Canva Professional Design Masterclass: Create Branded Content & Marketing Materials

1. Welcome to the Canva for Social Media Intermediate Masterclass!: Welcome to the Canva Professional Design Master Class. If you already know the basics of Canva and want to create more professional, polished and consistent designs, this class is for you. My name is Kinte Borska and I'm a designer with over six years of experience creating branding, social media content, marketing materials, and digital products. The years, I have used Canva not just for quick designs, but as a complete creative workflow tool. In this course, we will move beyond simple social media posts and focus on creating cohesive branding systems and more advanced layouts. We'll start by setting up a brand kit, building logo variations and creating visual consistency across different platforms and formats. Then we will explore more advanced design principles like font pairing, grid systems, white space balance, and editorial style layouts to help your designs feel more cleaner and more intentional. Also learn how to work more efficiently using reusable templates, content patching workflows, and Canvas AI tools like background remover and Magic Expand. Finally, you'll apply everything through practical projects, including designing a multi page workbook, a print ready flyer, and a branded business card. By the end of this course, you'll be able to create more professional designs in Canva while building a stronger and more organized workflow. Let's get started. Mm hm 2. Brand Kit Setup: Mm. Let's start with talking about a brand kit. First, I want to talk about what is a brand kit because it's a very useful tool inside of Canva. A brand kit is pretty much a single source on Canva for all your logos, fonts, color palettes, icons, graphics, photos, anything that visually represents your brand and you use consistently. Tool is made to remove friction when it comes to creating things for your brand, so you don't have to scramble around and search for the right hex code or guess the right shade of blue or even re upload your images or even your logo on Canva. You just have this one place where you can consistently go back to it and reuse it. Now, let's jump into Canva and let me show you around on how it looks. Then we're going to make one Banket for you. Now, first things first is you want to open canva.com and make sure you're on the homepage. Then you're going to scoot over to the left side of the screen and click on brand. Now, this is going to land you in the brand templates page, which this might be completely deep for you. It's all fine. All good. But we're going to go to the left side and zoom in a little bit on this menu right here. As you can see, I have a brand selection down here. I have a couple of brands created. So let's just click through the first one. Let me show you how this works. So I've selected my brand, and over here we have all assets. So these are all the categories where your assets are organized. So we just saw the brand templates, right? Next, if you click on Logos, this is where your logos would live. So you can upload all the variations you have. I'll start with the primary when we're going to make a blanket for you, but you can upload many different kinds of files just so they are handy and you can reuse them all the time. Next slot is the color. So this is where your color palettes are going to live. Now, for most brands, they have a primary, a secondary, and a neutral color palette. For this one, I only have one, but if you have a free account, you can upload, I believe, up to three different color palettes and organize your colors by their categories and make it really easy. Can also rename your color palettes up here. And I'm going to show you how to do this, but this is essentially how you would add your colors with the color picker. So next is the fonts. This is where your fonts will live. You see there's many different types of categories. You have the title, subtitle, heading, subheading, section header, body, crow and caption. And one cool thing is that if you don't use a font from Canva for your brand, which if you do, you can just select from their font library like that. But if you have a separate font from somewhere else and it's on your computer, you can just simply upload it onto here, and Canva will allow you to use that all throughout your design. Then we have the brand voice section, which this is a really handy tool if you're working with a team or maybe even with a client, and you want to be very clear about what your brand stands for and how you want your brand to come across. This is where you would put it in writing. It's like small little kind of instruction on the vibe of your brand, if that makes sense. You have your photos. So this is a really good place to collect all the photos that you use the most when it comes to designing for your brand. For example, as you can see, I have a couple that I have uploaded. And for example, this one, right here, this beautiful nebuloPhoto, I use this one very, very often for my Instagram stories. So instead of me needing to go to my computer and look for it in my files or my phone, I just have it saved here so I can reuse it all the time. I would just flip it obviously. I find this particular spot to be very useful because I do consistently reuse the same kind of photo for backgrounds. So it's very useful. Next, you have your components, your graphics, if you have some designed for your brand, your icons, your custom icons, and even charts. But now to create a new brand kit, what you're going to do is click on the selector and click on Cre brand kit. Also, I do want to mention that this create personal Bankit. This is useful if you work in a team, and you'll probably get that as an option, but we're going to just create a regular brand kit. I'm going to create a kit for the brand that I have worked on, which is a hypothetical coffee shop. It's called Osmico. So we're going to put the name right here and click Create. And now, as you can see at the very top, if you do have a website where you have your brand all designed out, you have everything you need, your fonts, logos, colors, your icons, and everything else, you can just drop your link right here, and Canvas AI system, which is actually this feature, particularly, is relatively new. So it's not perfect. However, it does do quite a good job pulling out color palettes and other things from your website. You do have to go back clean things up. But this is a good way to begin. Also, if you do have a document of your brand guidelines already made, you can just upload it here, and the idea is kind of the same. The AI would just pull out the colors and images and overall kind of look of your brand. But since we're going to just make it from scratch, we're going to ignore this and go straight for first, I want to start with the logos. So I'm going to click on this little Window, and since this is a brand new kit, it is completely blank, so I'm just going to click on Add brand assets. From here, I'm going to go to Upload Files. And now I have a folder on my desktop, so I'm just going to go there, and from here, I will select this folder right here and upload this main, my primary logo that I have made for this. So I'm just going to hit Upload. What you want to do is make sure that your file is in PNG because this way, you can actually put it over different kinds of colors and backgrounds and it doesn't have a square background and doesn't look awkward. So make sure it's in PNG. From here, I'm just going to maybe name it. Main logo for now. So now we have our logos done. Also, you can upload different kinds of variations and styles of your logo. We're going to talk about that in the next lesson a little bit more in detail. But now you have the logo. Let's move on to the next bar, which is colors. I click on colors. And from here, you see the Ken has pulled out some colors from the logo that I have uploaded, which is nice and it can be very handy. However, I do have a pre prepared color palette for this. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to remove this for now. Just to make sure all the hex codes are on point. So I'm going to click on the color picker, and this is where I would start either if you don't have a color palette, you would just kind of choose your colors. I do suggest preparing this before time and really working on your color scheme because brand color does say a lot about your brand, so make sure you put a lot of thought into it. But what I'm going to do here, since I have a palette, I'm going to minimize the screen right here. I'm going to open this color palette that I have prepared for this particular task. So instead of trying to match the color to all of these in the color picker, what I'm going to do is just copy paste this from the photo to this area right here. I am on Mac, and I know that this feature is available on Mac. I'm not sure about any other operating systems. So if you can't copy paste it, feel free to just double click and start typing your color code. The reason why I'm doing this instead of actually trying to match the colors is because it might take me a very long time to actually get the color right. So we want to make sure that all numbers make sense, and it's exactly the right shade of blue. You know what I mean? You know, sometimes when you begin a brand new brand and you're not very well versed in this kind of color palette magic, it is easy to divert when you're designing from the right shade of blue. And then eventually that diversion kind of compounds, and it just looks off. It's starting to look off. And, you know, when it comes to having your own brand, you want to make sure that you're on point, you're consistent because eventually, it does build trust from your audience or your clients. Oh, okay. That's okay. Just going to copy this yet again. I'm pressing Kancy on my keyboard. Okay, so we have all the colors put in, and from here, I could, of course, also rename this palette. And what I could also do is just take this palette and kind of break it up if I did want to break it up into primary, secondary, and neutrals. But for the sake of this lesson, being to the point, I'm just going to leave it as is. And when it comes to actually the designing process, if you do find it necessary when you're designing your backgrounds, your elements and your graphics and your designs, and you find yourself trying to decide what color goes better as a primary, what color goes better as a secondary, then you can definitely go back and rearrange and reorganize. But now that we have our color palette in here, let's move on to fonts. So here you see you have all the different kinds of fonts you can actually import. Again, if you do have a font that is from another source, what you would do is click on this plus sign and upload a font. You can also just drag and drop your folder or wherever your font lives on your computer onto Cana and it will automatically upload and then you just would select it here. But since for this brand, I did make it on Canva, I am using a font from it, and it was actually this one because I recently did use it. So for the title, I'm just going to select this, and then I can change this if I need to, change the size, which depends on each of your designs. So don't worry about that. If you're mainly using it in bold, select that or italics. Is that how you pronounce it? Anyways, let's move on to subtitle. And for subtitle, again, I do use one from Cana, which I believe was the open source, and I will leave it as is. And then, of course, if you do have all your other fonts selected, I'm not going to bother with that right now. I just wanted to show you how it goes. So now that we have this done, I'm going to click this checkmark. I have the main things, which is title subtitle, saved. Let's move on to brand voice. Now, here you have 500 characters to explain what is your brand voice. Let me show you an example. Again, minimizing the screen and I have it pre prepared, and I'm just going to copy and paste it for my notes, so Command C and Command V. Let me read you the brand voice just so you understand more or less what a brand voice is and how it looks in real life. So cosmic a brand voice. Warm but unhurried, poetic without being pretentious. We speak like a friend who happens to know the stars, grounded, curious, quietly inspiring. Every cup is an innovation to slow down and look up. We don't shout. We draw you in. Think late nights, constellation maps and coffee that taste like it was brewed with intention. Coffee for the Cosmos. This is supposed to be the kind of tagline. Of the brand, okay? I'll just hit and to separate it. But this is more or less what your brand voice can be. You just kind of explain the energy of it almost. Then into the photos, here is where you can upload. It can be photos that you frequently use for your stories. For example, like I showed you before with the other brand, or they can be your product photos if you do post your products and you're selling something. This is where you can upload all of them, since this is a hypothetical coffee shop. I don't really have photos for this, but it's pretty self explanatory. You would click on Ad brand assets, and from here, you can upload a folder if you have a folder created on Canva, or you can just upload from your computer. Go the same way like before. I'll just going to leave this blank, and the same goes for your components. You can upload those here, your graphics, your icons, or your charts, and that is pretty much how you can create your brand kit from scratch. Now, let me show you how it works in real life when you're actually designing and you're trying to be consistent with your brand. Going to hit Create, and I am going to just grab any kind of size canvas because this is going to be a pure example. So let's say you're here, you're creating something for your brand, and you want to make sure that you are on point with every single asset that you have. So what you would do is, for example, background background, if you have your background selected, you go up to the color section here, and you see the color menu opened and from here, you would click and select the brand kit that you want to use. So we just created Cosmica you click on that and you hit Select brand. And as you can see, we have our beautiful color palette all locked and loaded and ready to use. So let's say my background is going to be this dark green, very beautiful blue, bluish green. It has a tint to it. Okay, let's move on. Next, let's say you are adding your text. So you will go to the side menu and cover over text. And as you can see, you have the fonts that you selected in your brand kit already saved and ready for you to use. So I clicked on the title. And. And there you go. You have the font already in use. So if you wouldn't have your brand kit, what you would do is you would probably get a very default kind of font, and you would go up here and you would hunt for the right one. Oh, my God. And look at the library. It's so long, and you could actually waste a lot of time doing that. So instead of doing this, just create a brankit and life is much more simpler. And now mowing away from the texts and colors, if you click on the brand button here, as you can see, you have your brand kit laid out here. Now, this is looking just a little bit empty just because, you know, it was an example, but this is where your logos would be, right? So my logo is uploaded as a PNG, and you see that it dropped on my canvas, transparent background, and it looks very, very beautiful and ready to use. Now, for this kind of background is a little dark, so the logo doesn't stand out much. But in the next lesson, I'll show you how we can create some different kinds of logo variations. So in this situation, you don't have to be sad that your logo is too dark for your background, and you don't have to change the backup color. But yeah, so from here, if you want to use your photos, let's say this is where your photos would be. Same thing with all the other brand assets, everything in one place. And if you do have more brands than that, this is where you would select them and change. So to wrap this lesson up, a brand kit pretty much is designed to completely remove all friction from your design process, and you can really stay on point and stay really consistent with how your brand comes across, so you can build that trust with your audience. 3. Logo System (Variations): Okay, so now that we have set up your brand kit and uploaded your logo, it's time to talk about the different kinds of logo versions or the logo system. So what is the logo system? It's basically a way to rework your logo to fit all kinds of different scenarios. So, for example, these days, we have different sizes of screens and different platforms and different ways you can use your logo. And you want to make sure that your logo is visible and recognizable on each platform and each size. So mainly, there are four types of logos. We have your primary logo, which is the most detailed and full version of your logo. Then there's the secondary type, which is a slightly simplified or stacked. Then you have your sub mark or other people call it the icon, and then you have the word mark. Now, let's zoom in and really analyze all of these different types. So first things first, you have the Nike air primary logo. I have noticed recently they've been using the secondary logo more often, but this is a simplified version. If for example, you scale this down and you scale this down, this one's a little bit more understandable just because it doesn't have the air word in it, right? When it comes to primary versus secondary logo, the main difference is usually either slightly simplified or stacked, like I said before, because a lot of times your secondary logo is going to be a little bit more vertical than horizontal. Why I say that is because if you take a look at the monday.com and Nord VPN, their primary logo and what we are used to seeing the most is very horizontal. So in a situation where they would, for example, make their profile picture on Instagram, remember that most of us use Instagram on our phone, so the little icon of your profile picture is very, very tiny. If you scale this down, you lose a lot of detail and it's not as recognizable. For instance, they could use their secondary, which is a stacked version with their submark or icon being much larger, but still with the textmnday.com. Then they have also their submark which is perfect for scaling down or even just simplifying the overall look. Same thing with VPN. Their primary logo is horizontal, and so if they would, for example, want to fit this into a circular or even a square frame, it would not take as much space. Therefore, also wouldn't be big enough where it could be visible fully. That's why they have their secondary logo, where they have their icon much more larger with still the name Nord BPN under it. And they do the same thing with their icon or their submark being isolated. And this is also very recognizable and perfect for for example, if you have a design and you want to put your logo in the corner, you probably would want to go something that's more visible and recognizable without losing a lot of detail. So therefore, you have the sub mark isolated. Then you have your word marks for Nike, which Nike is very distinguishable because they do use their own font, which we all are familiar with, I assume, very similar with Chanel. Monday.com can get a little bit more lost just because of the.com. At the end is very small, and Nord VPN is also, I think, fairly recognizable. Now, with Chanel, for example, their primary logo is already stacked, right? So it's not very horizontal, but they have included this circle. Lately, also I have noticed they've been using a lot more their secondary logo, but much more often. Perhaps it's just a modernization of their logo. This definitely fits with different kinds of formats, and of course, their submarks very recognizable. Even without it saying Chanel, you already know that it is Chanel. So when it comes to your logo, you want to make sure that you can adapt your logo to at least three of these types. I would say the most important is your primary, your secondary, and your submark. The word mark isn't as necessary, I don't think, but of course, you can find instances where it can come in useful. But I would say if you could adapt your logo to these three versions, that's ideal. Now, when it comes to actually getting this done on Canva, if you have made your logo on Canva, you can open up your logo in Canva, and I will show you exactly how to make all of these versions of your logo. So let's say I have this example right here, a very standard kind of coffee shop. Logo with two main elements. We have the submark and we have the text, right? So this would be the primary logo with all the colors included, and it is, again, mainly horizontal. Now, if we would want to go ahead and make a secondary logo, what I would do with this is do what chanelmnday.com and Nord BPN is doing, right? So let's go back. Here, what I'm going to do is duplicate this page, and it's going to make an exact copy of this page up here, and now I'm going to start just adjusting the placement of these elements. So the text is aligned to one side. So what I'm going to do is ungroup quickly and center both text using Canvas guidelines, which are very useful to make sure everything is aligned perfectly, just like so, and here you can make it bigger depending on what you think looks good. I think this is pretty balanced. I highlighted all of it, so I can move it all together. And here we have the secondary logo. So we went from this to this, and it was really, really simple. If you want to do a submark version of this logo, I'm going to duplicate this again. I'm going to get rid of the text. I'm just going to center the actual icon. Like so, you can do this or you can even go one step further and get rid of the circle, for example, like Chanel did here. In their primary logo, they have the circle. In their sub mark they don't. So we can do that as well, make it a little bit more simple. So I'm going to go to positions and layers. Okay, so it's a grouped element, so I'm going to ungroup it. No, I had selected it. Okay, so I have the elements selected positions layers. And here we have all the layers. Okay. And we're looking for the green circle. I'm just going to delete that. And here you have the submark or your icon completely isolated, very simplified version. So let's imagine that this is going to be for, like, a Pinterest or a TikTok or an Instagram profile picture. Let me show an example why this is so important. I'm going to get a circle. Get a circle, go to make it large because mainly all profile pictures go in a circle frame these days. I'm going to make sure to put it all the way in the back. I go to make the background black. So you can see, okay? Increase the size. Now here, this would be your profile picture. It's much more distinguishable if we do this instead of, let's say, this, I have pasted the circle on the primary logo. I'm going to move it down, change the background to black. And also for the sake of showing going to group these. Okay, so this would be the primary logo as a small circular profile picture, right? Now, this one is much more distinguishable and visible, right, if you zoom out. And obviously, since we all use Instagram, for example, on our phones, we would see these as way smaller than we see them now. So we could technically increase the size of this, which isn't the worst idea. However, there is still a lot of empty space on the top and the bottom. And to avoid that is just to go with your sub mark. So I'm just going to go back, undo the damage. Okay. So here we have three different versions of this logo of your primary or secondary, and the submark and of course, we can go ahead and make the word mark. So what I would do is duplicate this one with the text. I would move it down on the bottom, delete the actual icon, increase the size of the text. And here you have your word mark. So we went from one logo to four different types, and these are adaptable to many different platforms and different kinds of prints. Let's say you would want to put your logo on a billboard, you could definitely go with your primary or even your secondary. Depending also on the aesthetic that you're trying to achieve, maybe if you want to look a little bit more minimalistic, you could go ahead and just use your submark. However, if you are scaling down your logo to fit a design, you definitely want to make sure that you're adapting your logo and using either your wordmark submark or even your secondary. Not always the primary will work. You want to make sure that people recognize and can actually see your logo. Of course, not all logos will have the same kind of looking components. Not all of them are automatically two element, horizontal logo. Sometimes you do have logos like the one that I made, which is automatically already. First of all, the text is curved and it's a stacked kind of look, right? So in this case, what I would do personally is this would be my primary, right? My secondary, I would think that it would just be this cup without the words because there's really no necessity to make a secondary if this already works for both primary and secondary, correct? So, for that reason, what I would do is, first of all, the way I made this logo in Canva was I did a little bit of magic, and I'll show you what I mean by that. Normally, I would just take and remove this text. But since there is a little bit of a problem here, I'll show you. Let me change the background. You see, there's this bar which cuts off essentially the bottom of the little cup, like so. So what I'm going to do here, also the stars, the stars are meant to be transparent and I just added elements to them. So what I would do here is I would download this as is with the colored background by just clicking Share Download. Selecting PNG is usually the best. Do not select a transparent background and download your image of your logo. I have it already downloaded. So what I did here, you see, it's transparent. What I did here was upload this downloaded from my computer onto Canva and let me add another page. Here, I just drop it into Canvas and go to background remover, which is a wonderful tool, very useful. I just got rid of the background with the bar and the stars. It made me transparent file where my logo now can go on any kind of background. This is actually a pretty good way to start playing with colors. This is my color palette. So this is pretty much how it would look on each of these backgrounds. And also, next thing we're going to talk about is color and how your logo can work on different kinds of colors and backgrounds. As you can see the kind of disappeared here. But it mostly works on all of them. However, going back to the logo system here, I have my primary slash secondary. Here, I have the PNG. I have these two separate in parts of it. So what I would do is I would get rid of the text by cropping it here, but then also going up to eraser and pixel eraser. And it just, I guess, it'll make me erase the entire thing. So here I can just erase the text, like so, and bam. I have my sub icon ready, and I hit X. And here, let me just crop it in so there is no extra space. And here I have my sub icon. Perfect. When it comes to the word mark, version of this logo, what I would do is just copy this commands on my keyboard. I would add another page, paste it. And since this is made again on Canva, I added a curved effect. So I would just remove this effect and have my submark like this. So for the sake of making everything look consistent, let me just change the color background. So here, I have my primary, I have my logo, my submark and my text ready to use. And I can go ahead and download these and then upload them to the brand kit. But before we download our logo, let's talk about the color because another important thing for a logo to do is to adapt to different kinds of environments in a sense of color. Usually, you have, of course, it depends on the variety and diversity of your color palette, of your brand. However, the main three kinds of logos you need is your primary color, which is for me, it's dark background, it's dark blue slash green with beige cup and yellow burnt yellow. Text. However, if, for example, I would be collaborating with someone or someone would be using my logo or I would want to use my logo in a different style. So putting it on a light background, my cup is going to disappear. What I need to do is make sure that I have a