Hey everyone, Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this quick start guide to canvas eBooks, you're going to learn how to put together
your first eBook in Canva and record time using these three simple steps, timestamp
table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos that take a
deeper dive into what canvas can do.
So let's go ahead and jump right in the very first step of course is our cover.
So once you log into Canva, you're actually going to want to go over to the left hand
side and click on templates.
And there's three different types of templates you're going to be looking for.
If you want to take a long time on your cover, you're going to want to look for the book
and magazine cover templates and go through all of them and choose your top three or four.
I'll get to how to choose your ultimate one in a second.
And then if you want to do this really fast, like we're going to do in this tutorial, then
you're going to go ahead and go scroll all the way down until you see reports, proposal
and media kit.
And those are the templates you're going to want to look at.
And the reason that this is so important is you need to choose the right template to start.
Because if you're using the free version of canvas, you can't move assets around between
your different canvases.
So when it comes to things that you might have to redo, your covers probably the last
thing you want to have to redo.
So let's go ahead, go through all the different options.
As you can see here, there are a lot of templates.
So just choose your top three to four across all the categories and then go to town, actually
starting to design.
So here in this example, I'm going to go ahead and choose one of the report templates.
And then we are ready to make some key design decisions before we actually start modifying
this template.
So this is the template I'm going to use through the rest of this little tutorial here.
And the first decision we need to make is our fonts.
So you want to choose two fonts.
These are the recommended fonts I typically use for Instagram and eBooks and pretty much
anything made digitally, because they are very easy to read and they do a good job sizing
up and down on different screen sizes.
Now, the second decision you want to make is for your colors.
So with your two fonts, you want a headline font and then a body copy font.
And then with your colors, you're going to want to primary color, the [0:02:11 Unintelligible]
fonts again; primary color and a secondary color.
Now, if you're going to have links inside of your eBook, which you can do with Canva,
if you export it as a PDF, then you're going to want to choose a bright color that is a
sharp contrast to your primary and secondary colors.
Now, I already have these queued up inside of Canva.
So with that out of the way, we're actually ready to start modifying this template, which
is what we're going to do now.
So I'm going to jump into my screen and show you exactly how to turn this template into
a ready to publish eBook.
So let's go ahead and dive in.
Now that we have our design loaded up.
You'll see that we have our main cover.
The reason why we chose this design and then a lot of the templates when you choose from
the second part, which is the magazine.
Either you choose from a magazine or a report or a proposal, we will have some other pages
in here as well.
We'll just go ahead and focus on the first one.
So we'll go ahead and check what fonts they have here.
And we're actually going to leave the secondary font.
We'll go ahead and change the primary font to something that we'd rather use.
So I'm just going to go in and use this font.
And then if I want to make a bold, I can highlight all of it and then come up here and select
bold.
The next thing I'm going to want to do is change up this color cause this yellow does
not fit our brand.
So when I click on the elements, I can come up here to the top left, click on color, and
then we have all these color options you can even click here and go up and down the spectrum
or just paste in your color directly.
I have some saved.
So I'm going to go ahead and use this blue.
And now that I’ve turned this blue, I’ll notice that this font is very unreadable.
So I’ll go ahead and highlight it and then come over here and make it white so that you
can see it here.
And I'm just modifying things so you can see how it works.
I'm going to jump ahead once I actually change all of the text to what our example is going
to be, and I’ll see down here that I'm also going to need to change these fonts as well,
to what I want them to be.
Now you'll notice here when I'm clicking on this, that there's multiple fonts.
And so what are multiple elements here, and so what's happening is this is actually a
group.
So you can see if I clicked ungroup up here, now when I click on it, there'll be individual.
So you'll have a lot of groups when you are using templates.
The-- whoever puts together, the Canva templates likes using groups, the advantage is when
you click and drag, all of the text will change in one fell swoop.
And so that's really the advantage of using groups.
So we're actually going to be making a eBook here about Google tag manager.
Yes, super fun and exciting.
So I'm going to delete that logo.
And there are a couple of things you could do.
You could come over here to elements and you can search for different icons.
They have a lot of icons and illustrations.
Most of them are paid now.
It's about a dollar.
It's a dollar to download for one time, and then you get it for you can download as many
times as you want for 24 hours.
Of course you can mouse over and you'll find some for free.
