Canva Cookbook E-Book

Barbara Tulissi

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 259

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Drawing from her expertise in digital design, Barbara Tulissi will guide you through Canva's user-friendly platform, showcasing how to create stunning visuals and transform your basic Canva knowledge into professional-level design skills.
The Canva Cookbook starts with a quick overview of Canva, guiding you through its main features and ensuring you're set up for success, before focusing on creating a brand. You will do this through workbook-like questions and activities, helping you understand your brand's vision, values, and voice. After that, each chapter focuses on specific design objectives, providing step-by-step recipes on crafting engaging social media content, creating eye-catching videos and ads, and developing print-ready materials. Through a blend of theory, instructions, and examples, you'll also learn how to make your designs more accessible – including the use of captions and alt text – as well as how to harness the power of Canva AI for efficient and powerful brand storytelling.
By the end of this book, you'll not only be able to create visually compelling projects but you will have also built up a powerful skill arsenal that will help you speed up your creative process and unleash your creativity with Canva.

Leseprobe

Canva Cookbook

Unlock the full potential of Canva with practical recipes for creating stunning visuals effortlessly

Barbara Tulissi

Canva Cookbook

Copyright © 2025 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Group Product Manager: Rohit Rajkumar

Publishing Product Manager: Tanisha Mehrotra

Book Project Manager: Sonam Pandey

Senior Editor: Hayden Edwards

Technical Editor: Simran Ali

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Indexer: Manju Arasan

Production Designer: Shankar Kalbhor

DevRel Marketing Coordinator: Anamika Singh and Nivedita Pandey

First published: January 2025

Production reference: 1101224

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Grosvenor House

11 St Paul’s Square

Birmingham

B3 1RB, UK

ISBN 978-1-80107-530-5

www.packtpub.com

To the classrooms that have become my second home, and to the brilliant young minds that grace them. Your thirst for learning and your unwavering spirit continue to inspire me, day after day. This book is for you, the next generation of designers.

– Barbara Tulissi

Contributors

About the author

Barbara Tulissi is an Italian designer who ditched her career in finance for the world of creative magic. Fueled by curiosity and a passion for empowering others, Barbara traded spreadsheets for design tools, becoming a master of both the classic Adobe Suite and the user-friendly phenomenon, Canva.

Today, Barbara’s not just a designer, but a Canva Ambassador (Canvassador), spreading the gospel of design accessibility to young minds in classrooms, as well as to brands around the globe. Whether it’s delivering practical takeaways at workshops or motivating and sparking discussions as a public speaker, Barbara’s infectious enthusiasm makes learning fun and empowering.

I am deeply grateful to Hayden for his editorial expertise and unwavering patience. His guidance was instrumental in bringing this book to life. I would also like to thank my loving family for supporting and motivating my dreams, including my sister, Veronica, whose unwavering determination has always inspired me to strive for excellence. Finally, a special thanks to Artur for always joining me on my daydreams.

About the reviewers

Beatriz Moreno del Castillo is a marketing strategist, design expert, official Canva Content Creator, and founder of Violetwave Studio. With over a decade of experience in hospitality, working with brands such as NH Hotel Group and Pyramid Global Hospitality, she specializes in impactful brand communication, simplifying complex design processes and empowering teams to create visually compelling narratives while making design accessible.

For Beatriz, design is more than aesthetics—it’s about creating empathetic, innovative, and functional solutions. Her unique blend of creativity and strategy has made her a trusted advisor for brands seeking meaningful audience connections.

Laura Goodsell is an award-winning creative designer, Canva creator, and Canvassador, helping small business owners to understand and utilize Canva for their own branding, social graphics, and digital products.

Building her business around her young family, Laura’s mission is to use her skill set and help small business owners to have a head start by equipping them with the skills they need to create and grow their business through her YouTube channel, Canva graphics, and low-cost Canva design membership.

Parvathy Suresh is a skilled bioinformatician with a deep passion for design and creative writing. With a background in computational biology, she applies her analytical mindset to her scientific work while channeling her creative energy into design and storytelling. Her diverse interests allow her to bridge the gap between technical and creative fields, and she excels in both scientific research and artistic pursuits.

