Transcripts
1. Welcome: Whether you've been working
within Canva for years, or this is the very first
time you're hearing about it, stick around because this might just be the
course for you. Hey, guys. My name
is Meggie Star, and I'm a digital marketer,
online course instructor, digital content creator, and a whole bunch
of other things, and I use Camba for
pretty much all of them. In this course, I'll
be teaching you everything you need to
know from the basics like how to choose the right
fonts and brand colors for your content creation
and where to find videos and images that are licensed
for you to freely use in your designs through to creating amazing
social media banners, animated pins for Pinterest, quick and easy Instagram rails, video ads for social media, engaging and interactive
Instagram stories. Sharable gifts and memes, cohesive and captivating
carousel posts, clickable YouTube thumbnails and animated YouTube end screens. But there is so
much more to being a great content creator
than just social media. So in the last part
of the course, you will also learn how
to use Canva to create amazing ebooks and how to animate them to share
them on social media. How to create professional business cards that will impress the pants off of anyone you meet at your next
networking event. How you can utilize some
lesser known features within Canva to create powerful presentation
slide decks and even how you can use Canva to create an
awesome website that you can use to
conduct surveys, collect e mails, and
even book appointments. Finally, we'll also
be going through some more advanced techniques for creating captivating videos, using Chat GPT and
other AI tools to bulk create content within
Canva and so much more. This content is perfect
for anyone who wants to learn how to create
eye catching content for their own business or
for their clients or who maybe wants to give
away some of their designs or templates in exchange for people's e mail
addresses and grow your email list or to actually sell it on platforms
like Creative Market. And whether you're using the free or paid
version of Cambra, there's something in this
course for absolutely everyone. According to a recent study, content creation is the fastest growing form
of small business, and with the skills that
you'll learn in this course, you'll be well on
your way to joining other amazing
content creators out there on their journey to
online business growth. The skills you'll
be learning here are the exact skills
I've used with my clients to create content for a wide variety
of businesses. And I'll be taking you through my exact processes that I've
developed over the years, including how I gain inspiration for my designs
throughout the month. So when it's time
to sit down and design for myself
or for a client, I have plenty of assets to draw inspiration
from for my content. Like I said before, I pretty
much live inside of Canva, and I can't wait to show
you around my home and show you everything that this
amazing software has to offer. So if you're ready, I can't wait to see you inside
my first lesson.
2. What You Need To Know: So to kick things off,
I'd love to spend a little bit of time over
the following few lessons, just covering a few
really great tips, tools and resources that are
out there that are going to help you to make the most of your content
creation process. And before you get started, just make sure to go through and download your course guide, which is linked as a PDF in the projects and
resources section, and I've also hyperlinked
it for you in case you're not able to
access the attachment. Inside, you'll find all of the resources we'll be talking about
throughout the course, including super handy
keyboard shortcuts, which we'll talk about
a lot in the lessons. You'll always know
where things are within Canva if you want to track
things down manually, and you'll also learn
how to speed up your workflow with
these handy shortcuts. In your course guide, you'll
also see some previews of the kind of designs you'll be learning to create
throughout the course. These will also pop up in the first few seconds
of each lesson so that you can get a
really quick snapshot of what you'll be creating
within that lesson. But before we get
into everything, I also wanted to mention
that Canva changes its interface a lot a lot a lot. And it's a good thing because it means that they're constantly developing the platform and they're making things
better for you guys. But it does also mean that
some things might look slightly different
on your screen depending on when you're
watching this course. And it's also because social
media platforms change their dimensions and change their preferences
and things change. But that's totally fine because like I said, I love this stuff, so I don't mind continuously updating it and making
it better for you guys. But that being said, if
something looks slightly different on your
screen or you're looking at a bit of a different dimension with social media platforms
or anything like that. Not to worry because the skills that I'm going to
be teaching you in this course are going to
not just give you know, step by step instructions
on how to create something, but hopefully also give you the flexibility to adapt