variation of this logo in different colors. So primary, which would be this one and then light and dark. So this kind of already serves as a light version of the logo. But before I am going to start adjusting things, let me show you an example. I found this really good article 0N rabbit logo.com. And here you can see, you have, for example, the Netflix logo. The Netflix very distinct color is red. We all are familiar with the Netflix red. And here you can see it works both on light and dark. Same thing with their actual icon, right? However, there are brands. Instacards going to be almost the same. So the icon looks good on both dark and light. But the primary logo, they have switched the text of Insta card from dark green to this beige color so it can fit on a dark background. Same thing with Mastercard, icon fits, but the text has been switched from black to white. And in Dropbox, they have opted for a monochrome white to be their light version, because originally the box is blue and the text is black. The icons also are switching colors. You have white on blue and blue and white. Nike's pretty simple. It's black and white. Same thing with Adidas. And Amazon is somewhat similar to the CosmicaO with yellow element here. One interesting thing about this logo, I do want to say that some people don't know, but this logo actually is hiding a little Easter egg. This arrow, which a lot of us see as a smiley face or a smile is actually pointing out the A to Z thing about Amazon, meaning they are selling everything from A to Z. I just thought it was very clever, and I wanted to point that out. But yeah, they have not switched the color of their distinguished arrow, however the text is changing and same thing with the icon. So you want to make sure you have a light and a dark version, at least. So I'm going to go back to my cosmicalogo. And here, this is all wonderful and great. However, I would need a different version. So let's say I need to put this logo on something light. So, for example, white. I'm going to duplicate this. Let's change the background color to one of my colors in the cosmic color palette. As you can see, the brand kit come in in handy. Here you go. Everything kind of the cup itself disappeared. So first things first, what I want to do here is actually change the color of all these little elements. I'm going to do the same to beige so it looks transparent. Let me change the color of all of these quickly. And to access this, let me just do it, so. And then now that I have all the elements changed to the color of the background, I'm going to go back to the cup and change cup. However, this element, particularly in Canva, has two tones, and a lot of times this is just kind of the color is pulled out with the AI kind of system of Canva and a lot of times it does have a problem changing. So let's say if I wanted to change the color, it doesn't necessarily do it's bringing out two tones of this graphic and it not always works. So what you can do if you come across these kinds of graphics on Canva, a very useful tool is make sure you have your element selected and then you click on Ask Canva. This is where the AI think comes in real handy because I'm just going to ask Canva to change the color for me. But first, I need the color code. So let me go and grab that. I want it to be this dark green or perhaps this blue instead. I'm going to make sure to copy my code. Instead I'm gonna go with this color perhaps maybe that's gonna be easier for it to understand. Change the color of this cup to pasting the code, I think it's the right one. Yes, it is. Okay. So I removed the white background. Apparently, I wanted to add a background. Well, now it seems like there's a little bit of a gap here under this. Also, this doesn't show up very well. But let's worry about that line first. I'm just going to copy this line at the bottom. Move it down so it can block all of it. And let's change the color of the text to the same dark green. So now we have a darker version of this same logo. We can also, of course, make it white or whatever, and now this way, this logo is adapted to any kind of different background colors. So same thing we go for this. I will duplicate this and go ahead. Actually, let me change the background color first. Let's go to Beige, select this element, and again, ask Canva. And put the same prompt in. Just got to make sure I have the color code. I clicked on this from before and it pasted it in. How handy is that? So I'll do the same thing. And while that's generating, I can do this with the text itself, so I'm going to duplicate it changing. And of course, with text, it's pretty simple. I can go either blue or dark green or really pick any of the colors from your palette. I really like the contrast between this beige and this dark green. So Okay, so it has created a dark version. However, it did include the thing that I was, I had deleted. What I'm going to do is just go back to erase, pixel erase and just get rid, get rid of this. Like that. And interestingly enough, this process of changing the color of the logo has added a background, which I find interesting. Oh, good golly. Let me do that again, I guess. Alright. You See, sometimes this AI works perfectly, and it just changes the color of the element, sometimes it doesn't it works out every single time, so I'm not complaining. What, but it changed up the Oh, no, I didn't just looks bigger because it's dark. Okay. I don't know why I added these stars. That's a little bizarre. Okay. So now we have a light and a dark version for the primary, for the icon, and for the text. So from here to download all of this and upload to your brand kit, just hit. I think I guess I would. Since I have the primary already uploaded, I'm just going to delete. Oh, that's what it has to do here. Okay. So I'm going to start from the bottom, I guess. I'm just going to delete the background from these last four. Is it increase the size of this one a little bit. There. I'm going to download these last four. I'm going to select them here, and PNG is selected and select transparent background. If you do want to, of course, print your logo on something or maybe even with embroidery or something that you need your logo to be higher quality, I suggest going with the SVG. But most times PNG works just as well. I have everything selected. Now I'm just going to download this like that. And while we wait, I'm going to download this as a regular without transparent background just because I want to remove this in Canva. So I'm going to have that selected instead. Done, uncheck this download. Okay, now it's time to start uploading. I'm just going to create a quick another canvas here and I'm going to upload the one that I just got with the background. So this one Dragon drop from your downloads, going to your uploads. Bam, bam, and now just remove the background. And like that, you have your PNG. So now I'm going to download it with the transparent background. It seems like a lot, but trust me, it's quite simple once you get the hang of it. Okay. Now, that is downloading. We can go ahead. We can go ahead and go to the brand kit. And from here, Can I just drag and drop from here? Open my downloads. Now I have the dark version. I have not uploaded this version, so I guess I'm going to do the same thing. With that, I didn't even notice. And now I have these different colored ones I'm gonna upload on my brand kit. That's done. And from here, no, from here, I'm going to go to upload and drag my primary here so I can make a completely transparent one. Like that. Background remover, share download. Let's select I don't have well, I guess. I think it's W one is it? It's one, two instead of one. And now download. Okay, now I have my primary as a PNG. Perfect. So going back to the brand kit, logos, and I'm going to drag and drop my primary here. And now I have all of these different kinds of versions, different colors, and different styles of my cosmica logo. And all of it was done in Canva. So to wrap up this lesson, make sure that your logo is able to adapt to different kinds of platforms, so it needs to be able to scale down and scale up with different kinds of ways logo is laid out, and, of course, the color variation of your logo, and always stick to your color palette of your brand to stay consistent. 4. Brand Consistency Across Platforms: So you know how we put all of that hard work into creating our brand kit. This lesson is going to be all about staying consistent across different platforms. Now, before we get into actually the visual part of it, I do want to talk more about the importance of consistency. Like, what is the reason behind the brand kit? Because if you kind of have a vague idea of what kind of look you're trying to achieve and then the colors that you you know, technically, you shouldn't need a whole color palette to constantly use over and over and over again. However, that is where the consistency issue comes in because let's think about this. So your brand kit that's how you present, right? So you have all of the elements that represent your brand, whether it's a personal brand or a business, doesn't matter. The colors are like the language that you speak in, right? So if someone's going to be scrolling on Instagram and they're going to see a post by you, and you're using the colors that you usually use that your brand is known for, they're going to know immediately that that is your post. Without even reading, without even seeing any logos or who posted it, they're going to know. And that is exactly what you want as a creator of any kind, right? You want your brand to speak by itself. Where you don't have to convince. Oh, yeah, yeah, this is who I am. This is me. This is solid. Now, you want your aesthetic to do it for you, and that's why we locked everything in before in our brand kit. So this way, there's no room for error, right? There is no chance of miscommunication. Of course, if you choose to completely switch around your look, that's a different question. But staying consistent is what will build that credibility, right? It's going to build that trust from your audience and from your clients because they see that you're consistent with your look. They'll be like, Okay, so that's a trustworthy person, trustworthy brand to go to a business. I can trust. I can give them my money or my time. So for that reason, you want to stay consistent if you post under the name of your own brand. Now, when it comes to actually doing it, first step we already did. So we made the kit. We don't have to scramble for hex codes. We don't have to match from the top of our head and try to remember. Everything's already solid and there's no room for any kind of deviation. Because these types of, you know, little mistakes, they do end up adding up at the end, and you end up looking all the way different. So you have your brand kit locked and loaded. You're ready to design. And let's say you want to make a post, an Instagram story, let's say. You have some sort of promotion. I have an example here on the screen, you can see, and you might be confused on, Why? Hold on. That does not look like cosmica. Something fails off. Why? Well, let's just ignore the fact that it says a different name. However, what is it that makes this post not look like my brand? It's the colors. Number one. Number two, are the fonts. Those aren't my fonts. That is not my website. My logo is nowhere near this design. So this belongs to someone else, right? And if I'm a fan of, let's say, I'm a random person, I'm a fan of Cosmica and Cosmic will end up posting this. He'll be like, yeah, that's not it. Scrolling by, right? Even though I didn't even look at who posted it. So that's why you want to make sure that you include your brand. I've pulled this template from a Canvas template library, and it's a beautiful template, now, and I'll show you exactly how easy it is, and it really doesn't take a lot, especially if you have your brand kit all set up. To take something that looks good but could look better with your branding and turn it into something very recognizable because you look at it and you immediately Yep, that I know who that is. Oh, they're having an offer. Let's go. Cool. Let's pay a visit. All I did. The difference from here to here is I really mainly just changed three things, the background. So we have the very recognizable color at this point, which is my favorite one, I think, also. We have our dark background. Then, of course, I changed the font. I changed the fonts to my own. So we have the fonts that we saved, both the headline and subheading, right? So those are two things that are changed. And then, of course, I changed up the text. That's like a given. I included, even though this cup of coffee, didn't look bad at all. And in fact, I do have brown in my color palette. I just thought that Cosmica is known to use some white elements, especially when it comes to actual product photography. So I included something that I'm known to have used in the past. And, of course, I've included my logo to make it super, super clear that it's me. If I remove it, it still looks like me, right? It still looks like cosmic. It's very, very characteristic. So even without the logo, it works. Now you have a whole complete template that you pulled from Kema, you made it your own. And even though it's a send template, it almost looks like completely something else. Because also, if you notice, as I'm clicking through, the way the back and color interacts with the element of the coffee beans, almost, like, pulls you in a little bit more, and the element almost looks bigger. But that's, like, another topic. So let's say that you have made this beautiful Instagram story and you're about to post it, you're about to download it and post it. And that's great. However, you know, you're proud of this design, and you would like to spread the word of this special offer that you're going on, for example, across your platforms. One way of doing it is, first of all, consider what this format of content, where else could it fit? So, another thing that comes to mind is Tik Tok stories. And this is a little slight deviation from the main topic which is design. This is mainly like social media world. But Tik Tok stories are very, very underused feature that can help you build a community around your brand. And I suggest looking into it and try using it more. You'll see. It's more like a personal behind the scenes kind of space for you to pretty much post the same thing that you're posting on Instagram. Format, the aspect ratio is already there. It's the same format. And you would also give, like, a little behind the scenes or an extra piece of content, even though it's going to expire in 24 hours to your TikTok audience if you have a Tik Tok. So this design, I just took me literally 5 minutes to make this even less, I think, because it came from a template. I can now post it on two platforms. Another thing that you can do is that if you really like this design, you want to stay consistent with it and another great way of staying true to your brand is reforming this piece of content for another platform. So you could technically, of course, post it as a Instagram post, and just go to the resize button up here. And from here, you can actually choose. So we have a reel, which is the same size. However, you know, reels are videos, and this is a static image. But here, you can resize this particular design into really anything. You have so many options here. Oh, my God. But without overwhelming us, let's go to, for example, Instagram post, right, like I mentioned before. I have selected the Instagram post, and now we have a new canvas with the same elements. The canvas itself has been expanded, so all you have to do now is just readjust your elements to fit so I'm going to do these both at the same time because they kind of fit together. I'm going to increase the size here because, you know, there's a little bit more real estate area. I'm gonna bring this down. I'm going to increase the size of my beans, probably the text as well to optimize it for Instagram. Ma'am. And that's it. Now you have the exact same post. You're using your branding, you're staying true to yourself. Your viewers and your audience will recognize you immediately, and you have another whole piece of content. Now, from here, believe it or not, you can actually already take this and post it on Threads, right? If you have a Threads page, which is also another great platform, by the way, it's similar to X for those who don't know, it's kind of like kind of like Twitter, right? So you just tweet or write your posts. And you can post this on there because the aspect ratio also works for threads. For threads, it's four by five. So exactly the aspect ratio. Let's refresh my memory on the exact measurements. So let's make sure to select. Second page. Exact numbers for this would be 1080 by 1920, right? So the average Instagram portrait post. And of course, if you have also a YouTube page where you maybe post shorts or full horizontal landscape videos, you can also post on the community. And that way, you would also use the same branding without going the extra mile to create a whole new piece of content. All you would have to do is just resize this to one by one. That is the best size for a YouTube community post. And now we go to the next one and we have a square one. And again, you just rearrange your elements. In this case, I would increase the size here a little bit more just so it's more visible. You can write yourself a beautiful message to go with the post, and you have a whole post for your YouTube community. This really just goes on and on and on for every single platform. From Canva, by having all of your hex codes in place, by having your font pre selected and your logos uploaded so you can just choose your favorite and see whichever fits the occasion best, there's really no way for you to be inconsistent with your branding across platforms because not only can you reuse the same design for so many platforms, you have all the right tools. So you really have to go out of your way. To throw people off with your branding. This is what happens if you start guessing the colors and you get inconsistent. So, for example, the background color. Instead of me using a hexco, I'd be like, I think it was this one, but I'm not sure. What about the font? It was something pretty, but I can't remember which one was it? I think it was this one, for sure. Oh, yeah, that is it. So now it's starting to look like a completely different brand, and this is why being consistent is so important. You don't want to kind of repeat yourself too much when it comes to the layout, of course. So being consistent doesn't necessarily mean looking the same all the time. You can introduce new elements, new graphics, textures, layouts. But as long as you keep the basics the same, there's really no room for error. By you resizing the same design you have made with the information, the assets that you have locked in in your brand kit, it is really, really super easy to stay consistent and also do explore different kinds of avenues on social media, like I mentioned before, with TikTok Stories and YouTube community. Really great places to post, brings in your audience closer, and they feel like they see you more, they know you more. And that is definitely good if you want to be a content creator of any kind, or even just a business owner with social media presence. 5. Platform Sizes & Formats: Now it is time for us to talk about one of the most important things when it comes to being a content creator, which is platform sizes and format because when it's done wrong, it is painfully obvious and it can cost you serious reach. However, when it's done right, it is absolutely invisible, but that is exactly what you want. Now, in 2026, we all know that we are in a vertical content craze, I will say. Most platforms optimize for vertical content, including YouTube with their shorts. They're definitely prioritizing shorts these days. Same thing with Pinterest and even Facebook and their Reels, and of course, Instagram and the Reels. I think platform like TikTok has definitely set a trend, and most platforms are converting to the vertical type of content. Also, it is very important to know your sizes and not only your types and your formats. So let's get into anda. I have prepared a couple of things for us to look at just to get a good visual aid for how different kinds of formats work for what platforms. So first things first, we have the Instagram page it has, again, as I said, Instagram these days prioritizes more of a vertical type of content. They even they recently actually switched out from their traditional very well known one by one format for their regular square posts. Now they prioritize this one, which is 1080 by 13 50 pixels or three by four. Ironically enough, it also goes for carousels. You technically can still upload one by one square posts and carousels and your regular feed posts. But the grid system is almost optimized for the portrait type of post or portrait type of format because the little thumbnails are elongated. So if you are still posting squares, unfortunately, the grid of Instagram will either Zoom in or gaps in between the other thumbnails. And overall, it's just not a good look, so you definitely want to make sure to pay attention to that and optimize your own content to each platform. And here we have the stories and Reels, which is the traditional 1080 by 1920 or nine by 16. One thing I do want to note, and it's very important to know is that Instagram compresses posts. So what you want to make sure is to keep your most important information as close to the center as possible and don't leave it on the sides of your design. Let's mobile on to Tik Tok. As we know, Tik Tok is mainly a vertical platform. There's not much diversity. So you have the traditional vertical format, which is 1080 by 1920, which is the same for Instagram reals and Instagram stories. And then you have the other type, which is just the profile pick, 200 by 200 pixels, very simple. And it goes in a circle frame. So really designing any other aspect ratio for TikTok is not only, I think, a waste of time, but also genuinely just going against its own format. And eventually, it's just really not setting you up for success. So when it comes to Tik Tok, you definitely want to adapt to the vertical type of content. Then we have YouTube, as I did mention before, YouTube is very big on the short feature now, and it's definitely pushing it. And the formats exactly the same as on Instagram reels. And on TikTok, it's 1080 by 1920. However, the thumbnail size, definitely, if you are posting YouTube videos, you want to make sure to make your thumbnails high quality and optimized for this size, and it is the traditional 12 80 by 720. That is going to be a for your YouTube landscape videos, and here comes the fun part when it comes to YouTube, the channel banner. It is one of those things that I personally don't find it to be very fun to design the banners for YouTube just because you see these dots over here that I have placed. When it comes to the YouTube banner, the overall size is 25 60 by 14 40 pixels. However, it depends on what device you are looking at this full rectangle will be visible. I believe it was on TV. It all boils down to this center rectangle is visible on the phone. The longer one, I believe is iPad and this full from end to end is on computer. So what you want to do when you design yourself a YouTube banner is keep all of your most important information, of course, in that center square where it's going to be visible on every single screen on any device. However, that does invite a lot of problems when it comes to actually making the rest of it aesthetically. Beautiful or just overall looking good. So this is a bit of a tricky situation, but I've seen many people get very creative and designed some really nice YouTube banners, but you definitely want to keep all your important things, your logo, your contacts or whatever else you want to put on. Here in the center. Last but not least, we have Linktn. For Linktn, it differs definitely in the sizes. It's not as straightforward as as we saw with Instagram TikTok and YouTube. For Linktn, the sizes differ in a way where you have two types or three types of posts, feed posts. You have your landscape, which is 1,200 by 627 pixels. And then you have your square, which is 1,200 by 1,200, and you have your portrait 1080 by 13 50. They do have two different types of banners. For Linktn, you have your profile banner and they need a company page banner. Now, I have laid all of this out just so you could see visually how all of these formats and aspect ratios differ and also what platforms have these aspect ratios in common. And as I said, vertical content is where it's at. Now, lucky for you, you do not need to memorize all these numbers. I do understand this looks like a lot, and honestly, I don't even remember all of them. I mainly just remember for social media and definitely not Linktn. I Googled most of these. However, the cool thing about Canva is that you don't need to know all of this from the top of your head because when the time comes for you to design anything, you go to the Create button and if you do remember particular number, size or aspect ratio that you need to use if you click on Custom Size. This is where you would put in your specs, right? And here you can change from pixels to inches to millimeters to centimeters. Now, pixels and inches are the most commonly used. I think when it comes to millimeters and centimeters, they're mostly used when it comes to actual prints. But here, this is where you would be putting in your numbers, and under that, you would see your most recent ones. And when I previously said that you don't have to remember all the specific numbers and sizes is because when you design on Canva, you can actually just select what kind of size Canvas you need, and CNA will automatically give you the correct size. And the cool thing is that Cannava stays very updated with all of the other platforms in terms of them changing up. So for example, back in the day when Instagram didn't prioritize the portrait type of feed post, they only were allowing one by one. Canva offered one by one. Now you'll see that the first thing is the portrait post. So for that reason, I say that you could definitely rely on Canada being updated with rest of the social media world and the sizes. So but when it comes to you actually creating the correct size for your design, you can either go from this little shortcut menu here or you can go back to the Create button and you'll get the same menu here on the side. And here you would just select what it is that you want to design. You have some already here waiting, Canvas suggesting. You have your frequently used popular and try something new. But let's say, let's focus on social media. Here, it's actually organized by platform. So first one is underpopular is Instagram. So you see Instagram post four by five, so that's going to be the portrait Canvas size if you click on it, it will immediately take you to a blank Canvas where you can start designing whatever is it that you need. Same thing with Instagram story, so it already has the exact numbers locked in and ready. Same thing with YouTube and even a YouTube with thumbnail. Then you have some Facebook options here in LinkedIn. Oh, these are just popular, but if you do want to go in depth with other kinds of posts, you can go under the **** platforms and see, look what is it that you need? And if you can't find it for whatever reason, you always have the search bar up here where you can type in whatever you want. So let's say I need TikTok. So I type in TikTok and it will open everything that it has for it. And there's only really two distinct sizes because TikTok story and TikTok video is pretty much the same the size of it, and you have the profile picture. But besides that, it's very well organized and all the sizes are preset, so you don't have to remember. And when it comes to the file format, you definitely want to export for these platforms, mainly in PNG or JPEG. And I'll explain to you why. So when it comes to designs that need to have a transparent background, like we spoke about in the logo systems, you need a transparent background for something like that. So you would download it in a PNG. Here, this drop menu will suggest it most likely. And then here you can adjust the size if it's necessary. And if you do have a subscription, pardon me. If you do have a subscription or if you have a paid plan, then you can adjust this. If you do not, then unfortunately, you only have the pre selected size available. But