If you have any kind of social media presence online,
then you know that you need to have content
going out to the relevant audiences on these different platforms.
Canada is an amazing free tool that you can use
to create beautiful graphics, PDFs, documents,
YouTube thumbnails, Instagram Reels, Instagram carousels, you name it.
Canada has the kind of format that you can design straight away within minutes.
So recently, I've been getting a lot of messages on my Instagram
about the graphics I've been sharing in my Instagram Stories and my newsletters.
And I want to show you in this tutorial how I design social media content
using Canva as a beginners tutorial , but also showing you
some of the tips and tricks
that you can use in your upcoming designs using Canva as well.
So let's get started.
Hi, everyone, I'm Laurie from Laurie Wine.com
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When you first signed the canvas platform,
this is the first screen that you will see on the left hand side,
you have all the designs that you can actually see
from your previous designs that you've done.
So again, I'm signing as a brand new accounts.
I want to show you guys exactly what it looks like as a free accounts
starting from scratch. So there's nothing here yet.
But once you start designing more designs on different formats and platforms
that you're going
to see more than being listed here, you can click into them straight away.
And here's on the ones that's been shared with you from other people.
So let's say there's a template that's someone else's design in your team.
They can actually share with you here, and you'll be able to see all the shared
files with you as well.
Now, the brand kids are really great because if you have existing logos,
you can actually upload them here so you have them ready for your future designs.
And if you also have brand colors that you want to use consistently,
then you can actually add them into this palette.
And if you have any existing fonts, you can also upgrade
to a paid account and upload your own font here as well.
And next one is your content planner.
Now, if you do currently have a content calendar, you can use that existing one.
What's great about here is that you can also start scheduling
in what content's going.
Yeah, on different accounts, on different days for your social media channels.
If you previously designed them already.
So again, another really useful feature.
And if you currently have team members and you want to actually create with,
then this is a great feature where you can put in an existing team
members that you want to actually collaborate with on Canva
and have them listed here to share the access.
And lastly, is folders and the love folders.
Now, this is not my current account, so my current one's a paid account.
But in this free one, you can also use folders the way that I do,
and I actually have folders for Instagram, for YouTube, for newsletters.
Whichever different areas in my creative side of things,
I need to actually have a folder for.
So let's say I need the folder for all the Instagram posts
they're going out, and that's basically on the left hand side.
I want to show you guys in terms of features
that you can tap into straight away and to start
designing on Canva, you actually have different templates.
So here are just some of the ones are listed,
but there is actually a lot more than this.
Once you start searching for them.
So for social media, obviously every different
kind of social media specifications are listed here.
I actually use kind of quite a few times to do my own presentations
and have some fantastic designs here that you can use
to make your presentation look really pro
and other things like newsletter designs, infographics, brochures.
Also here as well.
And basically, the possibilities are endless under learn.
There are actually lots of great resources that you can tap into.
If you know, designer like myself, I'm not a designer at all.
I actually do like to use some of these little mini courses
to brush up on my design skills and maybe even just to see how to best
use some of the new features that are coming out.
And here, the way to start designing is that you can actually go to click
the search bar here, and let's say you want to do an Instagram post.
So you can then click into it from here.
Now, another great way is also click Create the design,
and here you can actually even put in the custom size.
You have a specific customized size that you need.
So let's say it's for a specific vertical
vertical size that you need.
Then you can do something like this,
right, whichever it is and you can actually do.
You can choose that as a custom size.
You can also go and see the specific ones here as well by one click only.
And again, I recommend both ways,
whichever makes sense for you to make it easier to go into specific designs.
I would go for that.
So let's say going to Instagram posts
and this is our very first design that we can do together in this material.
OK, let's go with this one now.
first of all, this is really designed really well as it is.
However, I like to do some personalization onto this
and then make it into your own.
So here I can use a photo that relates to me to make it more personal.
I can then upload a photo of myself on here.
So I just uploaded my
profile picture that I can use to something like this,
but again, it's not the perfect fit,
but let's show you guys how that how easy that was essentially just drag
the photo into this area or upload by clicking that button there.
And then you can click this and then just slide it over.
And now it's actually
proportionally tied into the center of this particular area.
So you see how now this photo
is now in this area.
