facebook Post.)
• Click 'Create a Design' button in the top right-hand corner as shown below:
  

• Click to select a template on the left. In this example we selected the 'Hello Monday' template. 
• Customize the template with your own text and images.
• To change the background color, click Background on the top left and select a new background, which can be a plain color or an image. 
• Edit the text, colors and fonts as desired.
• Give your Facebook post a name
• Download image by selecting the PNG format.
  
  

And voila! You have a Facebook post which you can download or publish straight to your Facebook Page by connecting Canva with your social media accounts.

3. Create images for your website

• Login your account Extra: (Watch this short video on creating custom size images in Canva)
• Click the 'Create a design' button in the top right-hand corner, then click select 'custom size'.
  

Typical images for a websites have the following dimensions:

Banner / Header Image

1920px X 630px or 1920px X 1200px (width is more important than height)

Social Media Share Image:

1200px X 630px

Other Website Images:

450px X 450px

600px X 800px

800px X 600px

• Upload then drag and drop your image onto the canvas.
• Rename your image. Naming your file is very important for search engine optimization purposes. If possible, use a keyword when naming your file. For example, I named my file: about-business-coaching so I know that this header image is for the about page, and incorporates an important keyword.
• Save image as jpg - this is very important for websites, as large images will slow down your site, therefore impacting the performance in a negative way.
• Download image by selecting the JPG format.
  

In a similar way, you can create different size images for your website. Just remember to download them as JPGs.

Conclusion

As you can see, Canva is a great tool to create great graphics without having experience in the graphic design field. While graphic designers still play a great role in designing professional logos, brochures and other marketing materials, Canva can be a great free tool for creating social media graphics for a startup with limited budget.  The official Canva site offers many useful  tutorials.

If you still need help creating graphics, building websites and getting found online let us know!