Table of Contents

Preface

1

Introducing Canva and Its Interface

Technical requirements

Discovering Canva’s main interfaces

Canva search bar

Visual Suite

Templates

Brand Hub

Single project interface

Create a design button

Incorporating external resources and reviewing Canva limits

Implementing useful shortcuts

Summary

2

Creating Your Brand and Shaping It in Canva

Creating your brand

Day 1: Scope

Day 2: Vision

Day 3: Mission

Day 4: Values

Creating a brand archetype

Developing your brand visual identity in Canva

Mood board

Elements

Color

Fonts

Icons, images, and illustrations

Brand Hub

Summary

3

Personalizing Your Social Media Presence

Crafting your brand’s tone of voice

Getting ready

How to do it…

Improving your profile picture

How to do it…

There’s more…

Creating an Instagram grid mockup

Getting ready

How to do it…

There’s more…

Designing social covers for Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube

How to do it…

4

Crafting Engaging Social Content

Taking a single social media post to the next level

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating a carousel post

How to do it...

There’s more...

Creating an animated swipe-bounce effect for your carousel

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating a collage post layout

How to do it...

Creating a mosaic effect for Instagram

How to do it…

Creating a social media story

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating a meme

How to do it...

There’s more...

5

Creating Impactful Presentations

Creating a presentation for a client

Getting ready

How to do it...

There’s more...

There’s even more...

Creating a presentation from a document

How to do it...

See also

Visualizing data better in your presentations

Getting ready

How to do it...

Using infographics in your presentations

How to do it...

There’s more...

Utilizing animations in your presentations

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There’s more...

Presenting presentations in Canva

How to do it...

There’s more...

Importing, exporting, and sharing your presentations

Getting ready

How to do it...

6

Crafting Captivating Videos

Defining your video’s purpose and message (part 1)

How to do it…

There’s more…

Structuring and creating your video (part 2)

Getting ready

How to do it…

Animating your video (part 3)

Getting ready

How to do it…

Generating subtitles

How to do it…

Creating GIFs

How to do it…

Creating a label in Canva and CapCut

Getting ready

How to do it…

Editing videos with Canva’s AI

Getting ready

How to do it…

7

Mastering Eye-Catching, Stop-Scrolling Ads

Defining your ad’s objective and target audience

How to do it…

Finding references to get inspiration

How to do it…

Tailoring ad formats for different platforms

How to do it…

Crafting stop-scrolling ads

How to do it…

There’s more…

There’s even more…

Utilizing CTAs effectively

How to do it...

There’s more…

8

Developing Effective Marketing Documents

Creating a digital business card

How to do it…

There's more...

Transforming an event flyer

Getting ready

How to do it…

Creating a template for invoices and quotes

How to do it…

Creating an email signature

Getting ready…

How to do it…

9

Ensuring Accessibility and Inclusivity in Your Designs

Reviewing the WCAG

Creating readable text and typography

Getting ready

How to do it…

There’s more…

Using alt text for images and graphics

How to do it...

There’s more…

Enabling captions on videos and audio

How to do it...

Creating images using AI

How to do it...

10

Designing Print-Ready Materials

Resizing your Canva project, ready for print

Getting ready

How to do it…

Getting mock-ups for printing

How to do it…

Using the Canva Print service

Getting ready

How to do it…

Exporting your design as a PDF

Getting ready

How to do it…

There's more...

11

Unlocking the Power of Magic Studio

Transforming your pictures with Magic Edit (Free)

How to do it…

Removing backgrounds (Pro)

How to do it…

Grabbing objects within a picture (Pro)

How to do it…

Erasing objects within a picture (Pro)

How to do it…

Expanding your pictures (Pro)

How to do it…

Resizing your content (Pro)

How to do it…

Generating brand-new illustrations with AI (Pro)

How to do it…

Writing with AI (Pro)

How to do it…

Extracting text from images (Pro)

How to do it…

Extracting video highlights (Pro)

How to do it…

Transforming existing elements (Free)

How to do it…

Animating your designs (Pro)

Getting ready

How to do it…

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

Canva is a powerful and intuitive design platform that has revolutionized the way we create visual content. From social media posts and presentations to marketing and printed materials, Canva provides a wide range of tools and templates to help users of all skill levels bring their creative visions to life.