However, to actually move it around
to make it more fitting, depending on how your photos is actually being caught
in this specific size, you can just double click on that.
And now you're able to move this around,
whichever way you like to make it really suit that specific size and speck.
Now here are different options that you can choose
to change the tech and here by double click on this.
You can then change it into your handle.
You can also add more details.
In this case, I might even add my own web sites underneath
this so people can actually find me when they see this post.
And what I can do then is basically make a copy
so they duplicate what's in this here underneath this three stars .
You click on this
and there you go.
There's now a copy of this
that you can then choose to change it into something else.
So in this case, apologies to Lori Wang dot com to the movies,
or you can move your cursor down to where it makes sense.
So you see how I move it.
There's this purple box that's basically moving around with me.
And what that is is essentially telling me
where the specific graphic element is sitting on.
So in this case, this one is actually now aligned
to the left hand side of these boxes.
But what I really want to do is have a center underneath my handle for Instagram.
So by me, moving around here, I can see that now
is actually proportionate and lined up with this specific area.
Fantastic. It's not perfect science, but it's definitely there to help you align
it better of all the different elements on your design .
Another really cool thing is
you can actually, if you have three elements the same time
being so like this, let's say I have another one up. I'm not here.
And just for for argument's sake, let's say that is a call to action.
Follow me on. And now I want to have these three arranged neatly together,
but I won't really know exactly the distance between them that easily.
So I'll just click
this three little button here, and then I will go to your position
and then I want to be tidied up.
Now I see Olsen.
These three elements are now perfectly aligned,
which may or may not be the right thing for you on your design.
In this case, I don't want to be that aligned because it looks a bit weird.
But if you do have something that you want to tidy up
with the same distance between the elements,
then you can actually use this feature really well.
Also here you can change the title.
The the font size, the font type of everything on this page very easily.
So the design's all laid out for you.
But I always like to do is to change things around to make it
a bit more relevant to what I do, but also relevant to my designs as well.
Now, in this case, for the change the text and change the alignment
and everything around it, you can actually on these .
These are currently these two are grouped together.
You see how to move them, they move together.
If you click on them,
right click, then you can actually go to group.
Now these two elements are not separate.
So you see how you can move them independently.
And you can also change the font here to something that you like.
So you can easily change the text here.
You can easily go back if you don't like it. And then.
Go back to the original design for you if you prefer. Great.
So that's the basic tutorial so far of Canva,
but I also want to show you guys something really cool
that you can start to use even from the free accounts as well.
So let's say I want to animate this particular slide,
but this particular design and
I can actually have different animations that comes out.
So you see how if I hover over these different, different
options, they show you exactly what the previous look like.
So when you do animate themes, let's say these are the go
for let's see which one is pretty cool.
Well, that's a bit crazy. That one
Leslie would go for the panel option looks a bit less daunting
and a bit more or less crazy, so let's click on this one.
Now what's happened to see how up here the animation button turns to pan?
Do you have a plate?
Oh, you had this being animated, the different options actually popping out
and what you can do is under all of this as an MP for video,
which then you can share on your different social channels.
Now, a really great feature that you can use as a next level is
you can also record yourself
to speak over this video to have a voiceover.
Now, a really cool feature that I love.
And again, this is unfortunately a paid only feature, but I love this feature,
which I think is actually worth it.
The background remover literally removes all these unwanted background in my image
and just kind of crop me out like this with an outline.
Now you're free to use this image in any image that you like
or any background designs.
So therefore you fade into the background nicely and you can
then make it into a very creative post for any other social media platforms.
So that's the secret of how some of the people
that you see on social are doing these really amazing imagery
with just themselves cropped out with other background,
with the background removed and then be able to point you like, let's
say, a quote or for instance, you can see that on my YouTube thumbnails as well.
That's how I do them in color.
I want to show you guys some of the elements
that we currently have that you're able to use from Cam as well.
So first of all, on top, you have lines and shapes, which is really useful
to get some of the basic elements in your design and imagery.
And again, here the possibilities are really endless.
To save time, you can even just kind of search for it.
So let's say you're looking for square boxes.
And again, anything with the crowds in
it is the pro features, so those are the ones with a paid plan.
But you definitely navigate around that in
lots of free features that you can use here as well.
