Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Canva Tutorial: Graphic-Design Online”.
In this tutorial, we’re gon na look at an online tool that I find myself using more and more, and it’s called canva you’ll find it at canva.com and it’s all about design, designing web graphics or banners or certificates, or just about any kind of either online graphics Or print graphics, so when you get to canva.com, you just get started by choosing your primary purpose for using canva, I’m gon na select education and I can sign up using my Google account or if I prefer, I can sign up with email. I think I’ll go with sign up with Google and when I select that it will bring up a screen where I’ll need to grant access to. My Google account. So if you’re, okay with that, this is a good option. Otherwise, you might want to choose sign up with email. So give me a second to sign up with my Google account and then I’ll resume the video all right. Now that I’ve authorized canva with my Google account.
I now have a brand new canva.com account and you’ll see at the bottom of the screen. Here there are some recommended projects that I could do. I could create a poster. I could create some graphics for a presentation underneath that there’s a section where my own designs will appear once I’ve designed them.
So, let’s look at how easy it is to start creating your own designs up here at the top. It asks the question: what would you like to design – and this is the brand new version of canva – the older version of canva looked a little different. It had a whole bunch of layouts displayed on the screen, but to simplify things. Canva has rolled all of that into this little search box, so I can click there and I can say I would like to create a Twitter header and it comes up with an option and I can select Twitter header and it pops up with the correct dimensions. Exactly to the specifications that Twitter wants for my Twitter header, so that’s one example: I’m gon na go ahead and close that I’ll just X out of it in addition to a Twitter header, I could make a Facebook banner or cover image. Let’S see what options they have for Instagram can see that I can make an Instagram post or an Instagram story graphic. What about something like a certificate for my students, I’ll just type in certificate, and you can see there our gift certificate options and more academic. I guess certificate options: let’s take a look at how quickly I could create or adapt an existing certificate for my own students.
So you can see here at the left. There are some suggested certificates to award certificates to choose from 2 diploma certificates, work, certificates, appreciation, and it just goes on and on the different kinds of certificates. Now you may be noticing that some of these say free and some don’t so, for example, this one does not say free, it still seemed to add it to the page for me, but there may be some limitations with this.
It might not allow me to print or things like that, so just be aware, if it doesn’t say free, there may be some restrictions to it. I’M gon na click the undo button here at the top of the screen. To get rid of that, I want you to know also that these are just two of each kind of certificate.
So if I would like more award certificate options, I can just click here where it says all, and now I get many many more options with again. Some of them being free in this case it looks like most of them are free, but a few that may not be free all right. I’M gon na select this one here. It adds it to my project and now, if I want to focus more on my project now, I can hide this panel just by clicking that tab and I can increase the zoom on the project or if I want to, I can even go to full screen Mode to see pretty much exactly what that will look like once it’s done, I’m gon na escape out of it.
At this point I can just double click or even triple click, to highlight the text that I want to change and then it’s as simple as typing. So I’d like to put in a person’s name here next, I can click to change the name of the school principal in this case, and maybe the class advisor, maybe I’ll change this to the teacher and I’ll just double click or triple click where it says class Advisor and I’ll change this to teacher so that quickly, I have adapted this certificate so that it’s ready to be used with my own students. If I want to, I can click to add some elements to this design. I could put in some photos and they have a whole bunch of free photos.
I could add some grids, so I could basically split this certificate in half and have an image on one side and image on the other in this case. That does not make any sense. I could also add some various shapes to the project, this one’s all white, but I could click on it and, if I wanted to, I could change the color here at the top to a different color.
I could then shrink the shape down if I want to, or need to, and put that where I want it to be. I mentioned photos: let’s take a look at an example of that we’ve got three suggested photos, but I can click all to see. All of the 1.5 million high-quality free photos and illustrations – that’s gon na.
Take me a while, though, to look through all of these, so instead I’m gon na search the free photos for ia basketball, and that gives me some good options to choose from you can see. Some of these are not free; some of them are I’ll click and drag this free option onto my design shrink it down, and so I love this feature that, yes, there are some pre-made designs, but you can also adapt them. You can add your own elements. You can bring in photos, graphics, charts, illustrations and much more.
We can also add text. They have various free text, fonts that you can choose from, and then they also have some that might be for paying customers only so I’ll just drop this font onto the certificate and I will shrink it down and this can serve maybe as the signature for Anna Smith, I just triple clicked on it and I can type Anna Smith. You can adjust the background a little bit if you would like you, can add these different backgrounds, I’m gon na undo that you can also upload your own images or, like it says here, just drag one from your desktop, so this is much more than just using Other people’s content to quickly create a document or a graphic. No, you can combine your photographs, your own drawings, your own designs from other programs, there’s a lot of good things you can do here. We also have some folders. This would be a folder of purchased graphics.