The Canva Cookbook takes this user-friendly platform to the next level, providing a comprehensive guide to harnessing the full potential of Canva. It starts with how to create a brand, before delving into recipes, instructions, and practical tips to help you create stunning visuals that captivate your audience.

By the end, the Canva Cookbook will be your go-to resource for mastering this versatile tool and elevating your design game.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at passionate designers with a basic understanding of Canva who want to use the platform to elevate their visual communication skills and create engaging, creative projects. Specifically, this book focuses on entrepreneurs who would like to elevate their design skills to help develop a personal or professional brand. This book is also useful for graphic designers, social media managers, and content creators who want to align their designs with an already-established brand.

What this book covers

In Chapter 1, Introducing Canva and Its Interface, we’ll dive into the heart of Canva: its intuitive interface. We’ll explore the layout, key features, and essential tools that will empower you to create stunning designs.

In Chapter 2, Creating Your Brand and Shaping It in Canva, you’ll learn how to craft a strong brand identity by defining your brand’s scope, vision, mission, and values. We’ll explore the most common brand archetypes, and guide you through the process of creating a brand style guide that will ensure consistency across all your marketing materials.

In Chapter 3, Personalizing Your Social Media Presence, you’ll learn how to create a cohesive and visually consistent brand identity across all your social media platforms.

In Chapter 4, Crafting Engaging Social Content, we’ll explore strategies to craft engaging social media profiles and posts that resonate with your audience.

In Chapter 5, Creating Impactful Presentations, you’ll learn how to design captivating presentations that inform, inspire, and engage your audience. We’ll explore the art of storytelling, the power of visuals, and the importance of effective communication to create presentations that leave a lasting impression.

In Chapter 6, Crafting Captivating Videos, you’ll discover how to create stunning videos using Canva’s video editing tools, including how to add text and music. You’ll also learn how to create GIFs and generate subtitles, and how to utilize Canva with Capcut to create video labels.

In Chapter 7, Mastering Eye-Catching, Stop-Scrolling Ads, you’ll learn how to design attention-grabbing ads that stop users from scrolling and drive up engagement.

In Chapter 8, Developing Effective Marketing Documents, you’ll learn how to create professional and persuasive marketing documents using Canva, including flyers and invoices.

In Chapter 9, Ensuring Accessibility and Inclusivity in Your Designs, we’ll explore the importance of creating inclusive designs that are accessible to everyone. We’ll discuss key accessibility guidelines, as well as Canva’s Design Accessibility Checker, alternative text, and captions.

In Chapter 10, Designing Print-Ready Materials, we’ll dive into the world of print design and learn how to prepare your Canva designs for professional printing, including how to use Canva’s print service.

In Chapter 11, Unlocking the Power of Magic Studio, you’ll discover the magic of Canva’s AI features to speed up and elevate your creative projects to new heights.

To get the most out of this book

Software/hardware covered in the book

Operating system requirements

Canva

Canva works on your browser and allows you to save projects directly in the cloud. You do not need to download the Canva app for your laptop; however, I do recommend the app when using a mobile.

This book will largely cover the free Canva features; however, we will be discussing some of the Canva Pro features. Having the paid subscription helps you work faster and smarter but, when possible, I will give you some free alternatives to the Pro features.

Accessing the book’s links

In this book, you will find some useful resources that I will link to in every chapter. You can also find them all here, so save this link for later: https://caffecanva.my.canva.site/barbaratulissi.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “In your project, click File and select Show rulers and guides”

Code in text: Indicates folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, and user input. Here is an example: “Navigate to Canva’s home page and search for Infographic in the search bar.”

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [email protected] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata and fill in the form.

Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the material.

If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com.

Share Your Thoughts

Once you’ve read Canva Cookbook, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Please click here to go straight to the Amazon review page for this book and share your feedback.

Your review is important to us and the tech community and will help us make sure we’re delivering excellent quality content.

Download a free PDF copy of this book

Thanks for purchasing this book!

Do you like to read on the go but are unable to carry your print books everywhere?

Is your eBook purchase not compatible with the device of your choice?

Don’t worry, now with every Packt book you get a DRM-free PDF version of that book at no cost.

Read anywhere, any place, on any device. Search, copy, and paste code from your favorite technical books directly into your application.