from here, you would just tick the transparent background and hit Download, and that's how you would get the transparent background for your design. But other than that, if it's not for something that needs to have a transparent background, P&G is also good for designs with text or sharp edges in general because PNG oftentimes prioritizes quality. So when it comes to the other most common type, which is JPG, this is mainly used for photography heavy design. So if you have some actual pictures in your design, either from the Canva library or your own, you want to use the JPG. That's going to be the best choice for you. And the same thing also, you can adjust the size, and here you can also adjust quality, which I always suggest just go the biggest you can. So large is going to be 100 here. And now, you know, the best types of formats for your designs to be exported in. But to make a long story short, make sure that your designs are adjusted to each platform. Make sure you select the correct size Canvas on Canva. If for some reason you cannot find it, you can always go into Google and find the size for whatever it is that you need on Google, and then just copy based numbers into and make it a custom size. But definitely make sure to utilize and take advantage of these most popular sizes because the algorithms will oftentimes prioritize that type of content. So on YouTube, for example, your shorts might do a little bit better than your landscape or regular videos because YouTube is definitely pushing for shorts these days. And on Instagram reals is the exact same thing. So take advantage of the algorithm, make sure that your designs are adjusted and have fun. 6. Creating Reusable Templates: Now that you have your brand kit in place, you have different variations for your logo, Let's talk about how Canva can help you stay consistent across all platforms. CNA offers this tool called brand templates. So what does that mean? This means that you can create your own templates with the designs that you use the most across your platforms, save them, and then reuse them and stay consistent with whatever it is that you post. This could be anything from Instagram posts to LinkedIn posts to emails, to presentations, really anything that you design on Canva. As I've said before, small deviations compound over time, and at the end, things don't necessarily look wrong, but they just look off. So you want to make sure to eliminate the possibility of changing things without you knowing. So essentially, we are creating an environment for your brand where your easiest choice, your easiest design choice ends up being the correct choice. Now let's jump over to Canva and let me show you how to create one of these templates. On the home screen, going back to the left side of the screen, I'm just going to click on brand, and it automatically drops into the brand templates page. As you can see, I have a couple of templates saved, and let me show you how overall this looks. I'm going to go over to this brand right here and go to brand templates. I have two saved for now. For example, this one I have saved because these are essentially cover photos for my articles on my website and I really like the look that I have created here. And I have different kinds of layouts already made. And in a case where a new article is being written, I can just come over here, drag and drop and replace these same images, whichever design I like best or whichever one fits that article in particular. And I have a whole cover ready, and I don't have to readjust or think of anything. I have everything pre made. Ah, and here on this side, this is a template for video. So whenever I make videos and I lay out information on the screen, I really like the kind of look that I have developed so far and not wanting to deviate from that, I have saved all of these designs in one folder, and I've saved it under the templates page. Because whenever time comes and I have to create a new kind of informational video, I go back to this folder, and whichever kind of design fits best, I go back into it and I alter the text, I change out the graphics or the background, and I have a whole design already without needing to spend a lot of time creating everything from scratch every single time and worrying if it's going to look the same as before. If you do have something that you have created and you would like to stick to that look, you can make it into a template. Now, smartest way is to actually distinguish that design as a template and fill in, for example, text and the elements as placeholders, just so you know what goes where. Or if you are working with a team or with a client or with anyone that isn't you. This is also great guide for them to see what goes where. It's like instruction manual almost. So it really leaves little to no room for error. Now, let's show you how to actually create a template. I'm going to go back to my cosmica brand, and from here, I'm going to click on brand templates. I have a couple of suggested, and it's definitely great. However, could click on one of these, but I'm going to instead click on the homepage. I'm going to select a design that I have made previously just because I really do like the way it looks, and I would like to stick to that I know that on any other day I might not feel as motivated or maybe as creative or maybe I could just get a whole other fresh idea that seems good at that moment, but maybe isn't in the long run. I'll just stick to the design that I have already come up with that I'm satisfied with and I know that matches the brand and I'm just going to make it into a template. Um, now, you can, of course, create it from scratch, but that does require some time and some planning. If you do have a very clear vision on what is it that you want and the look that you need, and you know how to achieve it, of course, by all means, go for it, create your templates from scratch. The more original, the better, of course. However, if you do have already some creations under your belt, you can just make a previous design into a template. So that's exactly what I'm going to do now also for the sake of keeping the lesson relatively short. I'm going to click on this pre made design that I have made for this particular brand conveniently enough. I am going to go into the work window, and we're going to start adjusting things and actually making this look like a legit template I can send to other people if necessary. Now, the main objective here is to clearly indicate what goes where and take away the specifics and lock in the things that I would want to stay with. So first things first, I really, of course, like the background. It is the straight from the color palette of the cosmica brand. Same thing goes for these little graphic elements in the back, the lines in the stars. That's very cosmica. I can definitely go ahead and also save these in the brand kit. But let's just focus on these templates first. So I'm just going to stick with this kind of look. What I'm going to do is highlight these. Let's go to positions and layers and make sure we have the right things highlighted. So let's highlight all of the stars in the corners. And if you hover over the element, it shows you on the screen which one it is that you are hovering over. And by holding Command on your keyboard, just click on each element that you want to highlight. Here we go. We have all four stars, and let's make sure we have all the lines. Okay? Everything seems to be in place. And now I'm just going to go ahead. First of all, I'm going to group them, right? And then I'm going to lock them. Now, this locking locking feature is actually very useful because this pretty much freezes these elements in place. I cannot change them. I cannot delete them. I cannot move them unless I unlock them. I'm going to do the same thing with the logo because I like the placement, and this color variation fits this background, so I'm going to lock this in place as well. And this is a useful thing to do if you are sending this design to someone else to your team member. They're going to see the locked elements and they'll be like, Okay, got it. So I'm not changing this, I'm changing whatever else is unlocked. Right? And also, not everyone's very well versed with Canada and accidents can happen. But the locking feature is very useful. Now, going to the actual elements that I want to change, first, I'm going to change this. So not always the post is going to be about limited edition. So instead, I'm just going to put in info. So I know that info goes there. Then you have the main title, which is Sir fo latte. Here I'm going to put in I want the name to be first then in yellow, and latte is the name of the drink, so I'm just going to put in drink. So that's how I know whether to put latte, macha T, whatever else I would want to promote with a post like this. And of course, I'm going to line up the text like I had before. I like this whole lined up to the side. And here we have the clear indication of what goes where when it comes to the text and the main title. Going down to this price in store offer. Here I'm going to put in offer type. And instead of five, I'm going to put zero for now because, of course, this is going to change. And next, of course, this is not going to be staying here. So I'm first of all, going to delete this. There are different ways I can go about indicating what goes there. But how I like to do it this time is just to put in a frame of an image, which will point to the needing to be an image. So what you can do is go to elements and go down here to frames and select really any frame. Let's go with the circle just for the sake of why not? So here I put the circle in place. Let's find the middle. In the right click it Align center. No, let's align it to the text. That makes sense because this circles coming on here. So it is technically off center, but visually it looks better this way. Now, I have this frame here. So now if I need to, I can go to photos and really insert any kind of photo from the photo library from Canva. Right, I can do that. Not the best choice, I guess. Any kind of photo can go here. In the frame, however, I would usually go for a cutout, but the frame kind indicates that's where it essentially goes. Well, it's not going to go in the frame, but you get my point. It's just kind of like a indicator. You can also put some instructions if necessary, photo or cut out. And let's put an arrow and just let's give it some background, just so it actually looks like make it red. Why not? And Perhaps if I'm working with someone who doesn't really know how I do things. This would be how I would go about it, right. And then from here, I like the stars. I like the background little circle. This I like the fact that there is text there, but not always it's going to be operating hours. Again, I'm going to put info here, and this can stay. In fact, I'm going to lock it because it's my handle. Here we have a teplate that is ready to be used and reused. I also can go from here and make a different version of this by just switching some things out like the background color, going to the layer section and selecting the background, I'll change it to a lighter blue, for example. Going back to position. Now the circle, I want it to be darker, so it stands out, right? For the stars, let's see, things are a little not visible enough for my taste. So since I have these elements kind of locked, I'm going to unlock them so I can now adjust them. Let me do that. So this let me make sure I highlight and make everything unlocked. So I really did lock everything in place. Let's change the color to white. A Is everything changed? I think so. Okay, so that is all changed. This the text, also, I'm gonna change to white current page, and this one is locked, as well. So unlocking it. Come on. Okay. Change this to white. What else do I need to change? That's changed This one. I wonder if I can do it from here. Okay, well, that's as light as it's going to get, but it's pretty good. So here I have another version of this template ready also to be used. Should I go with this? No, that's too plain. That's not bad. Okay. Go with that for the color of the text, let's make sure it's the correct yellow. And here we have another version with the same layout, but different kind of color combination. And now that everything is ready, what I can do now is hit Share and click on the brand template. And from here, I'm going to choose the folder where it's going to go. I'm going to go to Cosmica right here, click on that, click ad and publish and close. And if you are working on a team, it does give you an option to change the permission of your team members if you have some added. Also, you can copy the link of this template and send it to people. Of course, that's the whole point of collaboration on CNN yeah, from here, you just go back to your brand templates. Of course, your correct brand. Brand templates, and from here, we're going to start actually adding that template that I just made. You can do it either here from the suggested. If you don't see here, click on the Plus button, and it should be up here. Make sure you check that and add. And now you have a template ready to be used. You can also create, of course, anything for any kind of platform, whatever you use most. I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but you can create some variations for Instagram story design. You can create some email designs, LinkedIn posts. You can be presentations. You can really be anything as long as make the design beforehand when it comes to the text, indicate what goes where, and just add it to your brand kit and you're ready to go. So this whole process takes out all the friction, and it leaves you in a place where your correct choice for your design is the only choice because the environment is shaped that all the sources available to you are according to your brand down to the last detail. I love this whole brand thing, especially the templates. It really does cut time in half when it comes to designing things because you do need to post a lot if you are very active on your socials. So use your brand templates. You can create them from scratch. You can go to actually Canva templates and adjust the pre made templates if you want to, but make sure that you make something really cool and something that you see yourself posting over and over again, and that's something that will make you look good. And I think this wraps up this lesson. Get creative with your templates and have fun. 7. Content Batching Strategy: Okay, now that you know how Brian Templates work, it is time to put that knowledge into practice. I'm going to teach you how to batch create a bunch of content. In this lesson, we're going to be creating five pieces of content to post. So if you post throughout the weekdays, this is an entire week's worth of content. Now, batch working is something that marketing teams and creators have been doing forever. And honestly, it works. The reason why it works is because when you need to create large amounts of content in a short period of time, it is very easy to get overwhelmed and creatively drained because not only do you have to design all the time, but you also have to kind of step back from a business point of view and do your planning and your captions and the information that you want to put out there. So so batch creating actually helps out with this process, and it makes the whole thing much easier. Now we're here on Cava in our brand templates page, and I have some templates here created. So as you can see, like we created the brand template before, which was this one over here, we replaced all the specific information with pretty much directions or instructions, right? So we know what goes where. I have created four more templates to create for this lesson, and they are different kinds. So what you want to is create your templates of the post that you want to post more or that you need more, right? So I have a quote. I have a promo first, then quote, then new item, tips and tricks and community CTA. So these two are very amazing when it comes to interacting with your audience and not looking like a cold brand. So let's just get in to the fun part. So first things first, once you have created your templates, the design work is over. That's it. You're done. And actually focus on planning. And this is actually a very crucial step of this whole process because it does help out a lot, and you can create a lot all at the same time. Here I have created a list that I also suggest to you do you can really use your notes application. You can write good old paper, wherever you want to write it down, it's whatever. Here, since we're on Canva, I thought it was appropriate. So plan before you design, right? You have your templates. The heavy lifting is done. Now, ask yourself these questions. How many posts? For me, it's five. So I have written down five. Next question is, for which platform. So since Cosmic seems to have its primary platform, Instagram, I decided to go with an Instagram portrait. Then what are the content types? So, you want to decide make these decisions beforehand, so you go into your templates and prepared and not scrambling around. So I have decided that I want a mood post, a padded spotlight, an educational tip, promotional offer, and a community question. And then, last but not least, of course, plan out your copy. So what is the information you want to put out there? What is it that you're going to put on your design? Write it down. So I have written out all five posts, and now I know exactly what to put on. I don't have to now look at my template and wonder, Oh, what is best. I have taken a separate time, not exhausted myself, and planned it out. And now I just got to put those two things together. And down here, I have made some more notes for my I believe it was the third post, yes, it's the best spices. So since we're staying on theme, we're going to create for Cosmic, of course, it's a brand that we have built together. So let's go for it. So first post, let's see. Clicked away too quickly. So first post is the quote. So what I'm going to do from here, since I have written it down, I'm just going to copy it, right? So come and see on my keyboard. Let's go over to our brand templates and pick out the correct one. So since this is a quote post, I'm going to go for my quote template. Click on it, and let's click on use this brand template. Alright, so we have our template already. I have all of my elements set in place, and all I have to do is put in the quote and just choose a background picture. That's it. And my post is ready. So from here, what I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate this page just so the actual template stays here and I can then reuse it. So now I have it duplicated. I have made some creative decisions here and placed some layers over this frame that will allow me to log in a photo, a background photo. As you can see, I have a group of elements, which is this frame and then a transparent square, somewhat transparent. So what I'm going to do, I'm just going to move them to the side so I can interact with this layer, right? So the background. Now I'm going to find myself a background picture. Let's go to photos. I'm going to type in copy. Oh. Search and let's look for the right image. This one's a good one. I can tell. This one also, I like the Okay. So I like how the colors play out, but the logo, I mean, I could switch it out for the darker one always. But I really like the aesthetic of the dark image. Oh, this sounds good. Okay, so for now, I'm just going to keep this here. I'm going to get my elements back in place. Click on it, and then move. Yes. And I'm just going to paste my quote. I like that. I think that's exactly what I'm going to go for. Perhaps I'm going to go back to my little transparent square, and I'm just going to increase the transparency just a little so, you know, the logo and all the other elements really stand out. I think this looks beautiful. Post one is done. So now I'm just going to go to share, hit Download. Make sure I have the second page selected. Have it as PNG, of course. And I'm just going to keep the size as is because it's pretty good and just gonna hit Download. And that is post number one. Now it's time for post number two. Let's go back to the brand templates. I exited from that window, and let's see what is my next post post two Product spotlight. Our oat milk latte smooth cosmic Yours. So product spotlight. Let's go to our brand templates. Product Spotlight is going to be a new item. Yes. So I'm going to click on this brand template. So now that we are in our template, let's just start working on it, start copy pasting and get this post going. I'm going to duplicate this layer again like we did before. And now just going to this premade um list. Just start copy pasting. Easiest thing in the world. And I believe that's This is latte, so I'm just going to type it in. I'm gonna take off the caps, increase the size, maybe decrease the size of this so it's a little bit more a little more. Now if it's better. Okay. Now, back here, let's take this copy. I'm going to replace this. And now just gonna in effexs tab, adjust a curve. Bam. Oh, here. So we have either a photo or cutout. So in the case where I have the actual real product photo, I would go to my uploads and put in my photo, however, since I don't have an actual real product on hand or a picture of it. I'm just going to go to photos and search for latte and use that. So we should we let's maybe it's ist. Uh huh, but then it wouldn't be curd. Okay? So I'm just gonna get rid of this. I could also technically jag and drop and, like, pull one of these. Oh, that actually doesn't look bad at all. But it looks too similar to carousel post. So what I'm gonna do, perhaps, maybe just take this. I'm gonna remove the background. Center it. Take this, twist it. Place it. I got to bring this down a little bit. Perhaps I'll even increase the size, so it's more of a statement, you know? On here, we just kind of play around. You know, I'm gonna flip it. So I can put that text. Actually, I can get rid of this little thing. So I can put that text on the other side because it feels like this is, like, little empty, you know? Okay. I see it. Should it be, I got to go back to the curve. Ah. You see? Okay. Okay. I think that's where I'm going to put it for now. Perfect. Okay. Let's bring those beans to the front so they can overlap the cup. Which beans are they? Those are these beans. So I'm just putting them above this layer there. Okay. Perfect. I think I'm going to increase the size of the text. So I'm going to just highlight both so I can pull one of these. Make sure that you stay within your safe zone, right? And there another post is ready. Now, same thing. Download it. Same way. Done. Download. Let's go to the next one. And one thing after you are done creating from your template, what you can do is you can delete this or you can keep it here. It really is up to you. I personally usually just would delete because if I'm already I already had the template. There's no need for me to hold on to this file, right? So I would just hit the garbage can and move on. But I'm just gonna keep you here for now. Now moving on to our third post tips and tricks. This should be This should be also pretty quick. So since I have made another little note, I'm gonna go ahead and copy that right away. Tips and Tricks, this template right here. Okay, copy tips and tricks. Let's go. Use this brand template. Title goes here. Now, it's a little bit overpowering. That's okay. Five best coffee spices for flavored coffee. Got it. Bam. So we have a list of five. So we have cinnamon nutmeg, lavender, Cinnamon. What was the I already forgot. Good thing I have everything written down. You see? I would be scrambling. I'd be like, What What was it that I wanted to put on there? I forgot. Why do I always forget Ginger and lavender. Gonna type it. And delete this. So now we have these. I'm just going to arrange them quickly. First of all, take of the extra space because it just kind of gets in the way. Okay. So let's start placing them. I would want it to look kind of like this, right? Bam. Perhaps something like this, but I want to put, like, little images under it, just so for visual kind of let's just start working on it. Okay, so we have cinnamon. If we go with, like, kind of, like, outline, I think that could be very clever. Could look good. Or should we just go with the Now, when you're kind of working with this kind of stuff, you want to make sure that all of your graphics match. So let's see if we can pull that off. No me. That kind of match is, right? This match is better, I think. Yeah. It's too large, too large. Center it. Clove. No, it's a different style. That's okay. Oh, that's a very different style. I didn't click this already. There we go. Clothes. Ginger. Let's just put down the thing and see. Okay. So yeah, so this is going to go to positions and start grouping them just so they all could stick together. So we have cinnamon, lock that in. Then we have nutmeg, group, close, group. I'm holding down my command key on my keyboard. And this way, it selects both of these layers. Lavender. Group. Okay. So now we can move them all together, like so. Okay, yeah, I weigh 100%, so they should be placed definitely like this. Yeah, there's more of a balance, like a visual balance, and lavender being in the middle being the only purple element, I think, also works. Let me decrease the size of cinnamon a little bit. Make sure it is positioned properly. Nothing needs a little adjusting to Let's increase the size of lavender. Not that much. Okay. Let's adjust the ginger. There we go. Okay. Now it's a little bit more balanced. So what I'm gonna do now is really just export because I have it done. So third post is done. Hiccups do happen, and I have forgotten to add the actual title, which this was recooki with a latte, I think. Or a cartato. Anyway, so let's just go for it. What we have is a promotion of a free cookie if you buy a latte. So that's the whole idea. This should be as, like, a little add on. So I can definitely get rid of this, and that's where the text would go. Let's start typing free Cookie. I did, I should have written down this, but it's okay. It's just a line that there. Okay. I'm gonna get rid of this. And here I want to go and get another actually, let's go to photos, and let's search for another latte. But maybe perhaps this time it should I guess I should include both hot and cold. So let's go with this. Oh, no. Okay, let's get rid of that. No. So what we do need is them to match kind of sizes, so it makes sense, you know? So we have a lot to here. Perfect, perfect. Very good. And now we need a cookie. So let's search for a cookie. Now, in real life, we would have a pile of cookies. No. We're not giving away a pile of cookies. In real life, no, we need a normal classic one. Okay, good. So in real life, of course, as I said before, we would probably have product photography, you know, of a real product. But since this is imaginary, ideally you would want to put your actual photo of your product on these, right, to be completely transparent and such. But let's put that latte behind. It's kind of, there we go. Okay, that makes more sense. And these cookies, they look large. Let's decrease the size a little bit. Okay. Maybe perhaps should be way bigger, and it should be bigger, too. I like big text. Okay. So now we have the main kind of stuff is laid out, the products are out, the title is. And now, since we have this instore only this Friday will stop last. So what we want to do is take the instore and put it at the top, in store only, like, as like and perhaps actually that could go down there, right? There. Or you should go here. Let's see. I feel like this should be the operating hours instead, let's say, 8:00 A.M. To what 9:00 P.M. Right? And that should go here. So I'm going to do is just duplicate this. Put that text over here. Like, so make sure it's aligned. Alright. There we go. And now this is done, as well. Let's export that. So I only need this. And now we have our final post, which I have come up with this or that, these kinds of posts do really well, especially if you're trying to build a community because it pretty much asks for the person to interact. And everybody everybody has an opinion if you give them choices to choose one or the other, coffee or tea, hot or cold, stuff like that. So let's just so this is going to be this or that iced or hot latte. What I'm going to do is go on and get the community CTA template going. So I have this or that, drink edition, Latte edition. It looks like I really