Transcripts
1. Introduction: If you are looking
to learn some new Canvas skills and create a kind of fun project along the way, then this is
the class for you. We're going to be
learning how to use the flowchart
tool in Canada, which allows us to
create linked boxes really easily that makes
flow charts a breeze. This is great if you
use Canva for work, so if you're making
presentations or reports or
anything like that. But also if you just do
any kind of graphic design or want to create some fun
posters, we can do that, too. We're going to do
an overview for three use cases for this tool. It's really got a
lot of potential. We're going to look
at a decision making flow chart and then a
roadmap for a project, and then a brainstorm
Mind map as well. All you're going to
need for this class is a free Canva account. So if you're ready to
learn a new Canvas skill, let's go do it together.
2. Designing Fun Flowcharts: Let's get started designing our Easy flow charts in Canva. I've opened up a new
document in Canva. This is a report size, so it's just like
a sheet of paper. This is 8.5 " by 11 " in size, but of course, you do
whatever suits your project. I've made a couple of
example flow charts here, and this is the one
we're going to recreate. And afterwards, I'll show you a couple other examples
of how you can use this feature to make
interesting graphics or charts. This particular chart that
we're going to create uses this auto linking
feature between the boxes, and I've created sort of a
decision making flow chart. So, am I going to
like this book? Are there dragons in it,
yes or no? Are they cool? Yes or no? Yes, I'll like this book or no, I
won't like this book. Just a fun, silly example to help illustrate how
to use this tool. So I'm going to
create a new page. Just as a matter of decoration, I set the background to yellow, and I'm going to just
add the white background to sort of make it
look a little nicer. I'm going to tap R on the
keyboard for a rectangle, and then I will make it white. And I'm just going
to make it up to the size that I want
the background to be. This, of course, isn't
part of the flow chart process, but
just decorative. And I'm going to just round
the corners a little bit. I'll center it, and then
I'm just going to lock it so that it doesn't interfere
with our design work. So this is our canvas.
The first thing we're going to do is create
our first box, and that is basically
going to be the seed for the
rest of R chart. So think about where
you want it to start. I'll tap R on the keyboard
again to get another square. And before I add any text, I'm just going to stylize it. I want my boxes to be sort of a long rectangle because we're typing in a
sentence or a question, and I am going to round the
corners just a style choice. We'll put it right at the top. Now the first box,
I wanted to say, Will I like this book? And I'll change the font color to sort of a darker
version of the yellow. I'm doing all this style work on this first one because it will copy over to the subsequent boxes that
we attach to it, so you can do it all once and not have to format every box. In order to turn on the feature
that lets you link boxes, we will click on
this, then right click and we're going down
to Enable Quick flow. Once you've done that,
these arrows will pop up, and this is basically going
to allow you to create boxes that attach to the first
one. So we'll start simple. We're just going
to click on down, and it creates another box. Does it have dragons in it? That's our first question,
and I can resize this or change any of the
features if I wanted to. Additionally, you can change the styling and color of the
arrow by clicking on it, and you have your design
features up here. So we could change the color
of the lines to black, for example, or maybe this
color to match the text. You can change the
thickness of the arrow. As you see, it makes it bigger or smaller based on
the line weight. You can also choose what
you want the arrow line end to look like if you want to be a circle
or nothing at all, and you can also do an arrow
head at the top as well. So we'll just leave
it like that for now. Next, we want to
have two answers, so we have a yes or a no. Instead of just
clicking on this, I'm going to click and drag. It's going to allow
me to position another box wherever I want it. That will be our yes, and then we will go and do the
same thing to get our no. I'll drag this one
to the bottom. Then I can actually go in and click on the line and reposition it so that it fits a bit more
evenly with the other line. You can also change where
on the box it connects to, but I'm going to
keep it centered. To add some labels
to these arrows, I'm going to hit T for text and just type yes for this one. I will duplicate it and
put one for no over here. So the no answer is going to be, no, I won't like this book. The yes answer is another
follow up question. Are the dragons cool? And then we're going to have
another yes or no answer. So for the yes,
I'm just going to tap on this and type in, yes, I will like this book. I'm going to reposition
this answer down to line up with the
other one below, and they're a little
bit wide, so I'm just going to resize
them slightly. There we go. Now we want this to be able
to say yes or no. So I will add another one. But instead of clicking, I'm just going to click and drag as if we were
adding another box, and I will hover
down to this one until it lights up
and I can let go, and this is a line redirecting
to this box as well. You can click on this connector and just sort of choose
how you want it to work or if you want it to connect in a different
place like that, and now we have a yes
and a no answer again. So I'll just copy these.
