How to Use Canva To Make Your own Design

Amin Siddiqui
5 min readJun 2, 2022

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A Images On simple guide how to use canva to make your own design

Canva is a free online graphic design tool allowing you to create or modify images and designs. Its intuitive, user-friendly interface allows you to express your passion for art and design without having to invest any time in studying or learning. It’s the perfect tool for all types of users, whether you’re a beginner or an expert. Canva is a great way for beginners to use more advanced features such as adding text over an image or using shapes and layers. It’s also perfect for people looking to make designs quickly with minimal resources. In this article, you learn What is canva ? How to use canva? Step-by-step guide on Canva let’s dive in. It saves you time and streamlines the creative process.

What is Canva?

Canva is a design and publishing platform. It allows you to create designs for your social media, blog, website, and more.

Canva was founded in 2012 by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams. It was originally designed for non-designers to be able to create their own designs without having to hire a designer.

Canva started out by offering a photo editor and designing images for your blog and social media platforms. The product has evolved into an all-in-one tool that can help you create all kinds of different content types like presentations, infographics, posters, documents, social media posts, flyers and more.

Canva is free to use with the option of purchasing premium elements in the app. Canva has a large library of photos and graphics that are completely free to use

If you’re a student, lucky you because Canva offers a free Pro account to all students who can provide proof of enrollment at their school. This opens up all the features of the Pro account.

Free Sign-up 👆

How to Use Canva — Step by Step Guide

Go to the homepage and choose a template that suits your needs. The templates are organized into groups such as Blogs, Facebook Posts, Instagram posts, Logos, Banners, etc.

  • Once you find something that fits your idea for a design, click on it to open it in the editor window.
  • When you are ready to create something from scratch go to the top menu and click Create a Design button then select the Blank Canvas option from the drop-down list.
  • Click on the background icon on the left side of your screen: choose any colour or upload an image or a patterned background if necessary (you can also change those later). You’re all set to start creating!

I have been using Canva since the beginning of 2022 and I love how easy it is to navigate around the app.

If you are new to Canva or maybe you’re thinking about using it but aren’t sure how then this post is for you. I know that when I first started using it, I was overwhelmed with all the different elements inside the app so I hope this post will help you get more familiar with the app.

We’ve got a variety of templates you can use to make your design, or you can start from scratch. If you’re not sure where to begin, try the explore tab! In the search bar up top, type in what kind of design you want to make and Canva will come back with some templates that might be useful. So if you want to make a birthday card, type “birthday cards” into the search box and hit enter on your keyboard.

You can browse through all of the results, or scroll down for more specific categories. When you find one that looks like it could be helpful, click on it and either edit it to suit your needs (if it isn’t quite right) or print/download/share it!

To create something from scratch:

  • Click “create a design” at the top left
  • Choose a template size — something like the Facebook post is probably most relevant for me but there are others as well
  • Canva will open up with an 18k gold-coloured background — change this by clicking on it once (or if this is how your template starts out, just move along)
  • Drag over any elements you want — text boxes, images, shapes… add more than one element by holding shift while selecting them

You can use Canva on desktop or mobile.

Canva is available on desktop and mobile! If you have an Apple or Android device, you can download the Canva App from the App Store or Google Play Store.

Alternatively, visit [canva. com](www.canva.com) on your internet browser for the web version that works perfectly on any computer. Both versions are free to use, but you will need to create an account to save your designs and access more features as well as stock images and photos.

Open up Canva in your web browser on a desktop computer or launch the app on mobile (you can also login via mobile by tapping Sign in > Log in with email).

How to Create Designs On Canva?

There are premium elements you can buy for your designs, but most of the content is free.

  • You can use Canva to make free graphics and designs by finding free elements in the search bar or by using a filter. The free elements will have no crown.
  • There are also premium elements you can purchase for a small fee, like this one:
Canva Premium Elements

You can adjust image opacity and transparency.

Add text to an image — You may want to add text to an image for a number of reasons, such as writing a quote on top of a photograph.

Watermark your images — If you are using an image from Canva’s library, you can make it unique by adding your own watermark.

Make distracting backgrounds less distracting — If you want the viewer to focus on the image and not what is in the background, you can use opacity to make objects in the background less obvious.

Fade out or blend colours — Let’s say that you have two colours next to each other but they don’t match perfectly and it looks bad. You can use transparency or opacity to fade out one colour into another so they look better together.

Make something completely transparent — Sometimes you want something that is completely transparent so it blends with its surroundings or appears invisible. This is easy with Canva as well because 100% opacity makes something appear invisible!

Originally published on -> bloggingwithamin.com

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Amin Siddiqui

Passionate about helping businesses increase their online visibility and connect their Ideal potential buyer with SEO.