Using Canva to Create Graphics: An Intro for Writers & Bloggers

I wrote a post last month on 8 Writing Tools We Love. It made me think about another writing tool I use frequently that both writers and bloggers could benefit from: Canva.

Canva is a great online graphic design tool and you don’t need to be a pro to use it. I discovered Canva when Richelle wrote this post about DIY Infographics and I wanted to give them a try. Graphics are great when you want to use images other than just photos in blog posts.

Canva has a free version with plenty of functionality. That’s what I use. You can pay for additional functionality or for premium templates and design elements.

Canva can be used to:

Create graphics for blog posts, websites, or social media,
Take a graphic created for one social media site and convert it to the right dimensions for another site,
Save brand colors and logos you use frequently to make it quicker and easier to create new graphics.

Below, I’ll provide a quick overview of what I use Canva for and how it works. I’ll also provide links to further resources.

Let’s get started!

How to Create Graphics for Blog Posts or Websites in Canva

Pick a project you need a graphic for and click on Canva.com to get started. For example, you might be writing a blog post and need an image for the top of your post.

If you’re good at graphic design, you can create yours from scratch. If, like me, your skills lie elsewhere, find a template you like and start editing it.

You can scan the template categories for what you need and then search within that category for designs you like.

There isn’t a category for blog posts, so I decided to create a Twitter graphic to publicize this post and then get double use out of it by using it at the top of the article as well.

I found this template I liked:

You might look at that template and say, “That looks nothing like the graphic at the top of the page.” You’d be right. I probably should have searched more and found something I didn’t need to edit as much. Still, this template had some things I wanted:

A text block with large font in the middle of the image for my headline,
A couple of graphic elements at either side I could delete and replace with our logos, and
Not a lot else. I wanted an image that wasn’t busy.

I clicked on the background to change the color to one of our website’s standard blue colors. (My blue arrows point to where you need to click.)

Clicked on the graphics and deleted them, then added in our logos by uploading them.

I clicked on the text block to change the text to my title.

And then changed the font and font size.

I also changed the text color to white for more contrast, then added in The Winged Pen and our tag line.

Canva is great about auto-saving your project so you don’t lose your work, but I also realized that maybe I should name this file for the post I was working on.

At this point, the graphic had the info I wanted and our logos, but it didn’t have much zing. I took a look at Canva’s “Elements” to find somethings I could use to add color and frame the words.

When I clicked on the cute swirl, Canva put it in my design. I moved it to where I wanted it by clicking and dragging it, and changed the size by clicking on one of those circles in the corners and dragging. I also changed the color.

Next, I copied and flipped that swirl to put a mirror image of it in the bottom right corner.

I added another flourish between my title and The Winged Pen, and then I was basically done. I did a bunch more futzing…changing the spacing between the text, the font size and the size of the logos until it looked like it does at the top of the page.

Okay, actually I tried several different swirls and tried putting the logos in the middle of the design vertically.

Warning! Canva can be a bit addictive. Frequently, I plan to spend a few minutes putting together an image and then come up with a better idea, and tweak it. . . and tweak it.

It’s kind of like writing. You can always make a design better.

Finally, I downloaded it to my hard drive and uploaded it to WordPress to put in this post.

Update:

I then woke up to find that the color-match between the blue in the logos and the background blue which matched on my computer screen did not match on my phone screen. *facepalm.* Thanks, Michelle, for coming to the rescue with 2 lovely logo images with no background. This is how the logos magically turned white.

There was more futzing involved.

Using Canva to Convert a Graphic to the Dimensions of Another Social Media Site

Have you ever noticed that the size of the standard graphic image is different for Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook? Another nice thing about Canva templates is that they come in the right dimensions for the social media site you select, so my design is good to go for Twitter since I used a Twitter template.

But what if I want to use it for Instagram? If you pay for the Pro version of Canva, it will adjust your image to the size needed for different social media platforms for you, but I’m cheap so I adjusted my image for Instagram myself.

I pulled up an Instagram template in a second tab on my web browser so I’d have the right dimensions, then basically deleted all the design elements.

Using CTRL C and CTRL V, I copied my design over from the Twitter graphic. It came in as the wrong size. I needed to move things around, change the font sizes of the text, and change the logo sizes to make the design work for Instagram.

After some dragging and resizing, the Instagram graphic looked like this.

Using Canva’s Brand Kit to Save Colors and Logos

One thing that made this project quicker than it otherwise would have been, is that Canva has a Brand Kit you can use to save colors you use consistently as well as fonts and logos.

Further Resources on Designing with Canva

Canva has a helpful video series on getting started with their site and also a more advanced one on designing with their site that you can use to learn more. Check them out!

In this post, I’ve talked about:

How to create graphics for blog posts and websites using Canva,
How to convert a design to the right dimensions for a different social media site, and
Saving brand colors and logos you use frequently to make creating new graphics quicker.
I’ve also provided links to further resources.

What do you think? Are you ready to give Canva a try?

If you use Canva now, let us know what you like about it or share a graphic you’ve created with us on Twitter.

If you enjoyed this article on how writers and bloggers can use Canva to create graphics, you might also like the following articles: