5 Tips and Tricks to Customize Your Canva Graphics

​Here are the best ways to elevate your graphics and impress your audience with your visuals. 
By Alejandro Vazquez

​Whether you are a huge company or a small blogger trying to build an audience, nothing attracts new followers more than a compelling visual. With Canva, there are many ways to create graphics ranging from social media posts, flyers, presentations and even merchandise, which will help with promotions and branding. For new users it might seem a little tricky, but here are five tips and tricks that will help push your graphics to the next level. 

1. Invest in Canva Pro
By upgrading to Canva Pro, you are getting your dollars’ worth with every feature that comes included. Starting at $9.99 per month, the upgrade comes with exclusive features, like premium templates, full access to Canva’s element and photo libraries, different sizing, more download options and access to an extensive font library, which will help elevate your graphics to another level. This upgrade will help with creating an even larger array of designs and make the whole process more streamlined by having more to choose from. The worst feeling is when you find the perfect font that would compliment your design, but then you realize it's only available on the premium version. With Canva Pro this is not the issue. 

Pro tip: If the price tag is a little too high, feel free to split the price by sharing the account with another person. That way, you both have access to the perks but at a fraction of the price. 

2. Set up your style guide to ensure cohesion
Being a graphic design tool, Canva comes equipped with different features that help make the design process a lot simpler. Most notably, they offer a handy feature called the brand kit resource guide. Here the user can pre-save any logos, fonts and color palettes and have them readily available to them when they’re designing. This tool is the most helpful because it has all the branding elements readily available, eliminating that extra step of having to go back-and-forth through windows. This way, all the designs and elements made have the same look and feel, adding value to the company's brand identity. In order to set this up, you need to have the color codes of the different brand colors, the fonts in a downloaded file and any logo in a PNG version. 

Pro tip: A transparent PNG makes adding logos a lot easier since it no longer has the background.

 3. Templates are your best friends
Both versions of Canva come equipped with templates for any project you have in mind. These templates are very useful because they help get ideas flowing and work with any drag-and-drop situation. The great thing about these templates is that they are all customizable and can be edited in whichever way is necessary. With every month, Canva releases new templates with either generic designs or with designs tailored to a specific holiday or event. The possibility is endless with all the options provided.

When it comes to templates, the beauty of Canva is that you can customize the template to your liking. You can rearrange the layout, customize the colors, add or remove elements or even merge two templates together. Although you can start from scratch, templates are extra handy when you don't know what vision you have in mind. 

Pro tip: If you find the perfect template but it happens to be the wrong colors, Canva gives you the option to customize and use your colors! All you have to do is open up that template and select which elements you want to change and choose which color works best. 

 4. Use the ‘positions’ feature to clean everything up
When designing with multiple elements, it gets tricky when it comes to aligning your design. Luckily, Canva has a helpful feature that allows the user to organize different elements when designing. The ‘positions’ feature helps the user make sure all the elements are aligned. This comes in handy whenever an element needs to be centered or when space needs to be evenly distributed between different elements. 

To use it, all you have to do is highlight the different elements you want to organize and select from the different options available. Of the options, the most helpful is the ‘tidy up’ tool since it makes sure all the elements are even with proper space between them.

Pro tip: If you want to move elements that are supposed to be together, make sure to group them first so that they do not get rearranged when you reposition them.

 5. Keep the hierarchy of type size in mind
With any design, the type is an important element because it informs the user or reader where to look first. With a hierarchy of type, the designer allows the reader to know where to move their eyes when reading and to assert visual cues and flows. If all the type on the page is the same size, the reader does not know where to look and your message will get lost. 

On Canva, the perfect way to achieve this is by playing with different fonts, point sizes, weight and characteristics. Both versions of Canva give the designer access to their library of font combinations and templates which practice the rules of hierarchy in type size. The best way to think of it is that the most important message needs to be the biggest and any supplementary information can be reduced in size. 

Pro tip: One thing to keep in mind is what kind of graphic you are creating and if the reader is going to have trouble reading it. For example, if you are creating an Instagram story, you do not want to bombard the reader with paragraphs of information. In this case, pick and choose the most important info and then include that in the graphic. 

Hopefully, with these tips, you can elevate your graphics to a new level and create compelling visuals for your followers and users. With the resources provided in Canva, the possibilities are endless. So do not be afraid to experiment with new designs. You are bound to learn something new from it every day. 

Click here to check out Canva and get started on creating some amazing visuals!