Canva for Entrepreneurs : Create a Blog Title Graphic

1. Introduction: in this lesson, we're going to learn how to make a blawg title graphic. The blog's title graphic is typically the first thing that someone sees when they visit a block post. And it is also the image that someone sees when you share that block post on a social media platform such as Facebook or Twitter. So it is very important that we create a good, compelling Blawg title graphic so that we get the audience to continue into the information that we have to offer. First, we'll look at some examples of some good block title graphics, and we'll show you some great graphic design principles such as color composition, typography and other things that go into creating a good block title graphic. After that, we'll dive directly into Canada so that I can show you how to use the tools and features of that program to create your own block. Title graphic finally will save that block. Total graphic out as a high resolution PNG. We can also save it out as a low resolution J. P. G, depending on how much server speed you have and what type of server you're using, whether it shared or host, but typically you want to use a high resolution PNG so that we can provide the best quality possible whenever that image is getting shared around the different social media platforms . At the end of this class, I encourage you to upload your block title graphic directly to this course so that everyone can take a look at what you have created. It is great motivation for you to share your designs with the world, and it's also a good chance to get any feedback or critiques from both us as instructors and the students, so that you can actually improve your artwork and make it better in the future. So if you're ready, let's go ahead and get started. 2. Examples of Blog Title Graphics: whenever I do any type of creative work, the first thing that I like to do is research and try to get some inspiration and look at different things that might work and might not work in the graphic design field. So I'll go to Google and I'll punch in whatever type of graphic I'm making at the time. So I typed in Blawg title here. Now, this isn't such a good keyword to type in because we get all kinds of different things, mostly people trying to tell you how to write a good block title. But this is a good habit to get into just so you can see what other people are doing. And it's not to steal any type of graphics, but it does help lend to inspiration, and it helps you visually see ah, bunch of images at one time of things that you might like or might not like, things you want to do. Or maybe you don't want to do so one that I see here that really stands out. Is this a quick and easy formula for writing clickable blood titles as a smaller image? This works really good. I can read everything. It's Ah, nice, nice image. The colors are good, they work together. So I'll click on that. And it's nice as a bigger image to we can make out what it says. And like I said, it's a good image. Now I can come over here and click on view Mawr if I wanted to Seymour of these types of images, But I'm going to go ahead and click on Visit Page, and when I click that it brings up their blawg page. And this is kim gorse dot com page, and you can see that the main blawg title graphic is at the top of the Blawg. So this is the blawg information down here. And if I were to take this link and copy and share it on Facebook or Twitter, this is the image that it's going to grab so would actually take this image and put that into the news feed. And that's what you'll see. So you want a good blood title graphic that really stands out because it's the first thing someone's going to see when they're scrolling through their timeline or their news feed. Another thing that you could do is you can go to a known blogger, someone that you know or that you follow personally. So here we have the smart, passive income Blawg by Pat Flynn, and you can see most of the images that he's using for his blawg. Here are these very simple images. It's a lot of negative space blank on the left hand side and a simple image on the right hand side. And if you see these, you might recognize him as his because he has the same type of format for all of his blawg entries. Now he usedto have text. Why he took it out. I'm not really sure. But at least you know that this is his type of blawg title graphic. Another type that he uses is for the S P I T. V. And you can see that this is a picture of him next to a monitor. So we know that this might be a TV or video type of graphic, and then he also uses book images whenever he's talking in his book club. So he has his own book club here, and he's actually using the cover of a book or any book that he's actually talking about at the time so you can go to a known blogger or someone that you follow and try to get inspiration that way. Then finally, you can jump over into Campbell, which is the program that we're actually going to be using. And if we scroll down to the blogging and e book section, you can click on Block title here in the center. When I have her over, you'll see the dimensions that it's actually using. And when I click on that, it opens up this page and on the left hand side we have a bunch of templates that we can choose from, and this is also another great place to get some inspiration from, because these are professional graphic design artists that camera is using to design some pre made templates. So they have a lot of graphic design theory principles behind them, and they look really great. So I clicked on this one here and you can see the best vantage points in the city, so we have good contrast and values between the white and the dark background. Since we're talking about the city, we're using a good city landscape with good negative space for a text, and it just works really well. So this is another place that you can come in and really quickly get some information in some different ideas that you would like to use for your blog's title images. Now, as we continue on in, the lesson will go ahead and will take some of these templates, and I'll show you how you can edit them and change out the images in the text in case it's a template that you like and you can make it your own. So let's go ahead and move into the next lesson. 