The very first page design program I learned was InDesign back in high school, and it was a pain. I learned it for laying out the school newspaper and would need to spend countless hours working on spacing. It wasn’t intuitive at all, but fortunately, through both experience and better development of the software, it got easier to use in college. It’s a super expensive program and out of reach for the average person, but luckily, as that software and others like it evolved, more accessible, similarly-functioning programs emerged. One of those is Canva. I’ve been using it for a long time, and I get asked often how to use Canva. Here’s a quick and dirty basic tutorial for how to use Canva, why you’d want to use it, and how it can be super valuable for authors, librarians, and bloggers alike.

How To Use Canva As An Author, Librarian, or Blogger

Before diving too deep into this, let me start by noting that this is for those using Canva on a desktop and making use of the non-subscription service. I’ve had a subscription before and found it nice, but it’s absolutely not necessary. You can do virtually everything you’d want to do with the basic, free program. Register as a user so you can have your projects saved.

What Is Canva and Why Use It?

Canva is a graphic design program and it uses “drag and drop” as its design methodology. This means you don’t need to do anything if you don’t want to for design, but there are plenty of functionalities available for those who want to try their hand at designing something fresh. It’s good for both print and digital design — this means for someone like a librarian, it can be great for book lists, signage, or other advertising for programs, and for bloggers and authors, it’s great for making eye-catching graphics to share information.

I use Canva in two primary ways. First, I use it for my work at Book Riot. I’m in charge of maintaining our Pinterest presence, meaning that I choose what to put on Pinterest and optimize for greatest visibility. I also create Pinterest images for Stacked posts with it. My author use for Canva comes in creating graphics that can be used on social media for advertising upcoming events, book deals, and other shareable content. This tutorial will focus on using the Instagram templates, but the same steps are used for creating a Pinterest image, as well as bigger poster projects, infographics, and more.

What makes using Canva’s templates great is that they are optimized for the medium. Pinterest’s best images are 600 pixels wide by 900 pixels tall. You don’t need to know this in order to create the ideal Pinterest image, as Canva has that automatically set for you. The same thing goes with an Instagram image, a Facebook header, and other mediums. This also means when those optimal sizes change, you don’t need to remember. Canva will update the templates.

Templates are regularly updated meaning that you won’t get bored by using the same one or two templates over and over (though, frankly, that’s totally fine too!). You have a lot of flexibility with color choices and layouts, and with a little creativity when it comes to images, sticking to a single template or two can cut down on decision overload.

Sourcing Images

I find pulling together something much easier when I’ve front loaded my work and pulled out some images that I want to use in the design. For anyone with a cohesive brand design, have those files ready to upload. For authors, have your book covers and — hot tip! — if your publisher will let you have the design files from your book cover, use them. I always ask when we have a final cover design for that, and it’s been invaluable in creating promotional stuff.

If you’re starting with nothing, though, there are a couple of excellent places to source free, high-resolution and high-quality stock images. The one I use most frequently is Unsplash. I keep some image collections there of things that catch my eye, often found while searching keywords for other things. If I search “library,” or “reading,” I’ll find what I want for the particular design I’m making but may also save additional images in a collection for later use. You can use these images without attribution or cost.

There are other stock image sites that operate similarly. For images of people of color, try Nappy.co. For images of fat people, use All Go. Broadly offers up a library of images featuring an entire beautiful gender spectrum. Canva has some of its own free images as well, though most are sourced from the above sites.

How To Start Using Canva

Once you’ve signed up and logged in, you’ll see this screen:

You’ll scroll through the “create a design” options for the template you want to use. In my case, it’ll be the Instagram Post. When you select your template, your browser might open a new tab (mine does!) for the design area.

 

On the left side are the various templates from which you can choose. Since I’m going to be making a schedule of my upcoming book-related events, I want something that’s going to give me some room for text, as well as an image or two. This might be the hardest part of using Canva — you really need to figure out what you need in advance so you save yourself time scrolling because there are a lot of templates to look through.

One thing you’ll see periodically is that a template is not “free.” You’ll know it’s a premium (aka, you have to pay for it) template because the image or design elements will have the Canva watermark on it.

 

You have a couple of options, though. First, you can, of course, pay for it. If you want to use the template but don’t want to pay for it, though, you can! This is legal. Just delete the image or the graphic design that is watermarked and replace it with your own. You’ll be able to download normally.

Since I think this template is going to work best for my upcoming book event schedule, I’ll begin by deleting that watermarked image and be left with just the text box.

I’ve highlighted the text inside the black box. The text is in two different sizes here: large, which is highlighted, and small, which is just below that. They’re in two separate text boxes. Sometimes, Canva has them “locked.” This means whatever you do with one box will happen with the other (if you move it up or down, to the left or right, all of the locked boxes move together). You can unlock the boxes, though. Where those three dots are above my design, to the right of “spacing,” you’ll see a lock and clicking it will lock or unlock your design. Sometimes, that lock will be right on the bar beside the dots and it serves the same function.