like latte, but ironically, I don't really even drink lattes on my everyday basis. That's so funny. So iced to cold. I guess here it would be ice? Iced. Hot. You see, and there it is. It says, tell us your pig in the comments below. So here you get interaction. And here I just drop in some photos. Um, oh, I need an actual photo. Which one looks most optimal. Everything looks like a frappuccino. Isn't that funny? Okay, this is. It's gonna increase the size. There we go. And hot. Oh, look at that. Or should go here. I think that's actually better. I like the cup. Okay, and that is done. It edition, iced hot, tell us, Okay, we're done. Alright, let's just download this one. And now you have five posts for the entire week. And took you just a little bit of effort, spread out throughout perhaps days, it's up to you. But this is how you batch create. So when you do have high volume of content that needs to be created, make sure to divide your process into sections and preferably do them on separate days because when it comes to the creative side of things, you know, when you want to create your templates, sure you do that beforehand, prepare, lay everything out. And then when it comes to planning you actually have to turn on your logical thinking more than your creative thinking, do that on a separate day, just so you don't exhaust yourself, don't overwhelm yourself. And this way, creating a bunch of content beforehand is super easy with batch creating because now you have five posts. You can sit back and relax. You can schedule these out on Instagram or whatever you're posting, and you're done. I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Font Pairing Systems: So, typography is one of those things that most people think they don't need to learn. And it's just, you know, pick a nice font, and you move on. That is not quite the case. And in this lesson, I intend to close that gap for you by giving you a system, kind of like principles of font pairing, just so you understand and your choice at the end becomes obvious. Now, first things first is use two fonts and not five. I cannot stress this enough. I understand not being able to choose the right font when you have so much choices and so many different kinds of cool options. However, you do definitely want to stick to mainly two because when you use too many fonts, start to get confusing. It looks off balance, and I have included an example here. If you take a look at one with two fonts, it looks clean and put together, and it makes sense. So it's not very difficult to look at as a reader. However, if you start looking at this one, we have three very different fonts. It just looks all over the place, and I can't really tell the character or the message that this text is supposed to give me or the vibe of the brand. It's confusing. So by using two fonts, you also will build that trust in your audience or even your clients because you're not all over the place. You have chosen two fonts that work for you. They speak for your brand or for your creations, for your designs, and they get a clear message across. Next up, what you want to do is pair contrast with harmony. Now, I have taken two fonts that are different, but simple enough. We have PT serif on the top and Rhodes Sun serif on the bottom. Now, these two fonts, as I said, are different, but similar enough, and they create this kind of contrast without fighting each other too much. And that's essentially what your font pairing should feel like where the differences are there and they're visible, but they end up complementing each other's style and look. And also, of course, again, get the right message across. Next up, you want to make sure to give each of your fonts its job and stick to it because when you start switching things up, it throws off balance, right? So let's take a look at these examples. We have our headline in a very bold and large font, and the body text is smaller, much lighter in weight, and this kind of hierarchy guides the reader's eye very clearly, right? It's very easy to look at, and I know exactly where the headline is and where the body is. And the actual font for the body is also very clear. However, when you start switching things up, I have switched these two fonts, put the body font as a headline and vice versa. And as you can see, it is not, first of all, aesthetically, not very great looking. But also, this body font is too heavy to be a body, right? So it starts competing with the headline, and it's not as clear and easy to read and see as a viewer. So you definitely want to make sure that you keep the jobs that you have assigned to each font all throughout your creations and just stay consistent with it and make sure that everything looks balanced. Then to get more into the hierarchy topic, you want to build your hierarchy through size, weight, and space, right? So you have three very distinct layers here. You have your headline, you have your subheading and your body. And all of these three sections should be distinct from one another and they should be separate from one another. So your headline is always large, it's always bald. And when it comes to designing, you also want to make sure to leave some space around it, for it to breathe. Then your subheading should be just a little bit less heavy than your heading. And so this one has a little bit less weight, and it is a clear step down as maybe a clarification or maybe some additional information that adds value to your headline. And then your body text should be the smallest. As you can see, it's very light in a way, very easy to read because the font itself is very minimal and it's very clear. And also, you want to make sure to choose your body font so it's readable. So you don't want to go for something that is like something in cursive, right? So this would be bad, technically, as a body font because it's very decorative. It comands a lot of attention. So worst comes to worse, just use it as your headline if you must. And last but not least, what I'm going to leave you with is lock in your font and just keep it, right? So this requires you to make a very wise decision for the future. Well, you want to make sure when you're choosing your font is to choose something that you can tell will work for the future. It's not something that you kind of chose because it looks pretty. Think about it. Will it work? Will I get tired of it? Will my style change drastically? So, you want to make sure to make a good decision when it comes to choosing your font and your font pairings and your system. Then when you have made your decision and chosen a good font that works for your brand, for yourself, and for your aesthetic, lock it into your brand kit on Cava. Because as we saw before, when you actually have something locked and loaded, it's very easy to continue creating without making any unnecessary decisions or even looking for the right font in the long list of fonts that Canva does offer. Lock it in and that way, you get to keep being consistent and being recognizable for your audience or for your clients. And once that decision has been made, then you're all happy like this little hamster holding your font being consistent and being on brand for yourself. And, of course, thank you for sitting through my presentation. However, I do also want to point you to a very good resource that Canva offers itself. So we have this wonderful article where Canva actually provides you some principles on typography, more information, but most importantly, what I find most value in here is that you actually get to see how Canvas fonts that they already have offered on their platform, how they work with each other. So in a case where you want to use the fonts that Canva has, you already have a very good spread, and you know what works together, what looks right, what doesn't you don't have to go to outside sources to look for your font. However, if you must do that, I will make a personal recommendation towards Adobe font and Google font. I find those two sources to be very, very good. And they stay very up to date with trends and aesthetics, and overall, their fonts are very good quality. But besides that, when it comes to C they actually show you, as I said, how fonts that they have on their platform work together. So you have lots of great examples that you can scroll through. Maybe you find something that catches your eye. And they also show how it works in different kind of scenarios, right? So you can scroll through, find your style, maybe read up on it, and get really familiar on the whole source and the whole world of fonts, just so at the end, you can make the best decision for yourself. Is absolutely gorgeous. I love this font. My personal favorite one, though, if it's of any value is actually this league Spartan favorite one. It works great on so many occasions. And this pairing is actually very good. That looks very nice and modern, actually. But, yeah, you can scroll through and see for yourself, take your time. Explore. But also, besides that, I do want to remind you, I know I have said this before in this course, that Canva does offer font pairings on the actual editor. So if you go to the text section and you would end up here at the top, right? But you start scrolling down and you see different kinds of paired fonts, and also they're very much stylized. There's a lot of different kind of you see retro and bubble. You have more serious ones. But this is also a very good source for someone who's finding their footing. And maybe just need some inspiration. There's many cool different kinds of examples. And again, you can, of course, get one of these. It was a bad choice to put it on my presentation. But let's say you like this kind of font that says mystic. That's pretty cool. You can still, you know, alter it if you want to adjust it more to your liking, change your colors, or even what we have here, you can change the sizes. Just about anything. So all of these are still editable, and you can still make it your own without just going with the default option that they do offer. But overall, to recap, you want to make sure to use two fonts, assign each of these fonts a job and stick with it. Do not switch. Do not put your body text with your title font and vice versa. You also want to make sure that the fonts that you have paired are different enough, and I know this sounds kind of confusing, but they are different enough, however, similar enough where they kind of create a little bit of tension. But not enough where it contrasts too much. So the best example that I can give you is these two. So this is a big no, right? You have blue wood in this kind of Western, I want to say, cowboy style, and then you have the craftsman, which is, like, handwritten, very decor kind of font. It's beautiful, but they just do not go together. If anything, I'd say the authentic leather font. So this is special elite, go with the blue wood, which is ry, right? So these two would work better, but bluewood with craftsman would not. So make sure that they are different but similar enough. And then, of course, when you have made your wise decision, just lock it in and stick with it. Trust me, it will definitely eliminate a lot of headache, and it will build a lot of trust with your audience. Thank you for your attention, and I will see you in the next lesson, which is all about grades and alignment. 9. Grid & Alignment: In the last lesson, we spoke about typography and font pairings and how to create hierarchy with size, alignment, and how to guide your viewers' eyes on your design. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about grid and alignment, which is the structure underneath all of that. And if this doesn't work, then it is painfully obvious. And it serves almost as a distraction of some way or discomfort to some because you can't really tell what is off, but something is off and it's not a pleasant experience for anyone. Thankfully, Canva has plenty of tools that can help you out with your alignment, and with your grid, you can create your own custom grid or you can just go with the standard but I'm going to show you around how grid and alignment can really improve a design because when that stuff is off, even if your elements are nice, your text is nice, your font is nice, everything is great. If the alignment is off, it can make your design look a little bit more amateur than it should. So let's get into it. We're looking at a beautiful design here. But there's some things that are off, right? So you have these images on the bottom that are different sizes. They're not really spaced out properly. You have your body text that's a little bit off center, so it makes me personally feel a little uneasy. And then you have the title, which is also a little bit off, not quite giving me balance. So, how we can fix this is quite easy. First things first, when you start designing, right? What you want to do is make sure to understand how to center. Or align your elements. One great thing is to drag your element over the canvas and just kind of see what these lines are doing, because this is the built in alignment system. So once this line is solid purple, it means it's smacked down in the middle of your canvas, right? Once it's interrupted line, it's aligning to another element, which in this case, you can see the line ends at the middle image at the bottom design. That's what this text is aligning to, right? So if you want it in the middle, make sure to have the solid purple line going all throughout from top of your canvas to the very bottom of it, right? So let's just align or actually, you can also do right click on your element and then scoot down to a line page. And here you have a list of things like align to left, line to center, line to right, top, middle, and bottom. So what would happen if I would click through these? So let's try the left. Now it has aligned my text to the left, of course, and that's the same thing that's going to happen if I do right. And this is very, very handy, and it's very quick, so you don't have to drag the element yourself. Now, what would happen if I would go top? My element went all the way to the top. Same thing with bottom, and same thing with middle. However, my main priority with this design is to align the text in the middle. I still want it under the word green, right? So what I will do is do center here. So now the elements in the center should have the purple line. There it is. And I'm just going to press it again and do middle. And now it is smacked down in the middle. I can drag it down, drag it up if I wanted to overlap. I actually kind of like the look of that. Think I'm going to leave it there. And now it is perfectly aligned and nothing is off. There's not even a millimeter of chance that something is off center about these two words. Next thing is, of course, the body. So you see how weird it is. You definitely want to make sure it is also in the middle. And you see these little numbers start appearing. So that's kind of showing how far it is from other elements. Wherever it appears, you see another extra line that says 3.021 kind of shows you how far it is. So that also helps you out with your alignment because if you want to let's say this line. I want it to be in the middle between my body text and my images at the bottom. As you can see, it is both say 1.106. So that means it's in the middle. But before we align that, we have to fix these images. That's weird. That's a little bit off. So this is what I'm saying when I'm talking about alignment, and the nicest elements can just completely lose their impact, their value if they are out of whack like this. So first of all, I want to increase the size of this, right? Hu. I want it to match. Because if you overall look at the design, everything seems to be very geometrical, very aligned and I want to say in order, right? So I'm just going to drag it up by whichever element I want it to be in the same size of. I can see there's this purple interrupted line. So now I'm just going to drag the bottom so it matches, boom. And now I can do the same thing with the width, not only the height, so there. Now this is the same size as both of the images beside it. So again, I want to align. I'm just going to go quickly. Align to page. Oh, so it is in center. So when your element is aligned to whichever choice here, it's just going to go gray and you won't be able to click on it. So that's a good sign, right? Now I just got to fix these other ones. And again, I want to make sure that they are at a proper distance from each other. And what I'm seeing here is I also want to align it with the line that I have here on top. And again, following the purple line that's interrupted. There. And if you will notice, I know I touched upon this before, but if you start dragging your elements, you will see this purple frame in the middle that's kind of like considered a safe zone. So it depends on what kind of design you make for what kind of platform. Or maybe it's a poster, which we will get into more detail about margins and all that stuff. But here, a lot of platforms will display all kinds of buttons or maybe your profile picture here at the top. So each platform is different. However, I want to make sure to focus most of your important information or your important elements in this safe zone. So it's okay if these three images go beyond it. It still is aligned, and I'm not going to lose any necessarily big value from this if, like, there's some sort of, like, cut off at the bottom, the majority is still in the safe zone. Anyway, it's moving on. Some people find the ruler feature very helpful, and I'll show you how to first of all, get it on your canvas and how to use it. So you want to do is go up to File and go to settings. And here you want to click on Show Rulers and Guide. And once you click on, you see you have this ruler up on top. And on the left side of your canvas. And from here, you can start dragging and create your own alignment and your own kind of grid and margins, right? So if you just grab from here and you hold it down and you just grab on to drag it to your canvas, place it wherever you want. Let's say, let's just put it here for now. I want another one on the other side. The cool thing is that it locks on. It has locked onto the element, which is another really great feature of Canva. There's the element lock on. For example, you'll see how if I start dragging this element out, it's starts interrupting stopping at many different points because it's locking onto other elements. Since like I said, I want it all to be aligned with the rest of the images I want to make sure it's locked onto them, and this is also a very helpful tool because I don't have to zoom in and see pixel by pixel. That might sound a little bit crazy for some, but when you design a lot of stuff, you start getting very nitpicky about the finest detail and you want everything to be in place, and it's completely understandable, right? So if I even do zoom in, I see how well it locks on. There is not even a single pixel of error here, right? So it's completely aligned. That's the benefit of the lock on. I don't have to think about it and spend time to make sure it's aligned. So when it comes to the ruler feature, I have dragged out my sides and I would do the same thing here from the top. I can go as far down or as high up as I want to. I'll align it to this frame that I have going on here for aesthetic purposes. But this, for example, if I didn't have this frame. Let me make sure to copy this before I delete it, but let's say I have it out, and I have my lines in place, my grid, right? So what I would do I would want to make sure I have a frame added to this design kind of looking like this, that's exactly what I would do. I would go to elements, and I would type in line search. And under shapes, I would grab this simple line, and I would put here by where I just put the ruler lines from. Oh, pardon me. Here you want to zoom in because it's quite thin. So grab this when it kind of turns purple, that's when you have grabbed it. And here you have a perfectly straight line across. Change your color. I'll do white. And now, it's very dangerously close to the grid. So let me zoom in just a wee bit more just so I could grab the actual element. Okay, I have a grab and I'll just duplicate it once, once is enough. And here I would grab it. So also, when it comes to tiny little elements like this, you can use this button instead when it shows up. So it's easier to grab it because to get your mouse to click on here, that always works out the best, so I'm just going to rotate it. And yet here's another cool feature about Canva. The rotating tool is very precise, and you saw that it locks At 180 and 90, which is also helpful because nobody wants a crooked line, especially in a symmetrical type of design like this, right? So again, I would just put it here. I think it was a little bit off. Bam. Perfect. And now I just duplicate this, and I have a beautiful frame feature added to this design, and it's all straight. And if I don't like these purple lines, I just go back to file and I turn it off, right? Let's pay Oh, I lost that. Okay, never mind. Okay. And another interesting thing is that you can also use some grid features that Kenva has built in. So they're like grid templates, I want to call them. So again, back to file and settings, you will go to add guides. And here you have three pre made by Canvas. So you have 12 column three and three times three. And you can see it shows up on your Canvas as interrupted lines. Let me zoom out guides. Okay. And you can click through and see whichever one works if you want to work with any of these. You can also build your own custom one, but this one will involve putting in numbers and, um actual margins that you would have to go by the ruler. So if you are up for that, that's something that is also possible. And you can save it then, right? So, hold on. There's something else I wanted to show. Okay, so when it comes to this ruler and the lines that you can add, so this is a good tool if you are planning out your let's say, poster in this case, right? And you know that you kind of you want to leave some space for your title. So what you're going to do is just kind of give that title a distinct area by creating your lines. Let's just imagine. Well, I suppose, I don't have to imagine. I'll just go to a brand new a brand new page, right? Wrong one? Okay. And then here, as you can see, I'm dragging these lines, and I'm kind of designating space for elements. So I would want my overall design to be more like I have a centerpiece, so center text with some elements up here and up here. And some maybe smaller designs here. This is how I would plan it out by creating this kind of blueprint of the layout of my design. And again, if you want all of this to you said, let's say you have put the line not where you necessarily want to or you have an extra line, you just drag it out and it will disappear. And you can turn off this whole roller system by just clicking on turn it off in the files and settings. So the snap on to elements is think the number one useful alignment tool in Canva because you don't have to go into settings or necessarily turn it on. I think it's automatically implemented. I do believe you can turn it off if you don't like saving time and like to zoom in pixel by pixel, make sure to have your things aligned. But that's the quickest and the most easiest way to make sure that everything's cohesive and there is good breathing space between your text and your pictures, your element. Besides that, the right click as I said, I do also find very useful and I use it very often, so feel free to utilize that. A lot of times it makes things go on a little bit faster, and I don't have to necessarily drag it because there are some times where I'm like, Oh, I can't find it in a situation where I have too many elements on my screen. And it's like aligning to everything, but not to the canvas, and I can't figure it out. I just go right click Center. That's it. I'm done. Right? So there you go. Canva has definitely made alignment and balance an intuitive thing in their interface, and the tools are wonderful. They are user friendly, and really, there is no excuse to have your elements and your text misaligned. In the next lesson, we're going to be talking about intentional empty space on your design and not overloading it with a bunch of elements. Thank you for your attention, and I'll see you in the next. 10. Whitespace & Balance: When it comes to designing on a canva, it is important to know how to properly balance your design, how to not overdo it. And I understand how easy it is because if you look at your design, oftentimes, if you look at it long enough, it feels like it's missing something. So you add a little bit more. You add another element. You maybe increase the size of something. You add things in the corners in the background. Oftentimes it is not necessary. On pro tip, I suggest when designing, if you've been looking at a design for too long and it's not working, step away. Just for, you know, an hour, take an hour to breathe, maybe even a day, who knows? But that I find very helpful. Besides that, a very common mistake that is completely understandable and mistakes are great because that's how we learn. But if I could help you with learning before you make those mistakes, that would be really good. But a common mistake is that people add way too much to their design because it looks too empty. Now, I'm referring to something that is called white space or also known as negative space. Now, what is white space? There's two types. You have macro white space and micro white space. Macro white space is the space of your margin. So at the edge of your design, right? Also, macro white space counts as the space between your title and your body, the space around your logo, and the space around your elements. Microwhit space, on the other hand, is the actual space between the letters in your text. So here where I have my cursor, that is micro white space. Same thing goes for the space between the lines of text. So between freshly baked and addition, that is micro white space. It's very useful to now, let's move on to talk about why leaving that space and making sure it's there with intention can actually pull your whole design together and make it look balanced in weight. I say weight in the sense of think of your elements on your design as having visual weight because that's essentially what is happening. If you take a look at this, it's kind of like a product catalog for bread. Looks very delicious. But all the elements are different sizes. There's so much free room, and some might think, Oh, maybe I could add another line here, right? Or maybe I could add something here because there's nothing, nothing, nothing. However, the design still looks very balanced and it's very light to look at. It doesn't have much weight to it, but everything looks very intentional. So for example, if we take a look at this piece of piece, no, a loaf of bread. It's a big element, so it has a lot of visual weight. And in fact, they've also decided to I say this loosely, break the rules of margin. So this element goes way beyond outside of the canvas. However, it still looks good because look what would happen if I would decrease the size of the element, therefore, in increasing the size of the white space. So I decrease it. Technically, you know, okay, let's not go crazy. Let's align it, okay? Now the elements aligned. Technically, it is correct, but it's not it doesn't have the same power that it did before, right? So visually, it looks a little off. And in fact, since this elements horizontal, the white space between the body and the loaf of bread is much, much smaller. So it looks a little bit more cramped and now there's too much going on here. Now I would want to technically put something there to distribute the weight. But instead, what is wiser to do, and also it gives the design a lot of character, it's just increased the size of the element itself, and there's still plenty of white space around it, but now it looks intentional. Let's say that instead of me wanting to add something, I would want to fill the space with increasing the size of everything, trying to pull everything together. So let's do that. I'll do this. So again, you see how the space between the line of texts here and the title decreased. Same thing here. There's really little to no space left. I don't know, man. I think I want to increase this, too, man. There's too much too much space. I don't like that. Let's just kind of start toying around with this. Okay, so, okay, that's bigger. Okay, okay. There's still a lot of room here. I don't like