Although once it looks like a laser squirt gun has nothing to do with Google.
So I'm actually going to come over here to some saved images I’ve already uploaded,
and I'm going to grab the Google tag manager logo here.
So I’ll go ahead and double click on it.
And when I do, I'm going to be able to crop the image.
So this is going to be your best friend when it comes to bringing in other images.
So I'm just going to crop it plus like that and then click out.
And then I will go ahead and Oh!
Giveaway, surprise there, probably saw that.
And then go ahead and put it up here on the top.
And that will be good enough for now.
So the next thing we want to do is change out this image because this image has nothing
to do with marketing analytics and data.
So we'll come over here to photos and then we'll just search.
How about analytics?
And then you can scroll through and see which ones are free, which ones are paid.
So you'll see this one says free.
That means it's free for everyone.
If I'm mousing over, you'll see free, but it has a little crown next to it.
That means it's only free if you're using Canva pro.
And then if there's a dollar sign, that means everybody has to pay.
Now, I actually really like this one, I'm just skipping out of research for time so
I can actually just click and drag it in there.
And the reason I can do that is because this is actually a photo frame.
So I’ll show you how to actually make your own photo frames.
But what's really nice is there's some filters and effects and settings already in here.
So that every time you drop in a new photo, it keeps the effect.
So you can see it's a little matted out.
And so anything I click and drag in here is going to fall in, is going to have that filter
applied.
So it's really cool.
And it's also really easy, because you don't have to worry about moving things around.
Now, if you did, I'm going to go back to this one.
Cause I think, really lucked out on that first one there.
So you can double click on it, just like you would do with the crop and then you can pull
it left or right.
And you can expand or do expand or shrink it to as much as possible.
So I can expand and shrink it as much as I like.
And then I can just click out.
And now the image is still there.
Now, if you are frustrated by looking at all these images and seeing that, “Oh my gosh,
they're all paid.
What the heck?”
You come down here to more and then you can actually click on Pixabay and Pexels.
So if you want to search for actual kind of stock photography, like this, Pexels is going
to be the way to go.
If you're looking for free icons, then Pixabay is the way to go.
And so that way you don't actually have to go to the other sites, you can just click
on it and then do the search directly here.
And pretty much all of these are going to be free, like right off the back, like that
would work.
This would work.
It wouldn't be the best.
I think what we have now works, but just showing you that you can get all the free images you
need right inside of Canva.
So now that we have this, I'm going to go ahead and pause and skip ahead to when I re--
when I modify all of the text to our actual eBook here.
So skipping ahead a couple of minutes, we go from this template and I’ll go ahead
and delete that.
And now we have our final one.
So the only thing I did off camera was go ahead and add in all of my text and then expand
this so that the headline was on one line.
And that's really all you need to do when it comes to making your eBook cover.
So now that our book cover is complete it's time to create our content page.
So when it comes to creating our-- and designing our content page, here are the elements that
you can choose to include.
So we can have a page number, a book, title, chapter, title, section, headers, image, area,
and a border.
So here is an example of what a content page could look like at the top.
We would have our title of the actual eBook.
Then we would have our page number, our chapter, or section title, plenty of space for our
content, an image block, which I’ll show you how to build in a second and then some
more space for content and a nice little border at the bottom.
So let's go ahead and jump back into our design here and let's go ahead and build it from
scratch.
So the first thing we're going to do is come over to elements and we are going to grab
a plain old square and make it nice and small and bring it up to the top here.
And this is going to be our page number.
So I actually really liked doing this.
Of course, you can have it on left.
You could have it on the right.
We're going to put it on the right, and then we'll go over to text here.
It gives us way too many options.
And we're just going to go ahead and click, add a subheading and we're going to do page
a one.
Of course, we need to change it to our font that we're using.
So this is our title fonts clicking on the wrong one there.
And then we'll go ahead and click and drag this guy up here and let's bring it up.
Let's make it bigger.
So center it, change it to white.
And now we're going to go ahead and add our actual color.
There we go at our actual color.
So let's make it our blue and then we'll come and actually add a heading.
And this is going to be the title of our eBook.
So we're going to make sure it's in the title format and I'm actually going to make this
a gray color and bring it up to the top.
And if you're really strapped for time, this is probably all you need to do, but we're
going to add a couple more elements here.
