How to use Canva to elevate your brand

Canva and social media graphics that are always on-brand give your business that professional look and trust factor.

One of the most versatile tools for practitioners and small businesses is Canva because it allows you to stay on brand as you create everything for your business. Canva is both intuitive and affordable. 

Anybody who has used Microsoft Word or Google Doc can easily understand Canva and it allows a small business owner to stay completely on-brand with all social media campaigns at a very affordable annual price. 

The importance of staying on brand

Consistency is mightily important for any business and its branding. That means that in every campaign, email and pamphlet you need to ensure that your fonts, image styles, colors, language, and patterns are the same. 

The whole idea is that your brand is recognized just from these elements before clients even see your business name. 

How to avoid going off-brand? 

Canva templates are great for creating one-off personal invitations, but they should not be used to create and maintain a brand. If you are going to use one of these, you cannot use any of the pre-loaded Canva elements, but need to use your own to ensure consistency. That includes fonts, colors, logo and photo styles. 

1. Choose the dimensions

When you log in to your Canva account you will have all your loaded brand elements available to you. These you have either loaded with the help of Canva or pre-chosen yourself. 

Get started by choosing from the wide array of options available to you. It includes every type of option from flyers to Instagram posts. 

2. Start with your design

Prefer not to use the pre-made designs on the left of the screen and instead use your chosen color and photo from your upload section. New photos can also be uploaded and dragged onto the Canva screen. 

3. Add your approved brand text

From the text icon, you can see which brand fonts are approved for you. You first select if you will be writing a heading, sub-heading or text and then you choose the text style. Make sure you set them up and upload your fonts to keep it consistent and save time

4. Size and color adjust

Font size, capitalization, color, spacing for letters and line-height can all be changed at this stage and the settings are similar to those of Microsoft Word and Google Docs, so you will find them immediately. Make all your adjustments until you are completely satisfied. 

5. Pick your elements

From “Elements” on the left side of the screen, you can use any shapes, icons, illustrations, or lines by clicking on the icon of the element you want. These can be dropped onto the design by clicking on them and they can be resized, proportioned and recolored. Even their transparency can be adjusted. 

6. Time to download your design and use it

Once completed your design is ready to download in four different formats. The download button is on the right-hand corner of your screen and allows you to first choose between JPEG (for photos), PNG (for text), PDF Standard (for links), and PDF Print (for professional prints). Once you have chosen the format you can hit download. Your design is now ready to use for your social media marketing campaign, website, and print. 

Task completed!

If you would like help with graphic design or a 1:1 tutorial on Canva, please contact me or comment below.