Be your own designer with Canva! Design made simple
Now, this is interesting. Canva just launched their new design tool and website last week, and we think this opens up design to more people, more ideas, and more collaboration.
Whether you are a seasoned graphic designer or a business owner who wants a bit more control over the layout of your designs, this multifaceted tool is perfect for both. The idea came from one of the founders, who started a yearbook company called Yearbooks. Here the owners tested the simplicity and collaborative principles they knew could work in design layouts and upped the anti to include any design layout that people would use on a daily basis; brochures, Facebook headers, presentations, e-books, and more.
What design solutions does Canva bring to the table?
For untrained designers with great ideas, Canva provides a drag and drop design program that is intuitive, easy, and on one state-of-the-art platform. What discourages untrained designers to put their ideas into designs is the cost of design software, the multiple platforms required to build your designs (Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, and the list can go on), and the overwhelming about of features to be learned to create half-decent designs.
Canva has one platform that combines stock images, ready-to-use artwork, a host of predetermined layouts to choose from, and the flexibility to make all of these components their own. With their drag and drop feature, photos resize themselves to image boxes without losing quality, text, colors, and backgrounds can be added with ease, and you can work with your partners or employees to get instant feedback or create changes online.
Canva is only for Trained Professionals? Absolutely not!
For trained professionals, the layout options, integrated stock photo library, and online collaboration feature make design layout and client happiness easy. Canva is not a program to conduct designs from scratch, so logo creation, brand images are done the ‘old fashion way, but seasoned graphic designers love the automatic layouts where they no longer have to spend a ton of time lining images up, resizing images to find their brochure layout. When they drop in their graphics into the templates, they can work with their client online to get changes done fast.
The first release of Canva solves these design issues. As they grow, so will the design options people love to use. For now, this is a pretty cool system that has endless options for new designers and is a time saver for seasoned professionals.
Can I print my Canva Designs? Absolutely!
Absolutely, you will be able to export your design in a high-resolution image or printable PDF file. Both files are ready for printing and can be given to any printer without any issues. They also offer sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
There will be a collaboration feature in the very near future. They will also offer a feature to share your design with your customers and they can give feedback.
Free platform – 23 Seconds to learn
This is the highlight today to the Canva design platform. It is free to use, and it takes 23 seconds to learn. To ensure your tutorial was understood, the Canva team put together 5 design challenges for the new user to use so they can perfect their use of the platform. Awesome idea!
How do they earn money?
We do need to make note that if you use the stock photos in their library instead of your own photos (using our own photos is easy and allowed) you will be charged for the stock photos. Every use of a stock photo will cost only $1. They will add up to 5 million stock images very soon. The stock images are well-chosen and most of them have no background, so you will be able to use them right away. Just drag and drop them into your designs. You will be able to upload and use your own stock photos as well, and there is a Facebook photo import feature as well.
Canva Demo Video
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Check out the Canva platform and reserve your design name. This URL will be your studio to share when collaborating on projects, working with others, and obtaining client approval. Super cool idea, and ready to dig in and use it!
PS: Their owner is very encouraged about Canva and their Demo is very very cool. I can't wait to get their email to be able to use it myself.
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