So I'm going to copy and paste this, bring it down to the bottom and just make a nice
little bottom border with it, bring it up.
And if we had a logo, if we have a logo, we can go ahead and drop it in here.
I think I have a logo someplace.
So yes, there it is.
Let's go ahead and drop it in.
I'm using the pro version of Canva, so I’m pulling in a design from another canvas.
If you're not, then you just need to upload your logo as a image, and then you'll be able
to do the exact same thing.
Now, something that I like to do is put links inside of our eBooks.
So we can go back over here to text and we'll go ahead and click on heading this time again.
And I'm going to click and drag and bring it that all the way down here, make it smaller,
so it's not obtrusive and out of the way and not obtrusive and out of the way.
So it's not obtrusive.
So it is out of the way.
There we go.
That's proper [0:11;50 Unintelligible].
All right, we'll go ahead and make it white.
And then we'll come over here to this button right here, link.
And this is where you're actually going to be able to enter in your actual URL, go and
click apply.
You'll actually want to put in the URL link HTTP S or HTTP with your colon and slashes.
So then we have our little frame here.
So the only other thing we really need to do to this is to prepare for the different
types of content we want to add to this page.
So obviously this is an eBook, so there's going to be a lot of text.
So we'll go ahead and click drag this over here, line it with that and then click and
drag it all the way over here.
Now, something that is a little cumbersome is the only way to make this textbook bigger
is just by hitting enter.
And we're actually going to want to click up here and make the spacing to the left,
cause it's going to be actual content.
And let's go ahead and make some space for images, right?
So whether you have your own custom diagrams or you just want to add some images along
the way, we can go ahead and click on elements and then grid.
So click on, see all here.
Let's choose.
Let's get a little fancy.
Let's just use this grid for that commit.
So this grid is going to function the exact same way.
The home page, the cover page did when we added our custom image.
So it's really cool, cause I'm just going to come over here to photos and we'll just
pull in some random ones.
And as you click and drag, come on Canva as you click and drag, it will go into the different
frames here.
So I’ll click.
Nope.
See.
Okay.
Well sometimes it takes a couple tries.
Come on, get in there.
One eternity later!
Okay.
Okay, after a bunch of trial and error, it only went on the bottom one.
So, maybe I just don't have the mouse coordination.
Okay.
And then we'll just choose our other image here.
Come on.
There we go.
And then as we create these, this page over and over again, so let's say we want to just
duplicate it.
Then we can click and drag in new images directly in here and they're already going to be formatted
correctly.
And this is really all you need to do for your content pages.
So I can just double click up here and make this number two, bring it out a little bit
so that it actually fits inside the box.
And now we have page number one, page number two, and we can continue to just duplicate
this for each one of our pages.
Now, the last thing I want to do is talk about how to create a call to action.
So if you want a button telling people to specifically do something, having your-- your
site URL at the bottom there, isn't enough.
So of course, we're going to come over here back again to the box element here, just a
nice little rectangle.
Let's make it like this.
We'll change the color to orange and then immediately copy and paste it.
And here we're going to want to click on the one we just made and click on transparency
and bring it down to about 39.
And then we'll want to move our first element so that it looks like there is a shadow.
And we'll click on our first one and click on position and bring it forward.
So that it's in front of our shadow.
And all we need to do here is I'm just going to go ahead and duplicate this text.
We'll bring it in and actually create a call to action here.
So let's say we're offering something for free.
So we'll say click here to download.
It is important that you tell people to click, because it's going to be in a PDF format and
they're not going to know that they should be clicking on it.
We're going to click on group here and then we can enter the URL of where we want people
to go.
And now we have a call to action button on our inside of our eBook.
If we want people to take another step with us.
And with that, your eBook is complete.
That's all there is to it to creating your eBook inside of Canva.
And just like that we have our eBook cover and all of the content pages ready to drop
in our actual content and pictures and images.
So thank you so much for watching.
I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video and you feel a lot more confident
in putting together your eBook using Canva.
You can go ahead and check out the link in the description to sign up for Canva.
If you haven't already along with some other helpful videos that take deeper dives in how
to use Canva for Instagram, creating worksheets and lead magnets and other types of pdfs.
So go ahead and hit that like button subscribe for more deep dive tutorials, just like this
one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.