I think I'm preaching to the choir when I say Canva is hands-down one of the best pieces of software for small business owners. It's made creating quality content a heck of a lot easier, and more accessible for everyone.
Even as a graphic designer with the full Adobe Suite at my disposal, I still use Canva on a daily basis because you really can't go past it's simplicity and that huge built-in library of assets and elements available at your fingertips.
There's a lot to love about the platform, and I could harp on for days about all the features I love, but today I'm going to give you five that knock my socks off - and hopefully yours too!
Without further adieu, five of my favourite Canva features are:
Element Search - I'm talking searching by Style, Author & Collection
App Connect - Especially Google Drive & Google Photos
Element Animations - Including the new animate on a pathway
Embed Design - Like resizing, only cooler
The Brand Hub - The SVG icon part gets me good
Let me show you...
1. CANVA ELEMENT SEARCH
One of the coolest things about Canva is the built-in library of endless elements and graphics of just about everything!!
What's even cooler though, is the ability to search for elements by style, author and collection.
So, say you find a graphic you like and you want more of it. Often Canva will give you the "Magic Recommendations" option, but did you know you can click on the three dots next to an element to search for more elements of the same style, more elements by the same author, and in some cases more elements from the same collection.
Did I mention too, once you find elements you like, if you want to be able to easily find them again you can save them to a folder?
Watch this...
2. APP CONNECT
Uploading photos and brand assets to Canva got 100000x times easier when they introduced the ability to connect third-party apps, especially Google Drive and Google Photos.
I use Google Drive to share files with my clients, so being able to import these files through the app, rather than having to download them to my computer then upload to Canva, is a major time and space saver!
And the number of apps you can connect with is insane too. Google Drive is only the tip of the iceberg.
See how easy this is...
3. ELEMENT ANIMATIONS
Earlier this year Canva released a heap of new features, one of them - Magic Animations - caught my eye. If you're wanting to turn your graphics into videos, Canva's animations are a quick and easy way to do that. With the Magic Animator you can go beyond the built-in "Stomp" "Fade" and "Scrapbook" type animations, and create your own custom path for the element to move along.
A bit like so....
4. EMBED DESIGN
Embed design is like is "re-size" and "copy-paste" had a baby. With embed you can drop an existing design into a another existing design. Regardless of the difference in size between the designs, the embed will auto-adjust to the new canvas size (some tweaking may be required, but it's usually not much). Embed design is a quick and easy way to re-purpose content for different platforms, or combine designs into one document.
Watch this...
5. BRAND HUB
Last, but not least, the brand hub! Previously you could load your logos, colour palette and fonts into Canva. Now you can load SVG icons, photos, graphics (which I use for custom background images) too. The SVG icons part is particularly cool because with SVG's you change their colours, so you only need to load in one version of each of your custom icons (if you have them) and use the colour change tool within Canva to make them the brand colour of your choice.
Check it out....
THAT'S ALL FOLKS.... ALMOST
With any luck you're now chomping at the bit to jump onto Canva and test at least one or two of these features out!
Lastly, if you want to know more and get a full insiders run-through on all the epic-ness that is Canva, I'm offering 1:1 tutorials. Together we can set up your brand kit, develop some templates, and I can show you best practice design techniques and time-saving tips to have you content-creating with ease. Sound like a bit of you?
With good vibes,