that room it looks out of balance. I increase this. It's looking a little off, right? So the white space is decreased. There's technically less, but it's not easy to look at. It's not as aesthetically beautiful as it was before because everything was balanced, and the space there was intentional. So I'm going to go back. I think that's where we started. And even though it is very minimal, there's still so much room to breathe, it looks way better than what I did when I tried to fill out the white space. It looks balanced. It's intentional. So if I would also go for the same kind of panic mode here and try to make it bigger, it has to make sense. There is no room around. Also, the text is hitting dangerously close to the edge. So it is in a bad way breaking the margins, which the safe zone, again, I mentioned this in the last lesson, I believe, about the safe zone. So you don't want the white space to be so small between important information like this description or name of this loaf. In this case, this would be wrong. So let's go back. And there. That looks way better. So the main takeaway from this is let your elements breathe, give your elements room around them, and you will see very quickly how less is more. I know that saying is very overused. But in design, it truly does work because if you look at this design itself, the style, of course, it's intentionally minimal. But everything it needs is here. There is no extra little to no extra design elements, like these lines would be the only ones that this design would still work without these lines. Potentially not as much here, for example. Like, if I would take this away, it's kind of looking empty, but still look balanced just because the space between the body and this loaf kind of mirrors the same space between this loaf and the logo. So it still doesn't look bad at all. This is just purely a stylistic choice that the designer has made, and I'm not completely mad about it. This line also not very necessary. But it serves here more as a way to separate sections of this design. So you have your other loaves, and then you have your website and your number, which is, like, a separate little. So that line kind of divides it. But overall, make sure to let your elements breathe and don't cram them. I will leave you with a couple of tips on how to avoid overloading your design. Unless, of course, you're going for a very maximalist type of look, then sure go ahead. But still in a maximalist kind of style, you do want to make sure that your design has balance. So it has that visual weight balance where the heaviness of this loaf is balanced out by the big title and the copy being right under it. Right. So make sure you even balance out your maximalist designs. Another good method is to use padding within, like, square elements that you have here, for example, that serve as backgrounds. So let's zoom in and take a look. So you have a lot of padding between the edge of this container and the actual picture of the bread. Same thing goes around the text. So there is a lot of padding. And it's all equal. Have you noticed that? So the white space is equal in each of these. The only kind of difference is here in the middle where you have a background on top of a background. But again, I think that is more of a stylistic choice than anything else. And it doesn't look bad, and it still is using that padding room here between the white square and the square behind it. So there is a lot of padding between the actual bread and the edge. So this is what I'm saying. This empty space is very intentional because this would lose its kind of balance if I would make it fit, let's say, a little bigger. Like, it's not as nice because the weight all of a sudden goes up here instead of the text, right? So it's unbalanced. I would usually suggest to scale your elements and your text down. To fit within the safe zone that I spoke about, I'll refresh your memory. You see this kind of purple line. The text, you notice all of it from top to bottom is a line. Let me zoom out, make sure that the bottom is lined, as well. So let me move to There you go. Okay, yeah. So it hits exactly the edge of it. Everything all the informations within the safe zone and everything is line. And there's space between them. But still, there is what was I saying? So you have the text within the safe zone, however, it still has the room. So if I would put it up here, the white space is gone, and it feels like it's crammed and it's not as easy to guide my eye. Like, there's something off, right? So you definitely want to make sure to leave spaces. And another great tip is remove before you add. So instead adding things to your design. See what you can remove because if there's even a single single element in your design, it's not necessary, it's not really serving a purpose. It's not providing any information. It's just there to fill that, I can throw off the rest of your design. So instead of you trying to add something to complement that, just remove it. And you'll see the overall look will balance out, and the design look will improve drastically. So always remove before you add. So now you know all about white space or negative space, and now you have the tools in your toolbox to make sure that your elements breathe. Everything has visual weight has been distributed properly. And each of your elements and your text complement each other. They work well together, and everything is balanced. 11. Editorial Layouts: We have spoken about typography, alignment, grid, balance, whitespace. All of these are tools in design by themselves. Now, editorial design is what happens when you use these tools with intention. The reason why I'm bringing up editorial design in this course is because actually recently editorial has had kind of a moment in the limelight in the social media world. Editorial style design has been very popular, especially on visual platforms mainly around photos such as Instagram. If you go around Instagram, and you kind of just scroll around. I can guarantee you you will find your friend from high school who posted a carusel of all the images she took when she went to Mexico, and they all are assembled in editorial style. I bet you $5 on that. 100%. But besides that, it is actually a very beautiful way to make designs. However, editorial style has a very couple of distinct features and distinct rules that it follows. The word editorial comes actually from publishing, such as newspapers, magazines and books. And I think, as you can guess, editorial, the word actually does come from publishing, shocker, I know, from things like newspapers, magazines and books. And most people when they think of editorial, they think of vogue. Coincidentally. The Vogue magazine does a wonderful job showing how editorial design is done right. Instead of showing you vogue today, I'm going to show you this template on Canva that is in the style of editorial design. It is quite minimal, however, it does have very distinct features like big stylistic text, of course, centering a purse. And the purse, as you can see, is overlapping the text, which is very, very common. And it's a great way to kind of break those rules. You know, those whitespace rules we were just talking about in the previous lesson, yeah. So when it comes to breaking any kind of design rule, when you do it, you do it with intention, right? So if sometimes happy mistakes happen or happy accidents happen, how Bob Brass used to say. But you always want to do it intentionally, where when you do break these rules, it still looks good, and it's still giving the correct message. And it's not hard to look at. So in this case, this is a beautiful example of that. And when it comes to actually magazines, like, for example, Vogue, you'll notice that a lot of times how they design their cover is the model the person on the cover will oftentimes kind of stand in front of the title Vogue. That's a very, very popular way to go. Honestly, I do it, too, in my design work very often. And when also it comes to editorial design trending and mixing in with the world of social media, it is not as if every single person is designing their work directly or specifically in editorial kind of style, they're implementing a lot of elements. And so the editorial style has seeped into other kinds of design styles, which I find to be very cool. And that's how you end up having finding new trends, finding new styles, creating new styles. But besides that, it's trending. Canada is also very well aware of this, and they have made sure that they have plenty of templates on their platform, so you could take part in the trend. Now, I'm going to go over and show you a couple of the editorial kind of designs, and we'll talk about what is it that makes editorial distinct from regular social media design. So let's search in. Let's go to templates, and let's search torial We very distinct thing about editorial design is that it creates very intentional hierarchy. So it almost works as a guide, right, for your eye. So it choreographs what you should look at first and then what you should look at second and third and however more elements there is on a design. But it's almost like a dance. Intentionally guiding you to what to see first and what to see second. For example, this reminds me of a fashion magazine that oftentimes old fashion magazines mostly use editorial kind of style. And as you can see, there's a lot, but first things first, my eye goes to, I can't decide whether it's the girl or the text because they both are in red, but it looks beautiful, right? And then for example, you have let's say this. This is a very good example. So first thing, I see the text. So that's where I read. Then I look at the girl, the model. Beautiful, gorgeous. And then I start looking at the subheading. Okay. Even something small can change the atmosphere. And that's when my eyes kind of trickle off onto the corners, but it's kind of like a predesigned dance, right? An instruction, if you will. Okay. Another interesting thing about editorial design is that they use type as a visual element. So in regular design, text is mostly for reading, just to give you the information on what am I looking at? What are you trying to tell me? In editorial, type, the text is its own piece of art. It is its own kind of visual element. So in this example, you see, the text it almost lives its own life. And the background image, which is a background, can you imagine? A background. Is just kind of like a second thought, right? It's not as visually intriguing as the text. And I apologize, of course, to the picture itself. The picture is beautiful, but the text is just doing what it's supposed to do, meaning it's being its own visual element. And you'll see this very often with editorial kind of style, right? This is another good example. That text. There's so much going on. It's very creative, and this is exactly what you'll see a lot in editorial design. Next up, I want to look at this. Another very distinct thing is that this kind of style uses intentional tension. And what I mean by that is overlapping images or overlapping text. So for example, you'll see here, this image is placed on top of this image that is seeping through and it's touching the edge, and technically, this would be considered wrong. But Again, I'll say it again and again and again as many times as I need to. When you break these rules intentionally, it actually helps you out. So this is the tension that's created. It's kind of making pulling the visual weight here. However, it looks almost with taste, obviously, but it kind of creates a statement, right? Same thing with this kind of design, you have the text overlaying a picture that is also going out of frame, and then you have a tiny little image here. So this kind of intentional tension is on purpose and is very distinct characteristic of editorial design. Another good example of this tension is adding elements and overlapping elements. So this overlapping the image that is technically, if you look at this, this is nice and centered, right? The white space is perfect. The text is breathing, it's readable. The picture is straight, aligned, and then you have Bam something overlapping. And you'll notice that a lot in editorial. There's elements that you don't expect. And we actually saw this in the previous one, which was this example that I showed you here, like, the color of this element is very unexpected, right? Because what you're looking at is an advertisement of a purse. It's classy, right? You have beautiful type, minimal. The background is beige with light texture, and then you have neon green container for the text. And even though it seems logically out of place, it looks good. It gives it that editorial edge, that character. If you want to start making your designs into this style, this is going to be a good practice to take a lot of risks and to kind of push the boundaries. And just add things that normally you wouldn't expect, and it will spice up your design at an instant, but do it tastefully. So another very distinct thing about editorial design is that it is very minimal oftentimes. For example, this, the image, it's not a very typical frame, size, or position that one would use, right? But it works. And that's a very, very editorial thing. Same thing with the text and the title. Everything is so minimal, and this kind of style emphasizes the point that less is more. So it's a very, very common practice to just make sure to make your creations as minimal as possible. So all you want to include is things that actually serve a purpose. Another great example for the unexpectedness or the boundary pushing is the layover of the text over an image that is blurred. So logically, we always want to include a very clear and high quality image. However, here it is blurred, and that is a very I don't want to say typical because that, I think, could be the greatest insult to this kind of design style. However, you do see this kind of boundary pushing a lot. It's very fun. And especially nowadays when everyone and their mom is making designs that are kind of a mash up between regular fun design of a t shirt design, but somehow they end up including editorial style, and all of a sudden, it almost looks more luxurious, I want to say. Maybe it's just me, but just morphing styles together, I think is a very fun and creative way to go about it. So now when it comes to the different kinds of editorial design, there's like there's like four different kinds of editorial design. There is the text dominant one. So this would be a good example where the text is the main act almost, if I may say that. It is what the whole canvas is about. You're meant to look at the text, you're meant to read it. However, it is designed in a way where you see it before you read it. And it's very interesting because this kind of comes in with the same point that I made before of oftentimes you see the text being its own visual element. So its own graphic almost. This one, I would say is also text heavy. Let's see. Let's see. Do we have another good example? This one's also. However, about half of the canvas is by an image taken up by an image, which beautiful. So when I say text dominant, it's mostly a design where if there is image, it's very small and oftentimes somewhere to the side, on this example, it's very text dominant. So the image is almost like a secondary thought. You immediately go to the title, and then you start reading about, Oh, what is that, right? Same thing here. So it's text heavy. That is the main act of the whole design. Of course, you have the other end of the spectrum, which is the image is dominant. So something like this, the image is the main act of the overall design, and that is where your attention is supposed to go to. Let's see if we can find another good example. Now in this kind of image dominant design, you'll see that there is sometimes the image will touch the edges and break those margin rules like this one because it's more to the side and then there's more whitespace here, but they will never overlap. So this overall is the image dominant editorial design way. So the main act is the image, then you go to the title and then the body. And same thing actually here. The whole page isn't taken by the image. That's like a whole no ballgame, but it's image dominant. So again, minimalistic, all you need is a photo or an image of some kind, your title and your body text. And you have editorial design on your hands. Another way that editorial design works is that they tend to use a lot of grids. So images organized either in asymmetrical grid or a symmetrical grid. For example, here, this is asymmetrical, right, because all the images are different sizes. So that could be it's more of a collage type of thing. But if we look here you have a grid of images, you'll see that very, very often. And I think that comes mainly from fashion. Because if you look at a lot of fashion magazines, you'll notice that it's mostly image dominant, right? Because, you know, they're showing off the clothes. And so you need a lot of images in your design. So you see, again, you have a whole collage asymmetrical, however, still is. And that's how most of these designs work with a lot of imagery. Like here, that's straight out of runway, right? So you oh, this is another good example. Okay. So again, if you're trying to do editorial design, make sure to include a lot of images and organize them in a way where they tell a story like this one. I also immediately noticed this one. They have included some just plain color squares to their grid, which adds a big editorial vibe, I will say. Then you have the final ish category of the editorial kind of design way. Hold on, I saw this. This one's going to be edge to edge image with a overlay of a lot of texts. You don't have a lot of other visual elements besides your photo be the main background and then your text and nothing else. There's no circles, no dots, no little hearts, no squares, nothing. It's just this. And that is straight up a magazine cover pretty much because you start scrolling down here, and those are all just magazine covers, right? So that would be a very, very easy way to kind shift into an editorial style. Just make sure you put your image, corner to corner, overlay your text in an interesting way. As you can see, this lady is standing in front of this text here. Oops, that was not what I wanted to do. And then she has text over her, which gives it layers. To recap this lesson, just in case you want to start creating in this way. You don't really necessarily need an extra set of tools. What you need is a vision. Willingness to break some rules with intention. And push boundaries. And it's mainly text and image dominant area. And I think it is very beautiful. And if you can mash it up with another style, even better. 12. AI Tools (Background Remover, Magic Expand, etc.): So Kana AA Editing Suite is actually a remarkable tool because something that used to take hours in separate editing softwares now takes a couple of clicks all on Canva. I cannot tell you how many hours have I spent on Photoshop trying to expand an image by a millimeter. And now in Canva, you can create whole images, but that's another story. So first things first, I would like to show you how this background remover works because you have seen me use it quite a lot throughout this course. And that's why I keep saying that the background remover on Canva is one of my favorite tools, and I use it all the time. So here in front of us, we have two images of a coffee cup. Now, the reason why there are two is because one is really good for a background remover and the other one isn't as great, right? So if you have an image with a background that is very detailed and it's not blurred and it's very busy, then Canvas AI system might have some problems removing it. Sometimes it does a very choppy job around the edges. At worst moments, it will just tell you, Oh, we cannot detect the background. So therefore, I would always suggest to go for an image more similar to this one, as you can see the background in this image isn't too busy, it's not very detailed, half of it is blurred, and this is the perfect example when the background remover is actually going to do a good job. And let me show you how this goes. So first, I'm going to go with a good picture, and background remover is going to be right up here. I'm just going to click and literally took it a split second to remove the background, and it did a very, very, very good job. Now, if I go up here to the image with not an ideal background, it's going to have issues. Well, there you go. I pressed background remover and it gave me an error message saying we couldn't detect the background in that image. Please try another image. So that's why I say, choose your photos very, very carefully. And end in a situation where, for example, it has left some sort of parts of the background, what you can do is click background remover again, and now you're going to be in this kind of pixel pixel eraser, literally, that's what it's called. And you can adjust by deleting more, or you can restore by just kind of dragging around where you want the background or any detail in the photo to come back. And technically, you can use this also here for this image. So instead of background remover, what you would do is go to the eraser tool. Can do magic eraser, which in this context wouldn't really solve the problem that we have, which is removing the background. We would go to Pixel eraser. And now you can start just erasing the background. But why do you need that if you could just choose a better photo and just do it one click and you're done, right? Now, the next thing have another example photo here to access the rest of the Canvas AI tools, you're going to hit the edit button. And here on the top, you see all the tools. So we have magic layers, magic edit, upscale, background remover, eraser, image video, and background generator. Now, let's try with the magic layers because this is actually quite impressive. What this tool does is it scans the photo, and it will literally separate elements that it can detect in the photo away from the background, meaning you can move, adjust, increase, decrease the size, you can do all kinds of things. So let me show you. So now I have this photo selected, and I'm just going to click on Magic Cares. As you can see, it is scanning the photo and recognizing what is the background? What are all elements and things. So it's just going to do that for just a little longer. So you see, I have a bunch of squares on the screen now, so these are the elements that Canva has recognized. So what does this mean? I'm going to click off the Canvas for now because it was all highlighted. And now when I help her over these elements, they highlight, so I can move them. That's a little wonky, but that's okay. That happens. Well, lucky, for me, I don't want to move these cushions, but what I can do here is move this cup. So an instance where, for example, you have a product photo of your own product, right? And you want to just move, let's say, any kind of object you have slightly more to the middle. What if it's, like, a little off center, and you want to make sure it's centered? This is the tool that you would use because now I have the background generated, so I can move it literally anywhere if I wanted to. So what I'm gonna do increase the size or might look a little unnatural, decrease the size. But this is the main idea of this tool. You see, also has highlighted the table, which is very, very cool. And this tool really allows you to take any kind of photos even from the CabelaPhoto library to edit. There's a furniture one. I want to try that. Let's do that right now. You can take any photo, whether you took the photo yourself. Oh, where did it go? Let's try this one. And you can adjust every single detail in the photo. I think it's very impressive because not even Photoshop or Illustrator does that. And in a case where you're creating a bunch of content and you really want to make sure that everything looks on point and everything looks straight, this is absolute magic. Still skinning. Okay, so now we have a bunch of elements, even the text. That is so cool. I could literally remove it and put something else over this. I could remove this or the cup. Or the book or that. So my point is that every single detail in the photo becomes an adjustable element. The next step, we have a very cool tool that is called Magic Edit. So here I have an example of an open sign. I'm going to click on Magic Edit, and here I can change anything about the photo with a prompt. So what I can do here is put in, let's say, change the color of the sign. To green and click Generate. So now I have given a general prompt, what I want the AI to adjust in the photo. As you can see, it looks exactly the same. Just now the sign is green. What you can also do is you can brush over any kind of area and then put in a prompt and change that little detail. So let's say I brushed over this. What I could Let's try to remove it and see what it does. So interesting that it's suggesting magic eraser. That is cool. So even the AI system is kind of looking at what you're trying to do, and they're like, Hey, maybe this tool might be better for that. That's very cool. So then you have the click option where you just take your mouse and you hover over. So in this photo, there's only this one sign, so there isn't much to work with. But here I can highlight this sign particularly and then go in with the prompt and do any kind of adjustment, any kind of edit. So here I will just click back, and that is how you can easily change anything with a prompt. Okay, now, since we are on this image, I'm going to show you another really cool feature, but going back to magic layers. So we have an image with a text on it, right? And magic layers actually allows you to change that text in the image. So it's a photograph of a sign, and the AI is allowing you to change that text that is photographed. I love this feature because, for example, right now, we have a sign that says come in, we're open. So it has recognized the font, and it has separated each of these words into separate elements. So what I can do here is start adjusting the sign. So let's say says come in. Don't. Come in. We're closed. Now, that's funny. Now, the elements are a little bit a little bit different sizes, unlike the elements are smaller, of course, than they were on the original, but we can adjust that. So place this here, this here, this here, and here we're just going to increase. Why not? Quickly? Now we have a sign that says, instead of come in. We're open, don't come in. We're closed. And it looks exactly like it did on the original photo. And this feature actually allows you to get really creative, and at this point, not even a photograph solifies anything. You can change anything, any kind of detail. So I just thought it was really fun, and I wanted to show you that. Alright, now that we are done with this photo, let's move on to this one and our next AI tool. So for this one, I have a beautiful photo of a coffee shop that looks out the window with two beautiful coffee cups sitting in the foreground. However, let's say if I wanted to post this on Instagram, there's two people in the background that I'm not liking. What can I do? I could open up photoshop and start erasing them. By hand, or I could be a little bit smarter, and I could stay here on Canva and just go to the Magic eraser tool. This is a tool that was suggested just recently by Canva with the previous photo that we worked on. So here, it's the same idea, gives you a brush tool. And with this brush tool, what you do is just highlight whatever you want going. So this is a really great tool to clean up the background of your photos, remove some people. Maybe there's some stains on the wall or gum on the floor or whatever it is that you do not want to um have in your photo. This will allow you to remove it without much effort. So here, these two people thanks for being here, but no, thank you. I do not need you here, so I'm just going to click erase after I've highlighted them, and they're gone. Now, I'm looking. There's this little spot here. Also, I'm not really liking this. I don't know what that is. But also, there's something on the table. And just like that, I erase everything. And now, as you can see the photo is up to my standard. It is clean. It's exactly how I want it to look, and now it's ready to post. So definitely, if you need to clean up background of your photos or anything, really, the magic eraser is definitely your friend. Of course, you also can use the click feature, which allows you to click on any kind