3. Using Canva to Create a Blog Title Graphic: Once you're logged in to Camba, you want to go over to the creative design section, and here you will see a bunch of templates. And if we scroll down to the blogging and e book section, you're going to see Blawg title here in the center. Now, if I hover over this, you'll see it's 560 pixels by 315 pixels, and this is just a standard size that they have given for these templates. Now do keep in mind that with blog's your blog's title, graphic is going to be dependent on the sizing of your actual block. Some blog's have columns just on the left hand side, some on the right. Some have columns on both sides. Some don't even use columns. So this resolution will be one of the times with these templates that it may change. And if you need to make a your own block title graphic from scratch with the different resolution, you can go up to the top and click on use custom dimensions, and then you can punch in the actual dimensions that you would like to use. But for right now, we're just gonna go ahead and click on the bog title because we're going to use one of the templates and edit it so you can just see how easy it is inside a canvas to do this. And you can see some great bog title templates laid out on the left hand side. We can click on any one of these, and I can go ahead and start changing out images and text and everything that you see here . And of course, you can see that some of these do cost a dollar. Some of them are for free, so it depends on if you want to use that template or not. Now what I do recommend is, if you're doing the block title graphics, you want to try to keep some kind of consistency on your blawg. Sort of like what we saw with the smart, passive income blawg in our examples where he used the same type of blah graphic over and over. And people become accustomed to see in your style on your block and it doesn't matter what it is. It can be all text. It can be maybe just some stock images that you use. Maybe it's a combination of images and texts, as you see here. But I will try to keep some type of consistency. So what I would do is I wouldn't maybe choose a template that I can just kind of change out pictures and text constantly and keep the same style over and over again. That ways I have that kind of consistency within my blawg. So maybe I picked this one here. It says interview. But I'm not doing an interview. Uh, I want this just to be the basic template that I use all the time. So maybe I come in here and the first thing I want to do is change out this graphic. So I'm going to go to the elements, and I'm going to click on free photos in the top left hand corner. And I can come in here and just find a nice image that we can use to change this out. So let's scroll down, see what we got here. Okay? We can just pick one. Okay. Here's one that I like will pop this in here, and I want to change out the color so I don't want it to be grayscale. Let's just change it to normal for now. And maybe we're writing a bog about destinations around the world or something of that nature. So we could go ahead and we can click and we can change out this text. So let's just come up with a title off the top of our heads here will say 21 destinations that you must see. I'm gonna hit control, way to select all that and just bring down the font size so I could maybe center this and see how that looks. That looks pretty good. And then, um, you know, these block titles always have some kind of catchy little subtitle after them, so Ah, we'll say you won't believe where number seven is located. That's a pretty common thing. Whenever you're writing bog titles, you'll have some kind of catchy main title. And then maybe another catchy subtitle. See if we can make this a little bit bigger that might look good and seen if we had the ability to bold this font. Sometimes you might want to make certain text pop out. You could also change this fun. If you don't like this, See this this far it looks a little more formal, and we're talking about destinations around the world. So maybe we want to find something that is a little, uh, nicer. Maybe it's got more of a beach feel to it. Um, I don't like that one. Let's take a look around here for a moment. That's kind of cool. Change just went out to you, and you can pick something separate. You can make the second font. Um, something different if you want. Now, what I would do is I would make sure that it doesn't take away. See, that last phone was very bold, and we don't want to take away from this main fund. Actually, let me just change this main front to the same front as below, because you don't want to take the subtitle away from the main title. So at least they're the same here. Um, I don't know if I like these left justified. Maybe will center these and same thing with the the size. We don't want this to be bigger than this one. So this is 21. This is 14. So that's good. Let's see if we can bold this. Some of these you can bold and make a tallix. Some of them you can't. Okay, we can't were not gonna worry about that. Now. I just want to show you how to easily change out some of these. So this looks kind of cool. This is a good starting point. We could go in. We could change the fonts around. Of course. I just came up with these titles and subtitles Off the top of my head, you probably have something a little better. I might want this little bar to actually extend across. And when I start moving this, you see these purple lines popping up and those air guidelines those just help. Tell me where things air centered where it when I get to the end, it tells me where the best places to drop this to make it centered with everything going on here. So that's kind of cool. I don't like the white background. Maybe we can do a different color background. So let's go to the background tab will click on that, and we can change out these colors. So we got these beachy color, so maybe we can pick something that looks a little more beachy. And if I'm not finding a color I like. I'll click on this plus sign, and I can go in and try to just color pick one. So maybe I could do something that matches these board planks. Or maybe something that looks sandy. So something in the like light yellow toe, light orange kind of range. Or maybe I go the blue route and I try to pick up that ocean color or maybe that sky color . But the main thing is that we have a dark text, so we want high contrast, which means we don't want to pick a very dark color. We want to keep the background a light color. I think I really like the sandy color a little bit better. So if we if we get darker, that Texas going to get harder and harder to see. And as you can see with camp, a cool thing that happens is if you get too dark, it'll switch it over to the white so that it's providing that contrast for you. But we want to keep it nice and bright, and we want to keep it. This yellow, I think, works good. We see some of that yellow in these board planks, and it also matches the color of the sand. So I think that works really good. And that's basically a quick and simple way to make your own blah graphic. Now, if I were to be using the same template all the time, I would keep the font in the subtitle