The perks don’t stop there, you can get exclusive access to discounts, newsletters, and great free content in your inbox daily

Follow these simple steps to get the benefits:

Scan the QR code or visit the link below

https://packt.link/free-ebook/9781801075305

Submit your proof of purchaseThat’s it! We’ll send your free PDF and other benefits to your email directly

1

Introducing Canva and Its Interface

Imagine turning your creative ideas into professional-looking visual content, even if you have no design experience. Sounds impossible, right? Wrong! That’s the magic of Canva, a user-friendly design platform that democratizes graphic design for everyone.

I am Barbara, a professional designer and your Canva coach, and this first chapter serves as your gateway to the exciting world of Canva. Here, we’ll delve into its core features, navigate the interface, and equip you with essential design principles.

Think of Canva as your portable design studio, accessible on your computer, tablet, or even phone. Sure, the interface might get a makeover every now and then (think of it as a fun fashion update!), but the core features remain the same.

In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:

Discovering Canva’s main interfacesIncorporating external resources and reviewing Canva’s limitsImplementing useful shortcuts

Technical requirements

To follow along with this chapter – and the rest of the book – you will just need Canva.

Saying that, it’s important to note that Canva has some features that require a paid subscription. But fear not, design grasshopper; we’ll be exploring both the free and paid sides – so whether you’re rocking a budget tighter than a drumhead or have pockets overflowing with digital doubloons, we’ve got you covered.

Discovering Canva’s main interfaces

Though Canva is extremely user-friendly, it might seem like a magical land of visual delights, and you may need some help navigating around the different interfaces.

Figure 1.1: Canva’s dashboard

So, let’s demystify the Canva interface together and explore some of its different features.

Canva search bar

Feeling the blank page panic? Fear not, design friend! Ditch the template hunt, tell the search bar what you want, and POOF! Canva’s magic AI whips up a unique design just for you!

Figure 1.2: Canva’s search bar

The search bar isn’t just your keyword buddy anymore – it’s a creative partner, understanding your ideas and generating designs based on your prompts. Think of it like ChatGPT for design.

But remember, our AI baby is still learning, so keep your prompts simple and concise. If you want to make an event about sushi, search for sushi Wednesday or flyer sushi. Adding a color to your prompt will also help you to find a template that suits your business, such as green flyer sushi.

Also, currently, the search bar only works in English (for now; more languages are coming soon!).

And another thing – even if you do not remember the name of a project, you can search for the style you gave it, the color codes used, or words featured in the design. Essentially, you can search for nearly anything you remember about the project and Canva should be able to find it for you!

Visual Suite

Since March 2023, Canva has transformed into a Visual Suite, serving up an array of eye-catching layouts right under your search bar. Need a social media post or a Pinterest pin? Easy peasy! Craving a video edit or a document template? You’ve got it! Invoices, estimates, mind maps, shopping lists, even CVs and presentations – Canva’s your one-stop shop for all things visual.

Figure 1.3: Canva’s Visual Suite

All the design types have been grouped into macro-categories, so just click on the category you need and look for a specific premade template or a blank one.

Templates

Feeling uninspired and stuck staring at a blank canvas? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! That’s where Canva templates come in. Instead of starting from scratch, you can use a template as a springboard, customizing it with your own colors, fonts, and images to make it unique.

And the best part? Even if you end up with something completely different from the template, it doesn’t matter! The template just sparked your imagination and helped you get started.

Figure 1.4: Templates page

Let’s suppose we are looking for inspiration to design social content about interior design. Click the Template option on the left-hand toolbar and, from the search bar, enter the keyword you are looking for. We’ll enter Interior design. Then, based on your color palette, let’s assume you want to find a template for Instagram that is predominantly white. You can just open the template’s filters, tick the Instagram post category, and select the color White. This way, you can find results that are closest to your needs without wasting time on uninteresting results.

Figure 1.5: Search results for “interior design” templates, plus filters

Brand Hub

Brand element management can be cumbersome; however, if you have a Pro subscription, consider utilizing Canva’s Brand Hub – this is your centralized storage space for all the logos, colors, fonts, and other assets of the brand (or brands) you may be managing. The Brand Hub eliminates the need for scattered folder structures and provides easy access in a single in-cloud location.