of area that it recognizes and then just erase that. So let's see if I could erase this cup. For some reason, I want it go. And the little plate is sitting there lonely now. You see? Of course, then you have foreground, which will recognize the foreground of your photo. So kind of similar to you see it highlighted. It's similar to the click tool, so it highlights itself. And then you have if I had text in this photo, I could remove that as well by just clicking on the text, but since there is none, this might not even happen. If for some reason thought that the coffee cups and flowers were text, which is Oh, no, it didn't. Okay. So yeah, since there is no text, there is nothing to highlight. Moving on. And now we have this gorgeous photo of a latte with some latte art. Since I would want to expand the background of this photo, what I will do is double click on the photo itself as I would crop it, right? And here, I can do that. I could crop and do whatever it is that I need and select my aspect ratio, or I could just go in with Expand and choose one of these three options. We have free form, which will allow me to play around with the actual amount I want to generate. Or also I can do whole page, which will expand the white areas of this and then one by one. I'll just go with the whole, click Expand, and now it's going to generate me a couple of options that I can choose from. And there we have a few options. So we went from this tiny little rectangle in the middle to having a full photo. So here we have our half eaten cookie, what it seems the table is continuing, and then we got some plant. We also have this option, this option. Or this option. I think I like this one the most. And then I just click Done, or I can generate some more results from there. And here I have an expanded photo. So now let's say I want to change the background altogether. I'm not vibing with this. What I will do is remove the background from this photo. And now I'm going to go into the edit and click on the Background generator. And here I'll put in my prompt. I'll say something like Cafe in Paris. Of course, the more detailed you go with your prompt, the better for the sake of this lesson. Being an example, I'm just going to quickly put in that little prom. You should do a good job. Of course, if you have a specific vision, feel free to expand on that. But here we have a couple of options. So this is kind of interesting looking. That's kind of cute. I like this a lot. And here I can't really tell what that is. But of course, you can regenerate it. You can change your prompt. But overall, we just went from the organic kind of rectangle photo with very limited background originally to an expanded to a completely changed background. And all of that took me like minutes, ten out of ten for me. Now, going back to the AI tools, there's also a feature called image to video, and I have used this, and it's very impressive on how it works. So what you can is take any image. Actually, in fact, I think I'm going to select a new one just 'cause let's just put in anything. Okay, so we have this gorgeous photo, staying on them with coffee, of course, image to video. So it's going to generate a five second video, so it's going to be like it can be amazing for an Instagram story. But there's gonna be some movement in the photo. Sometimes it, like, zooms in on items. Sometimes it lets the light kind of move around. And you have here two options. You have the smart option, which is make your images move like a video. This setting works well for most photos and the graphics. And then you have custom. So here, you can actually put in your prompt if you have a very specific vision. I'm just going to go with the smart one and see what Canva does on its own. And to make a photo into a video is brilliant. I remember doing it once with my own afternoon coffee at home, and I had made the inside, as you can see, there you go. You see it's zooming in. That's exactly what it did. In my previous experiment, I had generated a spinning galaxy inside of a coffee cup, and then I made it into a video, and it was zooming into a spinning galaxy in a coffee cup. It's wonderful. And this little clip can be very handy for something like Instagram story, like I said. Another very useful tool is the upscale. So generally K Width never has a bad quality photo on their photo library. I've never come across one. However, if you do have a photo with low resolution, this tool is amazing. I have used it on people on photos of people, and it has worked great, where it has upscale the photo tremendously and I can actually put it on a big thumbnail and it looks professional and gorgeous. So I definitely do recommend this, and as you can see, does have the new tag. So feel free to play around with that tool as well. But overall, that is a quick guide through all the AI editing tools, and they all work very well, and they all have saved me a bunch of time, and I do strongly encourage giving it a try. You don't have to use them on every single design that you have or every single creation. However, with certain things, it definitely helps out with speeding up process when it comes to, you know, making or editing things that take a long time. All right? I hope you have fun with the KNvA AI editing suite, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Frames & Grids: Now let's talk about one of the most underrated tools in Canva, which are frames and grids. And we did see a lot of use of grids, especially in editorial design. We went through plenty of examples. I don't even think I should bother with it in this lesson because I think you've seen enough. However, they are very underused, and it's either because people don't know they exist or they don't really understand how useful they can be. So what is a frame on Canada? I'm glad you asked. A frame is pretty much a container that defines the crop, the size of an image, and you can find them by clicking on your elements and going down to frames. In this section, as you can see, you have so many different options. It goes from basic shapes to already kind of collaged out film. You have photo frames and things like that. You also have devices, which this is very, very, very useful. I have used a computer and the iPhone one. I cannot tell you how many times. Then you have paper ones which are more decorative, flowers, blobs, retro letters, numbers, and so on and so forth, the different kinds of shapes. And it really gets very, very diverse, very quickly. Like for example, this one, that's crazy. But these kinds of frames can actually really improve a design. Let me tell you, it is way easier to grab yourself one of these goats photos. Let's say I want it to be like this. But also, I wanted to have curved corners, so I can do that. And what I can do now is grab my photo, drag it in, and the photo now becomes the exact shape, size, and crop as the frame. What I see a lot of people do, instead, just take their photos and kind of play around with them like this. Ah. Okay, yeah, you can do that. Sure. But then when you want to change the size, you're kind of losing control a little bit, right? So the frame actually makes this process way easier because this way, by inserting your frame into your design, before you can plan out your design way better. For example, I have this post that we worked on before, right? I already have a frame. I did not use it in that lesson, but this also kind of indicates that that's where the photo will go, whether it's in a frame or not. But if I did want to, I could drop a photo real quick in here. Should I even bother? Before example, there. Now I have a photo, and it's pre size, it's predetermined, and I can move on. So the heavy lifting has been done. So this way, you can plan out exactly where your photos are going to be. You can make grids out of them. Like, so let's say, you made one perfect one and you want to keep it. So now what you're going to do is use the handy dandy tool that I showed you before, which is the Canvas built in alignment tool that helps you align your elements properly. You copy it. BAM. Let's make sure up 16. Perfect. Now center it the locks in place, staying within the safe zone and BAM. And now you can just, like, switch it out. Like so. And your photos come out perfectly aligned and identical in size and in crop. Now, what can you do with these frames? So first of all, of course, editorial design. That is one, and that is one of the most popular ones, for sure. But you could also just play around and make a fun Instagram post. And because of these frames, you can do it very quickly. So here I have a grid of four frames. What I will do here is drop in some photos that I like. Let's just go with these, maybe. I'm now going to edit, and I'm just going to give them a filter. Here, I'm going to go in, and I'm going to search in the photo library nebula. And I'm just going to choose a photo. This one's cool. That is the horsehead nebula, by the way. And the Corina nebula, of course. I'm going to add the same filter just to tie in the photos. Look how they all just come together. That is not the correct filter. Which one is it Astro? Astro is the one. There you go. Okay, so now we have a grid of four aligned photos. Now I can go and I'm like, Okay, I want to spice it up somehow. My most searched word on Canva is coffee at this point. So that happens. Sometimes, that's okay. I'm just gonna zoom out. Okay, make sure you don't overlap. But from here, I can just go and utilize the tool that I told you about before center, right, and middle. However, because there is a little handle of the cup, I can also use my keyboard. So I have this element selected and clicking the air out to the right because I want the cup to be centered, not the lid, but the handle. So right now it is centered. Perfect. Just go to twist it. Twist it like s, move it up just to weave it. Then back to edit, back to adding a filter. Then I'm going to go and go away from filters, add maybe a drop shadow that's beautiful. And from here, I can go and add a shape for my text because I want there to be text. I'll put it where do I want it. Put it like here, maybe. Change the color. Just make sure you have the correct brand selected. Change the color to one of the brand colors. Double click and the thing and say, zip the un first. Why not? Highlight. I guess I don't even have to do that. And choose one of my brand fonts, increase the size. And I have a whole post writing. Of course, other things that can be done and what I would do in this situation since the background's very busy, I would just kind of do one of my little tricks, which is putting an extra buffer layer between the foreground and the background, play with the transparency. Now I have a whole Instagram post that is quite quite gorgeous. I really like that. And this is what grid allows you to do. Another cool thing about these kinds of frames is that you can also use them as mockups. So what you would do is go into elements. And here you can search mockup. In my case, coffee, of course, it is. So here, they have a whole mockup section, and you're just going to click on CA and see what is something that speaks to you. I like this one. Okay, I'm just going to make sure that it is filling the entire Canvas center it, like so. And from here, you see, I have the same kind of picture, right, the little cloud with the grass on the cup. While it is a frame, it's also a mockup. And what a mockup is is pretty much a way for you to put your branding, your logo, any kind of imagery onto objects because they are predesigned. So from here, I have the image on my canvas, and I'm just going to grab my logo, and I'm going to drag it over here. There we go. Okay, so now I have my logo on the coffee cup. So in a case where I don't have product photography, I can utilize the mock up way, and it looks very realistic. As you can see, the light is sitting just right and it looks like a real cup. Now, there are some white edges around here, but that's easily fixable. So make sure you select the image itself. And here, when you click at it, here is where you can start adjusting things, so you can increase, decrease the size, make it fit or fill it. You have Smart crop. But here, what I would do is just change the background color to the color of the actual image background. Right? So here, I'm going to apply changes, and now I have a realistic coffee cup image. And from here, I just download it and I have a whole product image that I didn't even take. I just made it. But besides that, how these frames and frames adjusted into grids can actually also help you is to plan out your Instagram. I have a template here, and you can find these templates all over Canva. You just go into the template section on your home screen. Type in Instagram feed, and this is what you will get. Here, what I can do is I can start dropping in any kind of images that I want to add or I would duplicate, let's say, I have planning out three posts, and I want to know how they would look what order should they go in. So what I would do is, first of all, make sure to fill out the grid. Now, let's just start dropping some things here. First, let's do this cover from the carousel that we have made before. Let's drop in the little product photo that I made, maybe this, some promo. Then oh, I guess I can go with the same with the same kind of photos and start kind of filling it in and seeing how it looks. B, there we go. So now let's say, these are the photos that I have posted already, and this is my grid so far. However, I have a video that I'm going to post. I have a product photo and some more photos that I need to post. So from here, I just drop them in in the order that I would post them and I see if they look good. Do they look good? No. I think what I would do instead is just have this one be the next post and then make sure to have the product here. Now I think it looks a little bit more balanced. So from here, that's how I would just also my posting schedule. And of course, if it's your own photos that you're dropping in here and not using, like, stock photos like I am just now, what you would do is go to your uploads and upload the photos that you would want to post on Canva and then from there, just drop them in here. But this allows you to plan out your grid. This is particularly six frames. However, you can go as detailed as you want. You can create your own so either way, adjusting your frames into a grid allows you to plan out your Instagram, even your Tik Tok, if necessary, it allows you to create some editorial style designs. It allows you to place your branding onto products and make some beautiful Instagram or really any kind of design or post. And remember, use your frames because, again, you can adjust the curve, right? You can also add some border if you want to, you can change the color of your border. And you can add different kinds of effects. So you have your drop shot I glow, you have Echo and so many that you can play around with. But definitely consider using the frame feature on Canva because it does make the design process much more organized and easy. In the next liston, we're going to be working with a tool that allows you to be fully creative and create things from scratch. I'll see you on the next one. 14. Canva Draw: M. So, so far we've been working with things that already exist in ana, like photos, elements, frames. But now I think it's time to show you how you can actually create your own element. And Kana has this nifty little thing called the drawTol. So you can find it by going to your side menu here and click on Tools. What we'll open is this extra little menu that will give you a couple of options. So first one is your mouse, right? But the second one is where the fun starts. You have all of your pens. So Kana will allow you to draw on your canvas by hand. First one you have is the pen tool, which looks like this. Of course, from here, you can change the color and the thickness of your pen or for every tool here. But next one is going to be the marker, I believe. Oh, it's a bite. No wonder. And let's do some squiggles, just to show you how it comes out. There we go. Then you have your marker, which this is a highlighter. I guess I would call it instead of a marker. So you can highlight text on your designs. For example, I suppose this would not be the best example, but I could highlight it like this. This is much more useful for things like documents and even on some designs where this could come in as an aesthetic feature. Then you have your eraser tool, which is very easy. You just kind of click on whatever it is that you drew and it will get rid of it immediately. And under that, you have your shapes. So you can get your shapes like this, as well, and you have a couple of options, you know, all your basic shapes. You have stars, circles, arrows, so on and so forth. However, if you would like to create your own shape, you would go to your pen tool, for example, or your marker, which everyone works, and you can draw your own, right? It does look hand drawn and sometimes that is exactly what you want. However, if you don't want it to look hand drawn, what you do is draw your shape and hold it down and Canva will immediately turn it into a proper clean line even shape. Now this is very similar feature that another software has, which is called Procreate, Theillustrators will know that if you hold down your pen, then your shape will become whole. But Canva also offers that. You can do that with triangles with squares, no matter how crooked and weird they come out with your circles, and this way, you can create your own shapes in whichever manner you want. Then you have your line tool which allows you to have straight lines, or it also allows you to have curve lines. So this I have used personally. But for infographics, for example, that show a timeline or a path, and you can, of course, change all of the sides here however you want. And then you also have the curve tool. With these lines and the shapes, you can create patterns and custom patterns for your designs. You can connect them, and they will also interlock if you do. Then you have your sticky notes, so if there is something that you would like to point out about a design and you're working with someone, for example, a team member or a client, you can also besides adding a common like I mentioned before, to a design, you can add your sticky notes and sign it. Also, it can be as a decorative feature as well. And then, of course, you your text tool. And if you're feeling really well, this is where you can also get your tables from. Now, these are very simple, so you wouldn't be putting in any information from here, right? If you are trying to create a legitimate table, that would be in elements. Your tables where you can actually, lock in information and put in, like, so would be from your elements tab. So how do these draw tools come in handy on canva? So what you can do is use it as decorative feature, like I mentioned. For example, I'll grab this marker. I'll change the color to Let's go with white. And from here, also change the thickness. So the weight, that's a little bit too much. So I can add a little my hand isn't as steady today as I would want it to be. These little specs, don't be afraid they're not going to stick around. Tiny little lag. Can do this or you can even use a hand drawn highlight, not a highlight, but an underline on your designs. You can also add decorative elements like little stars. I could do that a little better. Right? Let's go up to this one. Let's see if we could add. Perhaps the Pentl would be best. And I can add some stories here to make sure that I do it a little bit slower. Okay. Alright, we have some stories here. We have what else could we add? A little heart. Why not? Let's put it here. Like a little moment. So, yes, you definitely want to have a steady hand with this. But, you know, once you put effort in it, it can actually look very cute. Let's put some swirls. There we go. There we go. Oh, but definitely this kind of use of the drawing tools definitely add a very personal touch to your design. So also, speaking of working in a team, if you are collaborating on a design with someone else, you can also, if it's a design like this one, and let's say you're like, Hey, I don't like the fact that there is a second cup. Could we move? Could we remove that? And this is another good way to take notes and give these notes to your other team members. I'm going to remove that. I really like that up there. Another cool thing is that besides also you making your own shapes with the pen tool, you can also generate them. So what you would do is go to elements and go to shapes. Here, instead of searching for shape where you would, you know, put in what you want to search for and clicking here, you would go to generate. I'm going to drop down the menu. And from here, I can select whatever it is that I want to generate, and I would go for shapes. Now, let me describe. Let's say I want something simple. Like a crescent moon. And now I clicked on the Generate button and now it's gonna generate me some options. Okay, so here we have a couple. I like this one. This one's nice. You can put it here. We can change the color of it. And now we have a crescent moon. We can also go a little bit more detailed with our prompt, like geometric. Dang it Range. With three peaks and minimalist style. So this is a little bit more descriptive, and that's also a good thing because, of course, with any AI, any kind of prompt driven generation, you want to be as detailed as you possibly can with your prompt, just to avoid a lot of regenerations and you're trying to give the AI less wiggle room, right? So as much instruction as you can cause this kind of prompt, I'm specifying that I wanted geometric. I want it to be mountains, and I wanted to have three peaks and a minimalist style. This prompt is way better than just mountains, because if I would just put in mountains, I would definitely not get specifically three peaks. So I'm liking these two so far. I actually really like this one, so let's use this one. I put it here. For some reason, mountains are relevant on this design. But yeah, this is how you can generate your own shapes using AI, and using a good prompt. So definitely you can go ahead and explore the draw tool, get really creative and really personalize your designs because you are at liberty to do that. Just have a steady hand and a good idea, and you're good to go. 15. Advanced Elements: In the last lesson we saw that we can actually generate our own shapes thanks to the AI feature on Canva. In this lesson, I will show you how you can generate not only your shapes, but your own photos, videos, graphics, and even three D models. This is where Canva actually starts feeling very different from where it was two years ago, because back in the day, all you had was a library of premade graphics, a library of premade images and videos. And you would scroll on and scroll on trying to find the one where you would end up with just finding something that is close enough. Now, today, you actually have the power to make your own without leaving the Canva platform. All you need is a good idea and a prompt, and you're good to go. Now, here in Canva, I have a blank Canvas, and let me show you how this goes. So we're going to start with generating an image. So this is actually one of those things that I think most people are familiar with, which is AI Image generation because there's so many tools that do this. However, it comes real handy. When image generation enters your design tool. Now I'm going to go to the side here and click on Magic Media. So this is where you can see that you can start generating not only images, but graphics, videos, and three D models. And we'll get into that, which is a very, very impressive feature. For now, let's stick with this. So here, what you need is a prompt, or you can just go with Inspire M option, which we think of something for you. Most of the time you want to go in with intention. Here is where you would put in your prompt. As I said before, when it comes to AI, you want to be as specific as possible, so include as many details and make sure that you're giving good direction. You can simplify your prompt with just a cup of coffee, hit enter. However, you will get a very generic result. Here in the prompt section, I'm going to start typing in my prompt, and then we'll do some more adjustments. So let's go with a single cup of espresso on a ark surface. Soft. Lighting. Actually soft side. Lighting. Yes, because I want to be specific, you know, Moody and atmospheric minimal. Dark. Canty Mia aesthetic. There we go. Okay, so we have our prompt in place. The vision is clear. However, I have not included the style, right? So we could go any possible direction. It could be a photo. It could be like a three D kind of look. It could be a cartoon. It could be anything. But to avoid gambling, I will go to the style section and start kind of looking through and seeing if I find the style that I want. And there's plenty of options. We have the photography, which comes in different kinds of forms. You have Nia on a minimal list. High flash and soft focus, everything, right? Then you also have the digital art section, which is mostly just illustrations in different styles. Anime one, for example, is really good. Usually, it comes out looking very nice. Then you have this gradient, which looks very, very pretty. Psychedelic, looks fun, mid century, retro wave and so on. And finally, you have the fine art section. So if you're trying to generate yourself a Van go peace, go ahead, might not end up as good as his work, but, you know, you can try. Besides that, if you do not find the style that you find appealing or that fits your vision or doesn't fit your vision, you can upload your own reference photo. So if there is a particular style that you would like to mimic in your generation, just upload a photo of it. I do have something prepared here. So I have this photo, which is a screen grab of one of my favorite animated shows, and I really like the animation style. So I'm just going to select that. Next is layouts. We have three options, square, landscape or portrait. Since my canvas naturally already comes in kind of a portrait layout, I'm going to go with that. And now I'm just going to hit generate image, and let's see how well it mimics the reference photo that I gave. I'm very excited. I already like the results so far. So we have four different options. Let's click through them, and let's see. But once you click, it drops on your Canvas. You can take a closer look. Okay. Okay, that's cool. That's cool. Okay, good. Uh huh. I like that they included the books, and there's kind of, like, pillars in the back. Oh, this is cute, but I'm not really sure what this part is. I kind of like this one the most. I think it has the most characters. So let's go with that. And now, let me just center or I could just right click and set Images background. Double clicking, I can adjust the position of it in the frame. That's beautiful. I think that is wonderful, and it does match exactly my reference image, which is wonderful. So from here, what you can also do is start generating your graphics. So let's generate a graphic. Let's do can we do? A dragonfly. Let's just put in dragonfly. Let's see what happens. So I have some outline situation here, which isn't bad, and the best part is that it actually matches my generated image, which is amazing, because I can include it immediately if I wanted to, right? Let's get rid of this one. So it's between these two. I think this one's definitely the winner here. But, you know, it's a straight up dragonfly. So that was my mistake. I didn't include enough detail. So what I'm going to do is go back to my prompt and dragonfly mid flight from the side. So it's starting to get a little bit better. Little bit better. This one's a little bit curve, so it could be okay. Okay. I think this one works. I can just, like, add it to my And now we have a dragonfly, part of our generated image. That's beautiful. Okay, so as you can see, generating images and the graphics is super easy, but make sure that your prompts do you justice because my second prompt here or my first prompt with the dragonfly was not the best. And you saw exactly what happens when your prompts are too vague and simplistic. Now let's move on to the video section. So this is exactly the same idea. As generating an image just for a video. So, it does give you a disclaimer that it is an experimental technology. So it might not be perfect. So for that reason, I'm just going to go with Inspire Me. Extreme close up of a daisy in a field with even exposure in a cinematography