Put that one there. This one over here.
And there we go. Now we have a flow
chart. As you can see, that was pretty simple and
obviously a lot faster than having to add arrows and move them around
and reconnect them, basically doing it all manually. So this flow chart
tool is really handy. I'm just going to
show you a couple other examples of
how you can use it. So scrolling down, this is
an example of a roadmap. So if you were doing some
planning or something for work, I basically just made this box and added the text right in. So this is, again, I
hit R for rectangle. I got rid of the background
and made it transparent. I chose this color
for the line around it and did line weight one
just so it's really thin. Which I think looks
a little bit more professional and I didn't
do any corner rounding. Inside, I used just one font. I use Libra Baskerville, and then this part of
it is in bold, size 15. This is regular not
bold and size 11. After that, I just
tapped ad and was able to add the additional
phases in really simply. This is just a
really simple way. You can do an elegant chart
with directional arrows that can be useful for work or more professional purposes.
This is another example. This is just something I
really quickly knocked up, but I just wanted to
show you that you can also do it like a mind map. This is the first block
that I started with, and then I just started adding additional
blocks from there. Again, this is just
a rectangle with a border that is green and a little bit of
a thicker border, and this is the font bebisNu. Here you can see that I actually changed the shape of the arrows. I did that just by clicking on the shape and then
going up to line type, and it will let you do straight. I can do elbowed, and
it can do curved. You can manipulate
that curve yourself to make sure you have it
just the way you like it. Again, I also grabbed these end nodes and
I move them around, and you can attach
them to different sides of your original box. This is a great way to build
a mindmap, and of course, then you can go and add additional boxes to
your secondary tier. And build it as big as you want. This is really
great for planning. I particularly do
this for my work. I will note that
for some reason, Canva doesn't really like to resize your maps
once you have them. You can make them bigger, but they don't seem to
like to go smaller. And I think that's
just because it obeys the size and shape of the
arrows before anything else. So if you wanted to make
a really big mind map, I would say just
start small or create a really big canvas to be working on for your
overall design. That's it for a
quick little class. I hope this was helpful.
This is obviously a really great feature that
has a lot of applications. As a class project,
I would love to see a little chart that you do
just to try out this tool, and I would recommend
that you try one of these three styles. You could do a decision
making matrix. You can do a roadmap
style that's very simple or you
can do a mindmap. If you want to do the
most simple version, I would just say do a
mind map, pick a subject. This could be movies I like or different types of
cheese and just try that out to experiment with the different function here and the different kinds
of eras you can create. If you want to try doing
more of a roadmap, then come up with
some sort of process that you can break down
into different phases, and then you can use
this template for that. Or if you want to do
something more like our decision matrix
that we made together, you could start with
a question like, W I like this book or
will I like this movie? You can use it for
decision making, like, should I buy this new car or make it something
extremely silly? Like, do I have the
cutest dog in the world? And spoiler, I think the answer is probably
going to be yes. When you finish your flow
chart, I would love to see it. Just take a screenshot
or just download it as a PNG or JPEG and
upload it to the class. So we can take a look,
get some inspiration and see what kind of
capabilities this feature has because I think
there are a lot of options and probably tons of applications I haven't
even thought of yet. If you have any questions or
any ideas you want to share, pop on down to the
class discussion, and I'll be happy
to chat with you. If you enjoyed this class
and learning with me, then I have lots of other classes that
might interest you. So please do check those out. Also, if you'd like to leave
me a review for this class, I'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, what you liked,
or what could be improved. It really helps me
out, but also helps other students to find courses
that are useful for them. And that's everything.
Happy designing, help you create something
cool, and I'll see you later.
Rebecca Wilson, Artist and Illustrator