the same. I would keep the line the same, but I would change out the text to whatever the new block post is, and I would change out that image. And I want to make this image correspond to whatever I'm talking about. So maybe next time after I drop in the boardwalk, I my next one is on coffee shops. So I come in here and I put a picture of a cough, some coffee in here. If I double click on it, I can actually move the image within that frame around. So maybe I just send her up that coffee nice like this. You might want to move it just a little more. Try to get it, senators closest possible. And so now I could say, you know, um, the 17 best coffee shops around the world and that got a little too big there. So what I would do is I would come in here and I would make small changes. But I would keep the same kind of layout so that all my block post have that same kind of feel and I might change out the background color, maybe pick something that's closer to that. That Brown. I'll need to get a little darker here, and that's okay if we change it out to that white, that's fine. Maybe that looks cool. See if we can get something. And it's really useful if you go online and you find a color picker tool to help make make more colors. If you know the color code and you can punch out in, it usually makes it a little easier. And how I'm doing this. So that's pretty close. Like it darker cause I like that dark, rich coffee color. So maybe something like that. Now course this line doesn't look good, so we need to change this out. Um, we can do white where we could do this light yellow. This is kind of cool. Kind of matches the color of that cream that's going on in there. Maybe I go in here and I actually change out everything to that Korean color. I think that would look really good. So there we have it. Now we've easily made a second blawg title graphic that we can come in and use. And if I just keep the same layout saved within my camera account, I can come in here easily, change out the text, easily change out the image, and all of my blawg graphics are going to look similar that ways it provides. Ah, very nice aesthetic to someone visiting my blawg for the first time. 4. Exporting Your Blog Title Graphic: Now that we have created our blawg title graphic, the last thing that we need to do is just save it out so that we can add it to our block. The first thing that you want to do, though, is go ahead and rename it. So click up here it says, featuring John Smith, creative director, because that was the original text that was in this template. So go ahead and click on that and just name it something that you'll know. This will be the name of your graphic when you come back to Camba, and it will also be the name of the image when you download it. So we might call this 1 17 Best coffee shops hit done, then go ahead and hit the download button. If you want to make this public, you can click this button here, and it'll actually share it with other people on campus so they can see the type of work you're doing. But since we're doing a personal blogged, we don't want to share this. We can just go ahead and download it here. I'll click on this button and for a block title graphic will want to use Ah, high quality PNG file. Now, this is really dependent on your website and what kind of server you're using. If you're using a shared server with limited space, you might want to go with the low resolution J. P G file. But if you can get away with a high quality PNG and typically you can I would go ahead and download that. So I just left click on that. Now, if you've used any type of images or graphics inside of this that will make you pay, Ah, pop up will come up and I will tell you how much you owe. You'll have to put in your card information and make that purchase originally were using an image that was paid for, but we swapped it out with some free images. So of course, we don't have to pay anything. We'll go ahead and just close this out. And if you look in the bottom left hand corner 17 Best coffee shop, stop PNG and I can click on that and open it up. And there is our file in that resolution that was selected for canvas. So that looks great. And then, if I go ahead and I click on the camera title at the top left hand corner. It's going to take us back to the main page of camera, and this is where it's going to store our graphics for later use. And one cool thing that we can do is that we can make a copy of this graphic, and we can always, um, go ahead and save it out and use it later on. Like I said, if you want to use this template over and over again, we can just go ahead and click on this. Click on the drop down and select. Make a copy that will make a copy for us, and then we can go in and edit that copy that ways. We're not destroying the original, and we can keep all the different ones that we make, and you can have unlimited amounts of information in here, so I hope that helped you out with creating your own block title graphic. Now go ahead and take a moment to create one on your own, because in the next, the in the next section, in the next lesson, I'm going to prompt you to actually upload that to the course so we can see what you're working on. 5. Assignment : Create Your Own Blog Title Graphic: congratulations on completing this lesson. By now, you should have a strong understanding of how to do the material that has been presented, and it is my goal as an instructor to make sure that you have learned and have retained the information that I have shared. So if you have any questions at all at any time, please feel free to contact me directly. You can find out more about me at www dot jeremy deegan dot com. If you have a general question, I do ask that you ask that question within this course by asking it in this course. I can address that question, and other students can see that later on down the road. This will help them understand some common questions that come up as they go through this course. Now, if you haven't done so already, please leave an honest rating and any feedback that you have about this course. It helps both me as an instructor know what to do better in the future, and it also helps future students get to see what this course is truly all about. Now your assignment is to take the information that you have learned and upload the image to this course by uploading your image and sharing your artwork with the world. We can provide critiques and any feedback on how to make your artwork better. It's also very motivating to get your artwork out into the world and shared with others and will help you progress in your education and want to share more and more. So thank you so much for allowing me to teach you something new today, and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.