style with steady Zoom and camera movement. Sounds good to me. Let's go. One thing I'm noticing is that you're not able to choose your style here. So I would have to include it in my prompt so you don't have the same kind of dropdown menu for your style. Alright, so here is our generated image. Take a look. Okay. And the interesting part, it's actually very high quality. Sometimes even the images do come out in poor quality. So that is when you can actually start using this tool, which is upscale. I had done it with an anime generation, but let's try it with the upscale on this and see if it can get better, even though I'm surprised at how good this one is. Okay, so it's smooth. It definitely made it look way smoother than before. And as I said before, this video did come out quite in a good quality. The style is more like a three D. I could see this being almost it doesn't look as realistic as definitely a filmed video, that's for sure. It's giving me, new age Pixar vibes. Nothing wrong with that. It looks very good. For a new technology, Ken's do an amazing job. Now is the fun part when it comes to the AI generation because we're going to get into the three D models. We have a fresh canvas ready for us to drop some three D magic on here. This is very interesting. And this is also in Beta, so keep that in mind. However, it is very impressive for what it is capable of doing now as Beta in the Beta stage. One thing I do want to make clear is that this is not a replacement for advanced three D kind of creation software. This is more like a creator friendly version of it, but still can be very fun because what you can do with these is actually interact with them by rotating the actual model, which you don't see a lot in such a platform like cava.com. Okay, so now let's get into actually making something. Of course, you can go with Inspire Me, but I do have a specific idea that I want to see how it goes. I have a prompt, and I will start typing it here again, making it fairly detailed, just so there isn't much space for error. We're going with Espresso again. I have my prompt. It's fairly specific. Let's generate. It's going to give me four options again I can choose from. Also, remember that it is fun and cool to play around with these AI features, but I do want to remind that they do count as your AI credit spending. So you want to be mindful of that, you know, don't go completely nuts. Make sure you don't run out of your credits before you actually make something good that you can use, of course. So again, this kind of leads you back to making sure every single prompt counts. You don't want to mess around too much. So we have something brewing here. Just one more moment. Okay. So our generations seem to be ready. They're just taking a little longer to appear here in the side. But here, I clicked on one and they drop on my canvas. So we have a couple of options here. So far, so good. Okay, so these might be still generating. But here you can see in the middle you have the button to drag. So this is what allows you to interact with it as a real three D object. So I can twist around. Look on the bottom, look on the top, the side from both sides, mind you. I like this one. This one looks very nice and clean. Look at that. That's beautiful. I know this might not exactly be I suppose it kind of is navy blue. I see the navy color here on the handle up itself looks matte black. The gold rim is there, so that's true to my prompt. And the other two seem to be taking a little longer. But besides that, you see how this process goes. So you put in your prompt. Make it detailed, as much detail as you can include. And then you get these beautiful three D models. I just noticed one cup is filled with coffee, and the other one isn't. So, this can really elevate your design and really make it custom by you including an element that is so customized by you, even the slightest angle is made by you. And I think this can definitely elevate a design. Once you zoom in, it still is staying very sharp, which is cool. So these are also good quality. Not too many pixels. And really fun to play with. And last but not least, what I want to mention is the most obvious AI tool, which is the actual canna assistant. So this is like a chat situation. So up here. So once you have your canvas selected, you have your upper menu here and you just click on Ask Canva and it gives you a whole chat. Here, I've selected shape. Not really. That's not what I want to talk about. If there's something specific you need help with or any kind of assistance with from the AI, select the element, as you can see, and it changes, and you can directly talk about that in the chat, which is really cool. However, I'm not trying to talk about anything specific. Here, it gives you some examples. You can redesign this page, add a background, change stuff. However, you can also just ask for feedback. So if you're designing something and you're not sure if it's like, Oh, is this cohesive, or is this balanced or is this too dark, or how could I improve this? You can ask that in the chat, and the AI can give you legitimate, good feedback. So treat this as a colleague almost. So let's just ask it. How can I improve this design? Let's see if it has great suggestions for me to change my game. It comes out with not a single suggestion. It has four. Let's see. Remove the placeholder text, right? That's valid. Very valid. It's talking about this. Okay. Next is replace name with your actual drink name for a polished look. So you see how coherent this AI bot is. It actually sees what is missing. What is like, Hey, good design, but, why does it say name? It should actually have the name, so it's pointing that out, very good. Simply the layout. The scattered coffee beans and multiple decorative octagon shapes feel busy. So it's telling me that there's something too much going on and it's too busy. That's fair. Valid. Align the new menu item text, the rotated angle makes it harder to read. Okay, okay. As you can see, you can ask for legitimate feedback like you are talking to another graphic designer, and you're like, Hey, don't insult me, but what am I doing wrong? Something's feeling off or help me with this or how could I do that? Or really any kind of question, you would ask your design teacher or any kind of teacher, I suppose. And then it's asking me a follow up question. Would you like me to clean this up for you or focus on a specific change? Can you clean it up for me? On it. I will remove the clutter and give this a polished, cohesive look. Okay. So it's removing the clutter. Okay. I see the vision. It's going for a minimalistic vibe, looking better. The text is overlapping awkwardly, though. Iced caramel, and drink are Oh, so it's okay. So it is judging itself. It is critiquing its own work, which is what you always want to do, and it's continuing to work on this design. Wonderful. So not only do you get feedback, but you see in real time how it's being worked on. Okay, so our AI assistant or our design colleague is done adjusting. It's not necessarily the look that I would personally go for, but it's, you know, it's definitely a way to go about it. I do appreciate the feedback section that it gave me. So if you are stuck on a design, you utilize this. I wouldn't I wouldn't go as far as letting the AI, like, do all the adjustments on your custom. Design because, you know, when we design things, we do put our own ideas and creativity in our own vision. And a lot of times AI, it is a bot. It doesn't see the vision. What it sees is data. So remember that. But this is a wonderful thing to use as just pure feedback. So this will conclude our deep dive into the advanced elements of Cava and the wonders that AI can help us with. I'll see you in the next lesson where we start working on our class projects. 16. Project 1: Design a Multi-Page Workbook / PDF: Since we have spent this entire course creating Cosmic as a brand, almost from ground up, I mean, we have locked in its brand kit with its color palettes and logos and fonts. We have created multiple different kinds of posts for social media. We have created brand templates. Now, I think it is the time that we create something that can live in the real world and something that goes beyond social media. We're going to be starting with a multi page printable PDF, kind of like a workbook. I'm going to call it Coffee Ritual Guide, and it's going to be good for both digital viewing, something people can find on our website. But also, it will be a downloadable PDF and printable, as well. So first things first, before we start to do anything, like I mentioned before about planning, do you remember yes. Plan your content. So I have prepared a document where I have made what I want this workbook to have. What is the actual substance of it, right? So I have my title and my pages and even a little table here at the bottom. So I'm just going to be able to go into that document, copy, paste the information just so I'm not stuck there in front of my screen, creating this workbook, not knowing what to put in. You want to make those decisions prior. That is out of the way. Next is we need a canvas. So you can of course, go ahead and find the Canvas on Canva, that kind of rhymed. What I'm going to do instead, since this is going to be both for printable and digital viewing, I am going to go, first of all, with a custom size. But this specifically Canvas, the doc is very good for just printing. So instead, I'm going to go to custom size. Going to click here, and this is where we start adjusting everything. I want this PDF to be an A four format. So we have specific sizes and numbers for that. The width to be 210 by 297, and this is going to be in millimeters, right? So I'm going to click on Create New Design. And here we have the layout. And we have also some margins going on. I'm going to turn them off for this just because it's not necessarily what I'm looking for. I am looking to focus mostly on the aesthetics of it, but also with this design that I have planned out, I'm trying to break some rules and make a statement visually. So for that reason, I need a blank canvas, and let me just remove the ruler as well that I added. Okay. First things first, we have a cover. So a cover needs to be beautiful and it needs to catch the eye. However, I do want to name this before we start, so we have cosmica, coffee, ritual guide. Just so we're very organized. I'm going to start with the background and going to the color palette, I'm going to make it dark, obviously. That's how Cosmica goes. It seems to be working really well so far. Next, I think I want to add a frame because there's going to be a beautiful picture. So I'm going to go to elements and add a frame. For this, I need just a regular square one. And I'm going to put it like now, I'm going to put it here. Then I'm going to adjust as I go. And so I'm building this from ground up. So I'm building the base first. It really depends on your style and how you see things. I've seen designers go they start with text, and then they go from there, they start with elements, and then they go from there. It really depends on your style. This is just what I prefer because it feels like I'm building a house, you know, layer by layer. Next thing, I'm going to have text. So what I need is some sort of a background for the text because there is a lot. I want to include the logo, obviously, and I don't want the text too high, so I'm going to go into shapes and just really designate a whole area for the text. Aligned and snapped into place beautifully. Love that. I'm going to change the color right away. Let's go with this. Okay, let's drop in our photo just so we just so we know what we're working with. Okay, now I can align the frame, as well. I'm going to go into photos and I'm going to type in Coffee. Again, reoccurring theme here. Let's start looking for some beautiful pigs that we can add. I like this one. This is, you know, this is since this is a coffee ritual guide, you know, making coffee. This is pouring in the steamed milk. I think it fits perfectly. However, the picture is a little bit too warm for my liking, so I'm going to go ahead and add my favorite filter, Astro, and it just ties everything together. All of a sudden, look how good it looks. Already. Okay, text time. So I do want to enter and include Woo. I want to include the title, obviously. And the title is well, first of all, let's just tone down the size of it. Gonna center that. And coffee Ritual. Okay, beautiful, beautiful. I'm just going to bring Z Ritual guide on the second line here. Now, you see there's quite the gap here. Let me make the decision on whether I want it to be this font or whether I want to be using the other Sorry. That's not what I wanted. So brand kit, that's where we need. Brian's up here. Okay, cool. Do I want it to be in that? I'm not sure. Let's go with this one. Let's make it all caps. Okay. Okay. I see it. I see it. Starting to come together. There's still quite the big gap, so I'm gonna go up here and just the line spacing. That's way better. Way way better. Alright. I do also want to maybe perhaps increase the size just a little bit and change the color just so it fits the black looks a little bit intense. Let's go with the classic dark color. I think this is a little bit toothick perhaps. Let's adjust that. No, it's looking a little empty. I'm gonna go into elements, and what could go on there, beans. Perhaps using the same beans as used before. Oh. But I kind of have a vision of the beans coming from the side, so that's the kind of element we're looking for. Should we go into graphics and see if they have better options? These are all animated, no, but illustrated. I do want to go for the realistic kind of photo look. They're too loose. Loose beans, loose beans. Need something a little bit more tighter. Okay. This could work. Beans. Okay. Well, let's duplicate the same element, but this time, we'll flip it. Let's flip it vertically, too, so it's kind of like opposite doesn't look copy pasted, you know, like it's going the same direction. Perhaps less of a tilt. Okay, now it's making sense. Let's pull that in. Okay, that's looking good. So far so good, let's add the logo. So going to the brand, this logo could go, I think the full light version of it, I think is a good idea. Et's put it spank down in the middle. Okay, that's good. Now, these sides are looking a little empty. But also since we do have some visual elements going on, and there's a whole theme now with cosmic and those little stars, I want to add those because I have a feeling I'm going to add them throughout the page. Let's get a head start on that with a cover. And I'm going to go to shapes because that seems to be the one that fits the most. And there's already, as I said, the theme with this. Let's keep it here. In the same zone, just maybe a little bit smaller. Let's change the color to the beige. Duplicate that and the other side. Okay. It's kind of giving me like a look of, you know what? Notebook paper or I suppose it's like notebook paper where they have, like, holes. That's kind of like the vibes that this is giving, but I like the way this looks so far. Maybe if I change the color of this, it's not as heavy. Should we do brown? I think I'd like this one better. Okay, let's leave it there. Make sure everything is centered. Alright. We have our first page done. Looks gorgeous, let's move on to the second page. So I'm going to click on Add Page. Okay, so this is where the fun stuff starts. What I'm going to do is change the background color of this to beige because we're trying to kind of move away from the dark aesthetic just because I want, you know, the cover to be distinctively different from the actual inside of the book. However, still, you know, there's going to be dark elements because that seems to be the overall aesthetic of this brand. What I need is another frame. Let's go and grab one of those frames. Again, simple square one. Put it down here. Perfect. And here I want to put actually, I need another frame. I could do another square, but smaller. And this time I'm going to add a border just to give it kind of like a picture frame, look, you know? Let's do white. It seems to work the best. Okay, so here I'm planning on us this next page Here in document, you can see, we have the philosophy of Cosmica. So this is kind of like a personal page. Let me just copy the title right away, go back to here and start adding the text. Title, obviously. Let's decrease the size immediately just so it doesn't go crazy. Paste it. And I'm kind of feeling the whole, like, all caps Look, I'm going to go back and adjust line spacing because this is where I'm trying to break a couple of rules and make it look a little bit almost editorial. So I'm going to align it, and I'm going to touch the letters to the very side, right? So they kind of bleed into the actual edge. I'm going to change the color. Let's go with this for now because let's see how those images will start to contrast the text. And now I need a body. I'm going to go with obviously this this font because it is very simple and minimalistic. So let me go on and copy paste this. So now it's looking a little busy, but that's okay 'cause move it down here. And so the alignment for this is going to be this one. That's what most magazines do. Now it's looking real good. Okay, let's drop in those images. So for the photos, I'm thinking, since we created a really cool product with a mockup, I might just do this and add the filter. And here, since I think there's, like, so much copy, let's invite some space into our space. I got puns. So let's search for oran ebulo. Gorgeous. I really like this one. Let's drop that one in. Not overthink it too much. Ooh, I like that. Ooh. I do need that little pizzazz. Okay. Okay, it's coming together, for sure. Okay, and I think it's time to invite our little star elements here just to start tying things together and kind of create the opposite. Like more punch holes. There we go. Okay, that's beautiful. I like that. So the next page is going to have the same kind of background. And from here, I can just start copy pasting these elements just so I don't have to redo the process, and it is quite quicker. So since we started with the whole, like, touching the edges, I'm gonna continue with that. How to taste coffee is the next Okay. That's better. Oh, to taste coffee. Alright. Now, here we do need a subheading. So let's go with this. Go to paste it in to looking a little drab. That's okay. Whoa. Okay. So first, I'm going to align it, drag it out. Perhaps a little smaller. Of course, as I said before, let it breathe, give it some white space. Speaking of white space, perhaps I should make the text white because kind of is bleeding into the title. Should I have it pulled? Maybe. Okay, let's keep it for now. Now we need the body. So I'm going to copy the body from here down here. And I'm going to keep it within the safe zone. Going back to my document and here I do want to give some more space between these numbered lines just because it's easier to read and you see that there are different sections, right? Okay, for now, I'm going to keep it as is. I will add another frame. So let's just grab that from the previous. And since we have the filter already applied to this frame, all I need to do is just add the picture. I do want this bigger, though. And perhaps this too too close. Maybe it's too big. Now, it's too small. Now, it's perfect. Okay, let's get the better picture. So again, going back to coffee. Hey, let's find a suitable suitable image. Now baa baa bad. We use that. Oh, this one's kind of cute. Okay. Perhaps I would want something different. Like a community? No. Not for this. Hold on. This image that we used in oh, that's gorgeous. Those cups fit. The color of them. They fit so well. Let's drag it up a little bit. Oh, I just remembered I forgot to add something to the cover page. So what I want to add here is actually the slogan, because I just think it would add a lot of good value. So the slogan for Cosmica was for the cosmos. And I'll make it all bald bald, bold. I'll put it down here. Let's change the color of it. So it's visible. No. No. Should I do white? Then let's increase the size just so we have a little bit more of a plainer background for this. Oh, you see how it's now coming out all of a sudden. This should be no. I think I will put it here, and now it works. Okay, let's move on. So we have this gorgeous photo. We have the text all laid out. I will go ahead and this little guy. At this point, it just feels like a rule, you know? If I skip it, it feels like I'm doing it injustice, so it should be like this. Okay. Keep that here, perhaps move the subheading a little bit closer to the main title, and there we go. We have page number two. Hold on. Let me add another star down here. Just this time it's going to be Beige. Okay. Moving on. Next page, we have How to Brew. So this is gonna be a how to cool. Let's start. Let's copy both title, the subtitle. I did not do it, right? I should not have done that. Okay. So we're gonna copy this instead onto here. And since we kind of did one side, I think it's time to do the other to go back and get the title from the document. Okay. I think that's way better. Alright. Okay. And now we need a this line of text to include this. Perfect. But I'm kind of bothered by the heaviness of this. So maybe that's not the best idea. I think, yeah, we do it like that, put it here for now. And then we need the body. Okay, so this needs to align, and this needs to shrink a little bit. Okay, okay. We're getting places. So the body is, again, section. So copy paste that. And I'm going to make sure to make the titles stand out a little bit more, you know? Okay. And now we need another picture frame. But this time here. Okay. Okay. So do we definitely need another photo. Uh, Brewing Coffee, 'cause it is about brewing, so let's just find a good one. Do you like this? It almost feels like it's a little bit too light. Oh, Moody. Let's go with that. Perfect. Now, last thing, of course, of course. We got to keep the theme going and add some little star stars. Then this needs to be the same line. So it's about here. This can come up here. This can come up here and this can come a little higher. Alright, right, right. And change the color. Beautiful. All right. Onto the next one. Okay, so this time, I'm going to go for this vertical title again on here because this page is going to be mostly for the table, right? So the title doesn't necessarily need to, like, sit at the top. We can switch it up. I would like it to extend almost all the way, but perhaps not as large. Okay, we have that. Let's make it this big for now. Well, place it, no. Place it fairly. Okay. We'll go with that for now. Let's grab the subtitle, drop it in. Start creating some sort of a kind of like a frame situation. You know, it's all about balance. Oh, that's not the right one. Almost I think I copied the wrong title. That's okay. Yes, I definitely. Yes. Get to fix that right away. This is the title that I need. Okay. We're back in the game. Okay, so our journal. We'll keep the title here for now. Now it is time for the actual Hold on. Before we add anything, I need to establish the place for the picture. So obviously, we can also place this properly. Okay, that's good. Alright, let's keep it there for now. Now I need the table itself. Um, did I paste that? Yes, I did. Okay, let's just Okay, so it's Monday. What I'm going to do instead, because I don't want to make a traditional table, I'm going to do one of these where I'll just write it down because there aren't as many. What do we have next? Coffee, tasting notes and rating. So. We can shorten it to notes just for convenience. It's pretty clear. If we're talking about notes and coffee, it's for tasting and rating. Now, I'm going to highlight all of these and just kind of space them out evenly. So so far so good. Let's make sure it's okay, it's all good. Now I'm going to do the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I'm feeling like this text should actually be dark. So let's go back to the green. Got to love the spell check, I will say. Thursday Okay, so we have all of the days. I will bring this up here just so I could bring these together, create more room. And now we'll just kind of put them and we'll even them out, definitely. Let's see how far do I want it to go. Okay, so first of all, what I will do align them, highlight all of them, make them just a little bit smaller because I feel like they're too large and just kind of drag them out. Then when I even out the space with the right click feature. This is going to be the starting point, this is going to be the end point. So this way you can tell, where do you want it to start, where do you want it hence, but everything in the middle must must be with even distance, right? There we go. Okay. I think so far so good. I am thinking that maybe they should be even smaller. Okay. I think that's good. All right. Now, let's take a look at the table real quick. And then we have stars. So we have five stars for each day. Let's grab one of these, make them hollow and use those. So the filler is going to be invisible. The outline is going to be one, and the color is going to be this, yes. And now just five in a simple row, three, four and five. And after a while, you start seeing that Canva kind of sees why you're going with it, and they kind of help you align them. And now we're just going to duplicate this for each day, making sure that everything aligns perfectly, and Canva will help you with that. Easy, easy. Okay, we have five stars for each day, and now I just need some lines. So no. Perhaps these should be dark, as well. But then I want this to be light because I need it to stand out. So let's go with white. See if we can go 0.5. Okay. Yeah, way better, way, way, way better. So now that we have the table, all information laid out, let's just add some lines. So going to shapes, searching a line, and we'll add a line. Now, make sure that it is centered between the elements. Bring down the weight to be one, the color. Should we do white, maybe? And then bring down the transparency? I think that's a good idea. Okay, now I'm just going to duplicate it and repeat the process by positioning it in the middle. And as I do that, you see that Cava also kind of helps out a little bit. However, it's not quite aligned. This one, as well, needs to be aligned. There we go. All right. No, not quite. And repeat that repeat repeat. I'll do one on the bottom. Okay. I think I'm going to bring this down just to smidge lower. And then these or actually, I'm going to bring up the entire thing. Like so. And what we have left to do with this page is, I think change out the photo, right? Because we just used this. So here, let's go back to the photo library. Let's put in Espresso. Type in shot 'cause you got to specify. This one also kind of and here we go. I think that's what I'm going to go with. I will, however, increase the size just a little bit and go back for the stars. So come in, see. Duplicate that and bring it to the other side. All right. Let's see. Let's see. I think this looks good, and I actually will leave it. I will bring this in just a bit. Okay. And now all we need is the very last page of our book. So this kind of needs to match the cover. That's what I'm feeling. I'm going to go back to the brand and I will make sure to include the logo this time again. I will add the stars. That is not what I want it. All right, here so we can put some info down there. So let's go copy this. Change the color immediately just so the text doesn't get lost. So and for the info, I have not written it down. That's okay, but we will put the typical stuff that is the website, right? And I think another appropriate thing to add is the Instagram or I suppose the Instagram handle, yeah, 'cause that seems to be the way to go. And you know what? I actually want to add the slogan. So I'm gonna copy this text again and do coffee for the Cosmos. Center the text. Perhaps increase. I think these two are a little bit too large. So highlighting both of them, brought them down from 4.4 to not 3.4, but perhaps just okay, three? No. Four. I think that's better. Chris says just a little bit of the logo. Center it. Make this a little bit smaller. There we have the back cover. It's already. So now we have our workbook or our coffee ritual guide already, and now we can export. So what you would want to do now. So since this is going to be, as I said, for digital viewing and also for downloading and printing, we're going to export it a little bit differently. So we're not going to do PNG. We're not going to do JPG. What we're going to do is hit Share. Hit the download button. And from here, we are going to actually go to PDF per rent. Why? Because it is optimized for printing. So it's not going to affect the digital viewing, but it will give you a better result when you print it. If you would go to PDF standard, that's mainly only to be seen on a digital screen and it might affect the printing. So PDF print is the way we want to go. Then from here, we have a couple of more options. But since this is for both printing and for online, we're not going to get into this too much just because we're going to talk about it a little bit more in our next lesson, we're going to create an actual poster that needs to be printed. So for now, I'm just going to hit Download. And now we have our beautiful coffee guide already and ready to be sent out to customers. I think it came out pretty good. It captures the cosmic is vibe and aesthetic from cover to cover, and this is a wonderful way to also practice your PDF creating skills. Without. So without being said, I will see you in our next project. 