If you’re a small business (or indeed many a big business!) chances are you have a Canva account. 

Without a doubt this website has had a profoundly disruptive influence on how businesses build their brand. Before Canva, we had to rely on expensive, and much more complex to use Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. It was difficult for small businesses owners to make anything look professional without paying for design support. I believe there is still a place for professional designers, and I have worked with them continuously throughout my career, but when it comes to the day to day, nothing beats Canva.

It’s well worth upgrading to the Pro account in my opinion, when you consider you might be using this multiple times a week or even daily, the $119.40 a year is great value. I’ve created 291 designs this year alone on my own account, and that doesn’t include the ones I’ve done for clients which would easily be an additional 200.

But are you really getting the most out of it? Here are some tips and tricks I’ve picked up to help elevate your designs, and of course your business!

Ps… bonus game, have a shot of ginger or matcha tea every time I say the word “nifty.”

1. Load up your Brand Kit

If you’re on Canva Pro, the first thing you want to do is load up your colours, fonts and logos into Brand Kit for easy access when you’re building designs. If you only have one dominant colour, it’s worth exploring how to create a complementary palette. Canva have some great tools to help you here, these are my favourite:

• If you have an image you love, you can upload it here to help you isolate colours.

• If you’re lacking inspiration you can choose one of their tried and tested palettes.

It’s always worth having about 4-5 colours to play with in your designs.

When it comes to choosing a font, Canva also comes to the rescue! Here are some handy combinations you might like for your brand.

2. Magic Resize

I love this tool! If you have created a design asset for one medium, such as instagram, and you want to resize it to fit another channel, one click and it’s done, at the optimum size. You’ll need to have a little play around to get it to perfectly fit the new template size but it saves a lot of time. 

You can also select multiple at once. Mega saver!

3. Download transparent background

This is a super nifty little feature. If for example you have a logo and you want only your icon bit, not the entire full square, downloading a transparent background will remove everything behind so you keep the bit you want. Make sure you actually have removed the background on your design or it’s set to white. 

To find this, click download, choose PNG, then click transparent background. Easy peasy.

4. Hyperlink your documents

Canva absolutely isn’t just for social media posts. If you have a brochure for a service you run, or a digital flyer, did you know you can easily hyperlink within the document? This is a great idea to make it even easier for your customers, especially if you’re linking to a booking page or somewhere other than your homepage.

You just need to click the link icon when you’ve highlighted the text, and add your url.

5. Erase a background

At first glance, you might be thinking you don’t need that, but actually it’s super handy if you have an image of yourself, or a product image that you want to add to a design, you just need to choose “Background Remover” tool, it’s so simple. 

Well worth experimenting with this one!

(Shout out to my sister for unknowingly modelling for me!)

6. Create icons for your website

I love to create easy icons in my brand colours to use on my website. If you have a range of services it can be so helpful to have a small image to demonstrate what you sell. 

Canva also enables you to look within one collection so you can ensure they all have a similar look and feel. And if you have your brand kit loaded up it’s even easier to get them looking ace. (This is an example where you want to download with a transparent background).

7. Use frames for creative images

There are some great options within the frames section, such as adding your image into a phone screen, old fashioned photo and so much more. These look great on Instagram stories and are a super nifty way to bring a different look to your pictures.

8. Create a QR code

This is a fab feature if you want to add a QR code to a business card or a flyer, Canva makes it really easy. If you haven’t used QR codes before, the customer scans the image using their phone camera and a link appears to take them through to a particular site. With my marketing hat on, I’ll always say make this a unique landing page, not just your homepage so you can measure engagement coming from this channel. 

All you need to do is click the ‘More’ option from the left sidebar then select the QR code Generator under Apps and Integrations and add your chosen url.

9. Create many types of design

As I mentioned so far you might only have been using Canva to create social media posts but you can create so much much! 

• Flyers, there is a huge range of designs which you can then upload to Vistaprint or similar websites.

• Postcards, if you fancy a change from flyers, you could do postcards to write a nice message to your customers, or include a giveaway.

• Logos, if you are short on budget, you can easily create your own logo using the many many templates available, look for something simple, easy to read and see.

• Email headers, if you send newsletters, you can brand really lovely email headers to go at the top of your email. I always recommend a follow up email if someone signs up on your website too.

• Brochures, if you run a retreat or want to introduce a pricing programme of any sort, Canva have many A4 or A5 templates available.

• Presentations, if you need to deliver a formal presentation, you can’t go wrong with a canva template, there are many to choose from, they aren’t all super formal ones.

• Videos, gifs and reels, you have maaaany options here. You can create animated gifs, use canva for videos (e.g. if you had a birthday celebration to share on social media) or even reels, they have many videos to choose from or upload your own.

• Covers, you can create reel or instagram highlight covers using their range of options, great to keep your social media looking professional.

• Gift Certificates, if you sell gift vouchers, why not make it look really special, whether you’re printing physical versions or doing digital vouchers, it’s so easy to have it look lovely and make a unique gift.

• Branded stickers, if you have a shop or sell products of any kind, stickers with your logo can look super smart.

• Event headers, if you run events on a platform like Eventbrite, Facebook, or your own booking site, creating professional looking event headers is quick and easy. Tiny steps to elevate your brand.

Phew, I think that’s enough for today! It’s really worth looking across your entire customer journey at where you can ensure brand consistency and help your business to be as enticing as possible!

Goes without saying, I’m here if you would like any bespoke templates made or any tips to get the most out of Canva for your business. And please subscribe to my newsletter below!