Even free users can leverage limited functionality by storing up to three essential brand colors. For extended functionality, consider creating a custom project (794x1,890 pixels) to serve as a DIY Brand Hub, housing logos, color codes, fonts, and relevant branding imagery, all saved in one handy document.

Figure 1.6: Brand Templates page

Alternatively, you can access a pre-made Brand Hub template (created by me!) here: https://partner.canva.com/eK5vY1. You can customize the template to suit your specific needs and populate it with relevant branding elements to establish a consistent and organized brand identity.

Figure 1.7: My pre-made Brand Hub template

Remember, effective organization enhances efficiency and streamlines design processes. Implement these suggestions to optimize your brand element management within Canva.

Plus, are you stuck with your brand voice? Canva Pro’s got your back! Since October 2023, you can store your brand tone right in the Hub with its AI writing tool. Canva’s AI brand voice feature is not just a text generator, though; it’s a powerful tool for harnessing the magic of consistency and injecting personality into your brand communication.

Think of it as a whisper coach: you define your brand voice guidelines, including vocabulary, tone, and personality traits. The AI then analyzes these guidelines and learns your brand’s “language.” When you want to generate content, the AI will suggest text tailored to your specific voice. The AI doesn’t simply parrot your existing content either – it uses its understanding of your brand to generate fresh, original text that aligns with your desired tone and message.

To find this feature, make sure that you’re in the Brand Hub and scroll down until you find Brand voice. Then you can tell Canva how to generate text using the same tone your brand is using, such as confident, casual, and friendly.

Figure 1.8: Canva’s brand voice

To have a taste of how it sounds, click on Try your brand voice in a design and a new document will open up where you can write a prompt that will be used to generate a response in your set brand’s voice:

Figure 1.9: Canva’s brand voice result

With this prompt, Canva’s AI can help you with generating customized texts for your documents, posts, and presentations.

Note

Speaking of AI, Canva is packed with a whole host of AI features. In fact, we’ve dedicated Chapter 11 to discussing them!

Single project interface

The single project page interface is our chameleon of Canva, changing and growing constantly, and is packed with features that we’ll explore throughout the book!

Accessing design elements within Canva’s project interface proves straightforward. Once you have a project option, as shown in Figure 1.22, navigate to the left toolbar menu. There are a few categories here, but the three main ones are Elements, Text, and Uploads:

Need text? The Text section is here to help you add text boxes to your design.Got your own photos, videos, or audio? Upload them straight from your device using the Uploads section.Looking for something extra? The Elements section offers a wider range of design elements for you to choose from.

Figure 1.10: Single project interface

Looking at the Elements category specifically, it houses various design components, such as illustrations, icons, images, videos, shapes, grids, graphs, and layouts. These elements boast diverse origins, including contributions from creators like myself, enriching the available selection for Canva subscribers.

Furthermore, clicking the three dots (…) beside any element reveals the creator’s name, additional information, and suggestions for similar elements. You can even follow creators directly within Canva, allowing convenient access to their future content.

Additionally, if you click on Info, you can also do the following:

Mark the element as favorite: this will add the element to the favorite folderAdd it to a specific folder of your choiceBe redirected to similar elementsSee all the other related elements (if the element is part of a wider collection)

Figure 1.11: Magic recommendations and element creator details

However, be careful when using these elements. You cannot download an illustration and simply use it as a logo or icon just as it is; you will have to customize it with your own colors or use the illustration as part of a larger graphic. This way, Canva enforces copyright by protecting the work of its creators.

Note

You can find more information about Canva copyright here: https://www.canva.com /help/licenses-copyright-legal-commercial-use/.

Create a design button

Does your project canvas feel barren? Simply utilize the Create a Design button to initiate project creation.

Figure 1.12: Create a design button

While the search bar aims to lead you through templates or projects by searching for keywords, the Create a design button allows you to directly find the type of design you want to create (for example, an Instagram story). This lets you bypass pre-defined templates and set custom dimensions, allowing you to unleash your design potential without restraint!

Figure 1.13: Create a design button options

On top of that, have you ever been stuck in a situation where you have a PDF and you can’t copy the text? The Create a design button also lets you upload PDFs and make them completely editable. Some designers use this option to upload brand identities that were made in Adobe Illustrator but exported as PDFs.