17. Project 2: Design A Flyer / Poster / Print-Ready File: Our next project, we're going to be making a whole event poster. So I have this vision of a winter solstice get together at one of Cosmic's locations. Let's imagine there's many. Unlike our previous project, where our PDF book was mainly meant for digital viewing. However, it also had an option to download it and perhaps even print it. This, on the other hand, is meant to be primarily printed, right? So we want to print out this poster, put it in our shop window, and secondary use would be posted on Instagram. But that's not the main thing. So what we want to focus in this lesson is, first of all, poster design. So posters usually don't contain too much information, right? They are meant to catch attention. So we need to make sure to place our elements big enough so they are able to be visible from across the street and also not overloaded, right, with information and text and all kinds of elements. So first things first, we are here on Canada, and we're going to go back to custom size canvass. So I'm going to click on that. This time we need is an A three format. So in numbers, that would be 297 by 420 20 millimeters, that is correct. And we're just going to hit Create. And here we have a poster ready to be made. However, first things first, we do want to add things like margins because when it comes to printing posters, there is that little bleed section that printers tend to cut off, so we have to be mindful of that. And with this specific design, we're going to be paying a big attention to the safe zone. However, not to make any mistakes, we are going to place some guidelines. So what we're going to do is go to File and hit settings. First, show margins. Here it highlights the save zone. So anything beyond this is almost up for grabs when it comes to being cut off. Next, we need print bleed, which is this section, which is you see at the very, very edge all around the canvas, this is 100% going to go. Right? So imagine that that is like a buffer zone where your elements still should go into elements, I'm talking as background color and some texture because this is, for sure, going to go. Do not put let anything touch these edges because you don't want your text or your graphics to be half cut off. It's just going to look. And for the margins, so the general guideline usually is about 3 millimeters, but Canva does that calculating for you. Okay, so now we have our margins. We have our bleed sections, our print bleed section. Sounds weird if I don't include the word print. Now sense to get to designing. So this is a poster. This is supposed to represent cosmica in the best way. So again, you know, we're going back to our darkest color. Next thing, I do want to So, of course, I'm going to work from the ground up. So we have our background color. We need our background texture. So I'm going to go to elements, and I'm going to include something that we've included before in our designs for cosmica seems to be working really well and seems to be kind of like a character thing at this point. So I'm going to type in Consolations? Let's go then. Okay. And for other graphics, we're just going to view all, and this is the one that we particularly use. I do remember that. Now I'm just going to start placing it and I will, however, bring down the transparency quite a bit, just so we can actually serve as a background kind of texture, something that doesn't catch your eyes immediately, but serve as a supporting act for the background color. Now, I'm just going to double it a couple of times and just kind of play around with the placement of it. Rotate it. Perhaps I should go more here. I think that's good, okay? Duplicate it yet again. Twist that around. Ooh. And then as we keep designing, of course, we can change up the location of these, but this is gonna be kind of showing us what's going on and what we have to work with, you know? Okay, for now, that's good. Let's just keep it there. We'll work our way up. Now we need our text. So, of course, the first text should be, what do you want to catch people's attention with, right? Using, of course, our brand fonts. I'm just gonna write what it is, so I will go with all caps though. For a poster, that's a good idea. Winter souls this. Okay, so far so good, let's align that. Let's align all the text to the left side. But also get rid of this bald effect and also bring down the white space between. Okay, so that looks pretty darn good. Just go to bring it up here and also I'm going to change the color to Cosmic is yellow. From here, I'm going to add a subtitle, which is going to be saying the evening, so it's implying that it is an event. Right? Event. Evening, this should not be the same color, though, because we want this, you know, to separate and not look the same. I think I'm gonna go with all caps, as well, line it. Perfect. So for now, let's keep it. I feel like this is a little bit too high. For now, I'm just gonna keep it here. Mmm. For now, that's good. Okay. Next thing we need our center element. So since this is winter solstice, I'm thinking coffee cup that has winter vibes. So maybe something with cinnamon. Okay. What could we Coffee with cinnamon. Enter. And we're probably gonna go to photos because I so far, I've been using realistic photography elements rather than illustrations of coffee. So I think we should just keep the streak going. Perhaps if I search more specifically cinnamon coffee, that could be way better for search results. Okay. Okay, I see it. I like this style of cup already. There's this cinnamon stick, which love that. Let's flip it the other way, though. As whipped cream and everything. Mm I don't know. Let's see if we have better options. I really like this type of cup. It would be great if it had a cinnamon stick in it, 'cause I do like how this plays. Like, it fills in the space there, and it makes the text a little bit more balanced and it ties in with the title, you know? I guess the previous search was a little bit better. So coffee with cinnamon instead. I think I guess it's a little bit more specific 'cause yeah, there's more coffee this time around. Let me just check my previously used elements. Maybe there's something better. Okay. Okay. Ooh. Okay. I think I found the one. Let's do that. Yeah, this is, like, the perfect size, and the image itself is much more clear and high quality, and the tilt of the sinon stick actually works way better. So let's go with that. I'm gonna bring up this just a wee bit. So I can block it, but it's still readable. Okay, so far, I like it. Let's add that filter to really tie it together with the background. There you go. Now I see it. And I do want to add some cinnamon. So conveniently, let's add another filter to this. Okay, there we go. We're getting please. Now, got to place it right there, 'cause there's something a little bit off about that the bottom of that cup. So I think I think that's good. Okay. I'm going to add some drop shadow just to give a little bit of depth to this element and overall the design. And same thing for this. So dropshadowF cinnamon. I think it's dramatic enough. Yes, it looks good. This might be a little bit too large. Okay, that's good. So again, of course, since it is opposed to representing, we have to add the logo. But this time, I think I'm going to go with an icon instead, just so it's not too much. Or do I actually know? Do I might want to go with this instead. Okay. Okay. Yeah, definitely works way better. And now I need just some information to guide people and give them a little bit more context on what's going on. So I think a good place to start is the location. So that's pretty clear. It's going to be in the restaurant from 7:00 P.M. And date. Obviously, it has to be in December. So now let's make this text a little bit lighter, line it to the right, bring it down in size with a bit. Should I go with this? Okay. Okay, I think I like the way that looks. And now we can start playing around with these elements to properly place them according to what we have on the canvas. Just like so. I think that's pretty good. All right. And I think this is actually a good place to leave this poster, because as I said, you never want to overload your poster with too much information and make it too busy and too hard to read because there's too much people are just gonna be like, Oh, no, I can't. No today. But this is very, very straight to the point. Winter Solstice evening Cool. Cosmicaoh I know. That's a coffee shop. Where? Okay, CosmicaF 7:00 P.M. December 21. All right. So, if anything, they see this in the window or they see it somewhere online and they can either reach out and see if there's more information on the website or maybe ask the person behind the counter either way. This creates intrigue. It is very on brand and printed as a poster, this definitely will catch some eyes. So now we have our poster ready. I think it is time to export it. So when it comes to exporting, we are going to go and download it. And from here, we're going to go PDF print yet again. This, we are going to check this crop marks and bleed. So as I said, do not count this space around it as it exists. Imagine it doesn't, right? It's a buffer zone, so it's going to be sliced off. So we want to make sure to check this off because when you're designing and you're not counting that as space, a lot of times, there could be some gaps and things like that, and if it's going to be cut off, might as well just have it cropped in, right? Then when it comes to this, so RGB, sorry. So RGB says here, best for digital use. So this RGB is the light that digital screens use. RGB stands for red, green, and blue, right? And then you have the CMYK, which is for printing, and printers usually use the CMYK. This is going to be for printing specifically because printers use the CMYK. Meaning cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. And this way, if you select this, when you print it, the overall colors, the color quality, and the overall look of your poster is going to be way better than if you would have selected RGB, which isn't optimized for printers. So now you have those settings in place. Everything is done and just hit Download, and you have your poster done. So this concludes our second project. I hope you had fun creating your first poster. Very happy the way this turned out. And I wish you the best of luck with creating your own. I truly suggest you get creative and create something that fits your brand. I'll see you in our last and final project. 18. Project 3: Design a Business Card / Branded Stationery: Alright, so we have built pretty much an entire brand, and this is so exciting because I think it is time for us to really solify our brand by building a beautiful design for business cards. And luckily, Cama makes it super easy. And not only do they make it easy to create the design for these cards, but also they do offer printing services, which we will get into later when the time. Of course, by now, you should have your brand kit all assembled and everything should be relatively clear. However, if you're still kind of lost with the aesthetic and the overall direction of your brand, it's okay. It will happen in the beginning, but you do have the option to go to the template section of Canva and look through, I want to say thousands, maybe millions might be exaggerating here, but there's so many different kinds of templates that can genuinely give you inspiration and also give you a very good head start with your business card design. However, what I will do from here is go and click on Create, or you can also do Custom Size, but I'm just going to click on here. And from here, I am going to go and maybe type in business, and it should get boo. That's too many Ss. And here, it's going to give me the exact size for business cards, and the canvas is optimized exactly for your business cards. So we have a couple of options. Here, we have the very standard square horizontal. We also have vertical, which they tend to be very popular as. Well, sorry, these are rectangle. This is square. A actual square business card. I haven't seen many of those in the wild. Then you have rounded with rounded tips and rounded vertical. Going to go for the classic rectangle horizontal. However, feel free to select any of the ones that you see that might appeal to you a little bit more. So from here, we're going to get a blank canvas, and we're just going to start building. Again, if you're lacking on your ideas, it's Ak, just go onto the template section and here it can keep scrolling until you find something that speaks to you. But since we are creating four Cosmica which has its brand identity fairly established, we're going to go with things that we've done so far, which first, we need to create the front of the business card. So unlike our previous designs that are usually just, you know, one design, or you have the book, which we just created. But for business card, you have both sides. So you have two sides to design. They are fairly different because one oftentimes just shows a logo, right? And then the other side will give you more information. Here you have two sides. One will have the logo, so the front and the back will have the information. Sometimes people like business cards that have only one side. The front side will show the logo and the information and the backside will be completely blank, but I'm feeling a little adventure, so we're going to go for both. I'm going to start with, of course, dark background. And from here, we need our main act, which is going to be the logo. So back to the brand section, we're just going to choose the logo. Since this is the front, it wouldn't be wise to go with only the wordmark or the icon. We want to go for the full thing. So I'm going to select this one, center it. And from here, you can leave it like this. There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. Of course, make sure it's centered, though. I don't want to kind of decrease it in size just a little bit. And from here, there's a couple of different ways we can go. I'm really liking the constellation kind of texture. I'm liking the stars in the corners. So let's just see what works, okay? Going to the elements, I have let's see. Since I just used them, and since you use them, you should have them in your recently used. And now you notice that I have an element that's starting to touch the edges. So this is the danger zone, meaning, might be chopped off, so you don't want to put anything imported there. Let's just place this here and just like before, decrease, copy, do one of these. Maybe it's too vibrate. Maybe it's too small. Maybe we should I think I like that better. So we can go this way, for sure. The transparency should definitely go down. So ten, making sure it matches. Okay, that is a start. We can definitely keep building from here. Oh, let's just adjust this a little bit. Maybe increase the size a little bit of the logo so it's more vocal. Decrease the transparency to six here. Let's duplicate that and be kind of create a little bit of framing here. Okay, okay, okay. I see the vision now. Something like this, this isn't too bad because we don't want to overload it with stuff because the purpose of a business card is to give information, right? So let's keep the front, like so. I think that's the best that it could go for now, and I'm going to add another page so this is going to be the back. And for this, I actually want to switch things up, and I want to keep the back light. So I want the back to be a complete contrast, almost the opposite of the front. Front here, it's dark, it's moody. It is the front window of the cosmic coffee shop. But I want the back to be the opposite because I think in my mind and in my design and brain, it tells you that, oh, this is what happens when you see what's happening on the inside, right? This is the other side of it. Anyway, it might not be as important, but I just think it's a brilliant idea. With the back, this is where we lay down all the information, and I have more or less a vision for it, and there are many ways to go about it when it comes to the layout of the information. So all the main things what you need is, first of all, you know, your name, your role, your contact information, which includes phone number, email, and then you can also include the business itself, right? So the business logo and the information for the business. So the website, phone number, and location, preferably. That's what we're going to do. So we're going to go over to the brand, and we have the font locked and loaded and ready for us to use. I'm going to put in my name because I am going to pose as the barista of this establishment. Change the color, like, so make sure it's aligned to the left. And also, of course, playing around with the microspace. Do you remember from previous one of the previous lessons? There you go. You see, these things are very important and very useful to know. So I'm just going to place it here for now and add a subheading. This is where I'm going to say that I am the parista. This I might bring down to not be as dark. I'll zoom in a little bit just so it's easier to see. There we go. Okay. This goes under my name, right? So, as you can see, I'm going for, like, the same kind of invisible frame layout that we've had so far with many, many other designs for this. So I want to bring it down just a little bit. Okay, I'm going to leave it there for now. Now I'm going to start adding my information. So main thing, you know, you want probably phone plus one, two, three, four, 8891. Let's I don't know, an example. Why. So let's pretend this is my phone number, which will go under my name. Then I want my email also. So let's just say I am KirtaParista at cosmica.com. This would be my work email. Okay, okay, so so far so good. Go to keep it there. We're going to line everything later when the final elements come in. So next, I want to repeat the logo on this side. I could go with just an icon. I could. That's actually not the worst idea I've had. But it's not No, we need visual balance. So I'm going to include just the dark version of the icon, but I will make sure to crop the very top quite close just so I could align it perfectly. Okay. Let's crop this. This I'm not too concerned about, but I really want to make sure I'm hitting those edges. You see? Like, so the top of this logo is hitting the very edge of that line. So I'm going to bring the text here for now. We might adjust that. This is just I actually might not work because of the balance of the illustration. So let's just bring it down. Cause it almost almost serves as the dots on top of I and J, right? So there's a little bit of an empty space there. So this could have worked for now. Let's keep it there. Not complicated too much. I'm going to group these elements just to make sure that they are the same. Let's align them to the right, highlight them and just put them right under there. Okay. So this is where the cosmica information would go. So number we'll put here, duplicate this. And now let's put it in a make believe address. Mm, one, two, three, four, North, coffee, Drive. Press, so City? New York. Why not? And let's put in some very realistic zip code. Perfect. And now, we just need I think for this, it would be wise to include the website. So cosmica.com. This actually might have to go here, maybe. Let's just see how this works out. Okay, so my name needs to go down in size, that's for sure. No, the website needs to go on the bottom. Where's the safe zone? There it is. Let's bring that down. Yeah, so something here is heavily off center. Let's zoom out. Okay, so I see what the problem is. The problem is everything seems to be dragged a little bit too much towards the very edges leaving the space between everything very empty. So I'm just going to bring everything in a little bit. I think that's good. Not going to overdo it. Not going overdo it. Okay. Now, let's highlight everything and center that again. Okay, now it looks a little bit better, but still, there's a lot of weight. Perhaps it should go a little higher. Now, it makes sense. I will add a couple of those little stars that we have going on here, constellations, I mean, just to add the same look that we have going on in the front, so I'm going to color them. And up the transparency just a bit. It divides some visual interest here. Okay, okay, I see it. Okay, now it's coming together. Duplicate this. And since you see how the space between the edge here and the logo, the white space here is way larger than it is on the opposite end, which is down here, between my contact information and the edge. So what we can do is add some little elements here to break that space. Um, by not necessarily fluttering, but we're kind of making things balanced, right? Let me duplicate this and put one on the bottom here for some balance. Let's twist that. Okay, that's, like, really cool. I really like that. Should we bring down the opacity? I think so. Transparency. Let's go to I think 35 could be a good point. On all of them, so they match. Like so. That's way better. There you go. I think this part is pretty much done. What I need to do, though, is make sure that the right elements are in the forefront, so there aren't any mix ups with the background. There we go. Okay, now we can bring up the Brest a little bit more to signal that. That's where the text belongs. Let me just zoom in so I have more flexibility. I still think that the space between my name here, like the micro space is still a little large, and I think the conflict comes in with the J and the K because they both extend very, very far. The K on the top and J on the bottom, creating so much negative space here. Should I see if maybe the other font. Still the problem kind of remains, and I think that visually this font looks better. Let me try to see if line spacing could be. I don't want it to touch. I think that's as far as I can go. Okay, I think this is the best that it can be. So without fiddling, even more, because it's very easy to adjust and readjust and all that, from here, I'm happy with the design. I'm going to move forward. So we have the front. The front represents the brand very well. It is very consistent with our brand colors. Our previous elements we've used at this point, might as well put them right here in the graphics folder. I wasn't quite sure in the beginning, but these constellation graphics really have come in handy, and I love that they really bring out the character of the brand that we've created so far. But besides that, the front is a good representation. It's very consistent with what we've built so far. The back is a beautiful contrast to the front, yet it still is very on a brand, even though it's contrasting. And I think that this design came out wonderfully, and I really couldn't be happier with it. So I'm going to go ahead and export it. So there's two ways you can go about it. You hit your Share button and you hit Download. Here, you either want to print it yourself with some other print survey. So what you would do is up here by the file tag, you would select PDF print, right? Make sure you have both sides selected because this is the file you would hand over, so they would put this one on one side and this page on the other side. From here, since it's going to be for printing purposes, mainly and only, make sure you select CMYK, right? This is for printing. Better for printing, it's going to look way better, trust me. You would hit your download button and now you have your PDF file in your hand and you can go on and find the service that you like the most. Another way to go about it is going to share, and you have an option to print with Canva and Canva does offer printing services. I have personally used their printing service for a T shirt, and the print came out in very high quality. I haven't tried the business cards yet. However, they do give you a beautiful preview on what they would look like. So from here, you can, of course, be like, Oh, okay, so that's what it looks like. Maybe I would like to change some things and go back and adjust. This is magical. Right. Look at that. That's beautiful. Yes. Mm hmm. I can see that. I would hand out this card in a heartbeat. So after reviewing the previews from here, of course, you have your front and your back, print all pages, and then you can select your paper type. You have all kinds of types here. You can select your finish. So you have mats and gloss, and then you have corners so you can have rounded and sharp corners, even though they did give us the option to pre select that when we were creating the blank canvas for this project. And then you have the amount. There's different, of course, amounts and prices for each of them. Review that if you want, and yeah they have happiness guarantee, and then you just continue with that process and they'll get delivered to whichever address you stop submit. But overall, by creating a whole business card, we have created an empire, and you should be very proud of yourself because not only do you have a whole brand kit, you have a color palette, you have beautiful font, and you have a logo. Now you know how to create beautiful Instagram posts. PDFs, promotions. You know how to bulk create. And at this point, you're ready to take the Internet by storm or open your own business. Either way, it works. But Canva really does make designing very fun, very available to everyone. And it genuinely is a good time, and I absolutely love this tool. Anyways, thank you so much for hanging out with me. It's been an absolute pleasure designing and showing you around. And I do wish you the best of luck with your creative endeavors and your future designs, and I'll see you on Canva. 19. Class Project: Create Your Own Brand Design: Now, it's send to apply everything you have learned and create your own branded design project. For your class project, you will be creating one or more professional canva designs using the techniques covered throughout the course. You can choose to create a multi page workbook or PDF, a flyer or poster or branded business card and stationary set. Start by defining a simple visual identity for your project. So choose your fonts, your colors, and overall style. Then build your layout using grids, spacing, hierarchy, and alignment to create a clean and professional result. You're encouraged, of course, to use Canvas advanced features as well, including templates, AI tools, frames or reusable systems to improve your workflow. Your project is complete, export your final design and upload them to the project gallery. You can also include a short explanation on your branding choices, layout decisions, and creative process. This project is all about moving beyond beginner design and creating work that feels more polished, intentional, and professional. 20. Congratulations! What’s Next?: Congratulations on finishing the course. You have now gone beyond the basics of Canva and explored more advanced workflows, venting systems, layout techniques, and professional design practices. That is a major step forward, not only in learning Canva, but becoming a more confident designer overall. The most important thing now is to just keep practicing and refining your visual style. Try building more projects, experiment with layouts and create complete branding systems to strengthen your skills even further. And if you haven't already, make sure to upload your projects to the gallery. I would love to see what you have created. And if you enjoy this class, feel free to leave a review. It helps us improve and create even better courses for you. Thanks again for joining, and I'll see you in the next class.