That you buy from canva, you can use your own designs as templates, and this can be a folder of those and you can create other photo folders or design folders. Finally, here at the Left we do have some apps. Now most of these apps are probably going to cost some money for you, for example, this animation Pro you can turn canva designs into animations and videos. That sounds amazing. I click on it, though, and it’s only free for 30 days and then there’s a cost associated with it. So you’ll have to look into those apps and see whether or not they make sense for you. I’M just gon na close this little panel and I’m happy with this certificate. It looks awesome notice across the top here there are a few options that you do. Have you can title of the page basketball certificate? I could click here to add some notes. This certificate is awarded to the third best basketball player in the school annually.
I can now click to save that, and it’s just a note to remind me of things that are related to the document, and we have some other tools here as well. That I think you’ll find are rarely used like you can copy this page to create a second page. Ok, so now I have two that look very similar and I can delete one of those pages. If I would like, if you do have more than one page, you can move up and down between the two pages or the three pages. But again, I think you’ll find yourself using those very rarely ok, now that I’m done with this and I’m ready to use it with my students or with any audience up at the top. I can do some things like rename: it maybe I’ll call this basketball certificate again. Just like I named each page basketball certificate, and then I have these options for sharing this document.
Probably the easiest and the one I use most often is download it just downloads. A copy of this document, in this case in PNG format, now you’ll notice that there is a cost associated with this. It’S three dollars and the reason for that is because of the template that I chose.
So if I regret the look, how easy it is to switch to a different template, one that is free, all I would have to do is find that free template there. It is, and now of course I would have to copy each of the elements that I want from the design that I’m not going to be able to use, and I would just paste that onto the new document. So this could be easier, but I really should have been more careful about picking a template that would meet my needs better. That would be free okay, so you get the idea.
I’Ve copied most of the information over now. If I delete this other template, let’s see what happens now when I try to download it now, there is no cost associated with it. I can download it as a PNG or as a JPEG or a PDF.
I’M gon na stick with PNG, I’ll click download and it’s preparing my design. It’S combining all of the elements together into one image. You can see this advertisement pops up to try the 30 days for free, I’m just gon na click continue editing and here’s. My download, if I click on that, it’s probably in my downloads folder on my computer, but I can just click on it and there. It is here’s a certificate that I could print.
I might want to print it black-and-white or if I have a color printer print in color, but I’ll tell you. This is much better than I could have produced on my own without canva. I want to show you one more example: yes, I’ve used canva for these kinds of things like a certificate or a card for a family member or a friend, but the way I use it more than any other is to create online graphics for my classes that I teach so let’s look at how easy and quick it is to do that. I’M just gon na type in banner and I’ll go with a blog banner, but it doesn’t really matter that much okay. So let’s say I’m teaching a Spanish 2 course. I’M gon na search for any templates that might be related to Spanish. It doesn’t look like there are any, maybe I’ll, search for language or Mexico or Spain. So you can see Mexico gave me some options, so I could simply select that and use this design.
I don’t particularly like it, though, so instead, I’m just gon na select a background. I can either use one of these background images or a solid color, and I gon na quickly choose one I’ll pick this one here. Next, I can add some elements if I want to – and at this point I’m gon na search for Spain to see what I can find there’s a bunch of great options, some of which costs some are free, but I’m gon na go with this one here, this Flag of Spain and I’ll maybe put this over here at the left – shrink it down a little bit, you’ll notice that you get some guidelines that help you know where the center is both horizontally and vertically I’ll. Put it right there and then I’ll add some text. This one looks kind of fun, so I’ll click and put that on the screen into the document and shrink it down, and then I will simply triple click on it and I’ll call.
This Spanish looks like I need to delete the word cheese. I don’t really need this other text, so I can just delete that if I want to, I can make the font bigger or smaller. I could add some more decoration, some more pictures here, but for now I’m pretty happy with this and to get this into my learning management system or onto my teacher website or blog or wherever I want to put it.
All I have to do. Is click download, I’ll select, PNG click, the download button and I’m gon na have a really nice banner for my Spanish to class, and it took me very little time at all to create this now, I’m sure you could do better than this with your own artistic Sensibilities and abilities, I’m sure, you’ll be able to create even better graphics using canva than I have really quick. I want you to see that you can also share in a variety of ways. You can share your design with others, so they can either help you edit.
It or just view it simply by putting their email addresses into this box, you can invite people to edit or just to view also, if you click this arrow, that’s next to the download button. There are options to publish to a Facebook group or page to twitter. Pinterest tumblr and a whole bunch of other options too, so I have to say I really like using canva. I find myself using it more and more. I’Ve come to depend on it more and more. I hope that you found this tutorial to be helpful. If you did, please click the like button below and consider connecting with me on my social media websites like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, and definitely do subscribe to my youtube channel for more videos about technology for teachers and students and when you do subscribe. Please click the bell next to the subscribe button that way you’ll be notified whenever I post another video and watch for another video from me at least every Monday. If you’d like to support my youtube channel, consider becoming a supporter of mine through my patreon account and you’ll find a link to that in the description below .