Graphics are really cool, too, because these are sometimes animated
little graphics or just things are done already for you that you can use
straight away, and the design and the of times will happen
is your suggests other designs for you based on what you chosen.
So let's say I've gone for this one to make it really fun.
So let's say I have the design selected,
and once that happened down here, there's a magic recommendations.
And this is really useful because these are
all the things that cover things are relevant or complements
your existing design really well that you can use on here , too.
And gradients are a really great feature, too, because if you ever want
to do those really cool background gradient colors for your posts,
you can certainly do these very easily by using gradients
and save you, having to do it and mix it yourself using different colors
that may or may not work together.
But here these are the ones already done for you.
And of course, you can choose to change the color of them as well.
Here then, you can click on the different colors that may or may not work,
and you want to change something else. So it might even take my photo colors.
So these are the colors that Canada has extracted based on my photo, right?
Different colors of my skin tone, etc..
And you can actually choose to change something like this, let's say.
So now it looks really weird with a bit of blue and bit of brown,
but maybe let's say we go for like a light gray.
So now it's like a muted tone that matches the background of
what is currently in my image, which is pretty cool feature, too.
Again, this doesn't apply in today's design, but it's something that
to keep in mind that you can use for going forward as well.
Now templates the ones that we can now choose.
The templates are really great because let's say
you don't want to do this existing template that I have here anymore
and you want to choose a different design.
Then here you can easily choose from the what's currently available.
So if you like specific design or template can do is click on the little three dots
and then you can add it to your like your favorites.
This is a really cool feature because there are
so many different templates I love with this platform.
It's really hard to keep track of them all.
So by me adding them to like section
to my favorites, I can go back to them again and again,
and you can even take some of their existing format and apply the style only.
So let's say I take the style here, apply to what I see on my post.
You see how that's taken, the colors
of this, the design here and apply that to my canvas design
here and again, may or may not work in this instance is probably
not very easy to read the text, but I do like the color that's applied,
so the color is quite nice and I might change the fonts to make it more relevant.
Another great feature is using photos within cover themselves.
So I used to have to go to the stock imagery website is like on Splash,
for example, download them put into Canada.
And what they've added in the last
few years is actually able to find these imagery straight from camera.
The self is all listed in here, and a lot of these are royalty free,
which is fantastic you can use for your different projects.
So there are lots of other great imagery that you can look through here.
That's all very what
why think is actually not very stock image like, which is fantastic.
It makes him a lot more natural to actually work with.
And there are also major recommendations, which basically are
the ones that Canva recommends on the back of what you chosen.
You can see that here.
These are all relevant to the ones that I've chosen along the lines
of, you know, someone working in office using a coffee mug, etc., etc.
So all great imagery to choose from.
So one more feature I want to show you guys is a really cool one
I think can save everyone a lot of time in creating content
for different social media platforms
because you know that on different social media platforms,
there are different sizes being required of the specific posts,
and that's always a bit of a headache, because then you have to resize
your creative, your your creation here into different sizes.
That makes sense for that platform, and that might take a lot of time
on your part. You can choose that as well, so you won't want to Instagram Story.
You want it to be a Facebook post.
You may want to be, let's say, a video of this size,
whichever it is, you can then click on this
and then magically transforms your existing design
into that specific size perfectly proportions, which is amazing.
It's a huge time saver.
So, you know, coming to the end of the video,
I want to just go through some of the key things
that made me consider a transition to a pro.
These things all really kind of warranted a paid plan with Canva.
So that's my personal opinion anyway.
And let me know what you think in the comments, whether or not
you want to try this feature out.
The good thing is to have a try for free function, so maybe give it the.
See how that works for you.
Great. That's it for today on the Canada tutorial.
I hope that you found it helpful.
And let me know if any questions in the comments below.
I look forward to hear from you
if you've been using Canva for a while or maybe just getting started.
Make sure to let me know in the comments below how today's story has helped you
and also any other tips and tricks
that you want to share with all of us here as well.
And if you really connect with me further, I'd love to hear from you.
So head over to Instagram or Twitter at I am Laurie Wayne and you'll be
able to find me there or send me a message if you'd like this video.
Make sure to hit the thumbs up button
and share with your friends so they can benefit from it as well.
Thank you for watching and looking forward to seeing you next time.