Canva is a wonderful tool for designing all kinds of things without being a graphic designer. Of course, having a good eye for design helps, but Canva certainly makes it easy to make a big impact allowing anyone to create a plethora of things ranging from social media posts, to presentations, to printed materials for your business and more.
As a brand strategist and designer, I'm always going to recommend working with a professional who can help you develop your brand vision, but if you're not quite there, Canva is great for the DIY route. Below are resources I found really helpful, and a few tips of my own to get you started with Canva.
Canva Tutorials:
Design Tips
Always keep your brand in mind
Select 1- 3 fonts to use consistently
Be intentional about your Color Palette
Create templates and reuse them!
Add stickers or animations to add movement to your posts.
Ideas For Things You Can Design For Your Business
Social Media Posts & Templates
Banners for Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn
Presentations (instead of PowerPoint)
Invoice & Receipts
Product Labels & Tags
Business Cards
Letterhead & Envelope
Flyers & Postcards
Pros & Cons
Pros of Using Canva:
It's super easy to use
They offer a free plan, and even the paid version is quite affordable.
It's easy to share designs with other team members
Lots of stock images (especially in the Pro version)
Lots of templates to choose from
Convenient resizing to nearly fit any social media platform
Cons of Using Canva
It's not as robust as Photoshop or Illustrator which can be quite limiting.
Unless you really make the templates your own, you risk making your materials look like everyone else's who is also using Canva.
The copyright and licensing is a bit of a grey area so it's not ideal for designing anything that you wan to trademark.
Legal Info About How To Use Canva
Without getting into it, I highly recommend you do not design your logo in Canva. The articles below can illuminate why.
With that said, while I would never give up the Adobe Creative Suite (especially Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign), I love Canva for creating quick social media posts!