 

From here, I’ll begin to work on my text. I want the big text to explain what the graphic is for, followed by the smaller text giving the basic details. This will involve a little changing of font size (that’s in the tool bar beside the “A” with a color gradient below it) and also potentially some shifting of alignment of text (that’s beside the italicized “i” in the tool bar).

Though it’s not always the case, this particular template made the black box get longer as my text got longer. If you use a template where it’s not automatically resized, you can click the box and manually adjust the size. You’ll see four white circles around the corners of the box, and you’ll just drag to lengthen and can click again on the box to move it around on the template.

Even when you use a template, you are not married to keeping it exactly as it looked. Rather, you can use it to begin getting creative on your own. If I wanted to move that black box to the left side of the design, I can. I like it on the right, so I’ll leave it there.

The next step is putting a background image into the design. I have the files from my book covers, and while not all of these events are specifically for or about (Don’t) Call Me Crazy, I know that the design will pop with the black box and white text. I’ll begin by uploading the image — the box on the far left side of the page is where I’ll click to begin uploading.

Everything you upload will stay in the upload section, so long as you have an account. This is really convenient if you tend to use the same designs or need the same images over and over.

To get my image over to the background of my template, I’ll drag and drop it. This can take a little finagling, depending on how Canva feels that day. It’s possible you’ll just drop the image in the middle of the template and it stays small. It’s also possible you need to delete it from your design and try again. Eventually, it will stick.

If your image is longer than the design, you can scoot it around, as I did below.

 

Voila! I could be happy leaving this exactly like it is and call it a day. But, I also know that for book events, having my face on the image can be super helpful for those who don’t know what I look like and want to make a connection between the me they know online and the me they see in person. So I’m going to upload a headshot here, and I’m going to center it on the left side.

Even though there’s not a specific image box there — some templates will have those — I can still add anything I want. I will be given guides, too, to tell me when I have an image centered.

I couldn’t decide whether I liked the color or black and white photo better. My headshot has a cool designed canvas behind it, and that design competes a bit with the background of the project I’m working on in Canva. It’s not ideal to my eye, but it looks better in color than in black and white.

I like the photo laying on top of the black box, but if I wanted to, I could send the photo behind it, so that the edge of my photo is behind the date box.

 

To reposition anything on my design, I just need to click on it, and this tool bar pops up. From left to right: you can filter your images, making them any variety of colors or gradients. You can adjust the size of the image with the adjust tool (I find using the corners easier, but you might not!). You can crop your images, and if you want to flip your images, you can do that, too. The duplicate tool does exactly what it says, while that position tool allows you to move an image forward or backward on the canvas. This is what I’d click to send my head shot behind the black box. Note: if you have an image on your canvas and play with position and it disappears, it might be hidden behind other images.

The gradient image you see will allow you to highlight or desaturate the selected image. The link will allow you to link that image (I’ve never used this tool before). The lock was explained above — and if I wanted to, since I am happy with this design, I could click all of the elements and lock them into place now. I don’t tend to do that since I don’t do heavy designing or font work, but if you do or want to try it, lock what you know you don’t want to lose in your design.

Saving Your Canva Project

Your projects will automatically save as you make adjustments. But when you come to the end of your project and you’re happy, you have a few options for what to do with the thing you’ve made.

 

You can simply download the image and select what kind of file type you prefer. You can also upload the image to a presentation, send it to a Facebook group or page, or share it to Twitter or email. There are options to send it to your Pinterest account, too.

I downloaded my image, saved it on my desktop, and am on my merry way.

Other Tips and Tricks

A few additional tools you might want to play with in Canva will give you a chance to explore more images, more design elements, and other fun ways to spice up your graphics.

As you’ll see on the left-hand size, you have an additional toolbar. From top to bottom, you have you templates (in the event you start designing one and want to try a different one!). Then you have photos, which allows you to search both images and clip art. You can search the ones that are free, as well as the ones that are premium, and you’ll know which is which easily.

Elements, the next option, allows you to add some pizazz to your design. You can add circles or squares or other shapes, among other things. Text, as you might imagine, lets you add all kinds of text options to your design, and background gives you some pre-made images you can use as a background anywhere you’d like. There are a lot of great ones.

Your tool bar, as seen above, that lies above your work in progress, has options for changing your font colors, your fonts, and more. Any elements you add to the canvas, such as a box or a shape, you can change the color and gradients of as well.

Since this is a basic tutorial for how to use Canva, I’m not going to dig in much more — rather, I invite you to play around and see how you can use this free program for your own graphic design needs. It’s made for those without knowledge of design at all, and it’s equally useful for those who do this on the regular.