Plus, the Create a design button lets you adjust images without opening a project too. This way, you do not need to download other photo editing apps to quickly adjust the colors or add a filter to your picture. It’s your design pit stop for quick fixes and instant satisfaction.

After that overview of the main interfaces of Canva, one thing you may be wondering is

what you can upload in Canva. If so, stay with me. In the next section, I will give you some more details about the storage you can use in Canva and the upload limits.

Incorporating external resources and reviewing Canva limits

In Canva, the Uploads section allows you to upload external resources and save them in the Canva cloud space – for free users, this is 5 GB (on average, over 3,000 images); for Pro users, it is 1 TB (on average, over 600,000 images); and for education and non-profit accounts, it is 100 GB (on average, over 60,000 images).

Figure 1.14: Canva’s upload section

Even though I have hardly seen the storage space on Canva run out, I still advise you to upload images that are never larger than the design you are creating. For example, if you are creating an Instagram story measuring 1,080x1,920 pixels and you want to use a full-screen photo of yourself, make sure that the image is no larger than 1,920 pixels. If you instead were to create a 1x2 meter roll-up, you would need a larger image, at least 2 meters in size (i.e., 7,559 pixels), otherwise the previous 1,920px image would be grainy.

Figure 1.15: Low- and high-resolution images

Saying that, there are some upload limitations. In terms of the files, there is the following:

The image file (.jpeg, .png, .svg) limit is 25 MBThe audio file (.m4a, .mp3, etc.) limit is 250 MBThe video file (.mov, .mp4, etc.) is 1 GB

And in terms of users, there is the following:

The limit for free users is up to 1 GBThere is no specific limit for Canva Pro/Teams users (it is likely just very big)

Let’s also take a look at some of the supported file types. The supported image formats are as follows:

.png and .jpg/jpeg: These are the most common image formats.heic: Most iPhone and iPad pictures are automatically saved in this format.svg: A vectorial format, mostly used for logos

While the supported video formats are as follows:

.mov: This is Apple’s video format.gif: Used for animated web images for the web, such as icons and short loops (memes!), but not for photos or long videos..mp4: The widest multimedia container format.mpeg: A format that uses compression to make the file smaller.mkv: Good for high-quality videos with multiple language options.webm: A free, web-friendly video format designed for streaming

If you are wondering how you can find out the format, size, extent, or weight of the image from your PC, simply right-click the image and view the image properties:

Figure 1.16: Image information on Mac (top) and Windows (bottom)

If you’re using your phone, just find your image and open the image’s information panel:

Figure 1.17: Image information on a phone (iPhone)

After that, if you need to change properties, you can use this powerful and free converter: https://www.iloveimg.com/.

Also, to quickly convert pixels into centimeters or other units of measurement, you can simply use the Google Converter: https://cloudconvert.com/.

Note

Before starting a project, it’s worth remembering that the minimum size for your project is 40x40 pixels (1,058 x 1,058 cm), while the maximum is 8,000 x 3,125 pixels (211,664 x 82,681 cm).

After quickly reviewing the Upload section and some Canva limits, let’s now quickly review some helpful shortcuts you should remember.

Implementing useful shortcuts

To speed up your work in Canva you can use a series of shortcuts from your desktop. Here are some of the Canva shortcuts that I use daily to speed up my work:

Function

Windows Shortcut

Mac Shortcut

Undo

Ctrl + Z

Command + Z

Select all

Ctrl + A

Command + A

Add text

T

T

Add rectangle

R

R

Add circle

C

C

Add line

L

L

Toggle rulers and guides

Shift + R

Shift + R

Figure 1.30: Shortcuts

Besides these, you can find other shortcuts here: https://www.canva.com/help/keyboard-shortcuts/.

Summary

Level up, designer – you have now finished the first chapter and unlocked some of Canva’s essential features!

Throughout this chapter, we have navigated through Canva’s interface, discovering the search bar (powered by AI!), its streamlined single project interface, and the multi-purpose Create a design button. Just for Pro users, we also met the Brand Hub; however, we looked at how Free users can still use this feature too.

As well as the main interfaces, we also reviewed incorporating resources in the Uploads section, some of our tool’s limitations, and some handy shortcuts.

Remember, Canva evolves, but your potential soars. Use this knowledge to explore and unleash your inner design genius!

In the next chapter, let’s dive into brand archetypes and discover your creative personality!