as these platforms evolve. But that being said,
if there is something that you think needs to be
updated, please let me know, or if there's something
that needs to be added or you've seen something
online that you're like, This is really cool and it's
not covered in the course. I'd love to know how this
was created. Ask me. Ask away, ask for support, ask for help, ask for
feedback. Just ask. I will be happy to help. Now, I know some of you are
going to want to just jump ahead and go straight to the lessons where we
start creating stuff. But I would really
encourage you even those of you who might have
been using amba already. You think you're a pro and you've been using it for years. I would still encourage you to go through the basics because sometimes we get into bad habits as creators, myself included, and it can be really helpful to kind of get
back to basics and remember what font pairings go well together, what
contrast means, what the hierarchy of
your typography means, and all of the kind
of basic terminology that's really key to creating amazing epic content online and making sure that everything
stays on brand as well. Not to mention that I'm going
to be taking you through how to find inspiration
for your design. And kind of getting into that sort of creative flow that
can be really hard to jump start if you're
sitting down and you're trying to create something and
your mind just goes blank. So we're going to
overcome all of those challenges in these
initial few lessons. So I would really encourage
you not to skip these steps. And finally, I also just wanted to manage your expectations in terms of the version of
Canva that I'm using. So I'm going to be using Canva P to demonstrate
a lot of these lessons. That being said, if you're on
the free version of Canva, you will have access to most of the stuff that we're going to be talking about
throughout this course. The differences are
pretty minor now. They used to be quite intense. But really, there's just kind of minor
differences in some of the things that
we'll be talking about. So, for example, when
we get to branding and storing your different brand
assets on the pro version, you can store pretty much
unlimited brand assets and fonts and colors, whereas on the free version, you can only pick up
to three brand colors. So it's usually just a
slight limitation like that. So you won't be at a
huge disadvantage. And if you're brand new to this, I would very much suggest that you just start with
the free trial of Canva and then upgrade only when you feel
that it's necessary. But also be aware that
when you sign up to Canva, there is a free 30 day trial
of Canva P that you can jump on if you want to follow along with absolutely everything
within this course, and then you can always
cancel it if you feel that the free plan is enough for what you need in
your day to day. As it says here, most of the advantages of the
Pro account have to do with access to better
workflow functions like more storage
for your designs, and just options for quickly bulk editing designs and
those sorts of things, which are just ways
that you can save time if you're using
Canva every single day. I personally wish that I'd upgraded sooner
because I spent years creating stuff for myself and for my clients
on the free version, and I wish that I upgraded
earlier because it has made my workflow so much easier. But if you are not going
to be working with in Campa every single
day like I do, then the free version
might actually suffice for everything
that you need. All right. And now let's get into
everything in the next lesson. Make sure to download
your course guide, so you've got access
to all the resources we'll be discussing throughout, and I'll see you in
the next lesson.
3. Psychology of Colours: Over the many years of teaching
branding and marketing, I've gotten a lot of questions specifically around
colors and color schemes. So before we jump
into the next lesson, where I'm going to be taking you through how to actually go about selecting color palettes for your brand or for your clients, I first just wanted to
take you through a bit of the reasoning behind why
brands pick certain colors. Because while knowing the
psychology of colors may not be the B and end all for
choosing your color palette, it can still be a useful tool
when trying to decide on the overall vibe that you're wanting people to
associate with your brand. So let's take a
look at the color emotion guide here
and talk about why certain brands have chosen specific colors to connect
with their audience. Yellow is the color of the sun, so it makes sense that it evokes feelings of optimism,
clarity, and warmth. Brands like
McDonald's and Subway use yellow for its
playful qualities, while cat who create
construction equipment have chosen it because yellow is also a sign of safety and caution. Orange stands out in a
crowd, so it's creative. It's useful, it's enthusiastic, which makes it
perfect for brands like Nickelodeon and fanta. Red has actually been proven
to have the ability to raise people's pulse rate
when they look at it because it's a
powerful color, and it's warm, it's exciting, it's sexy, it's urgent, it's all of these things. It's super bold, and it makes it perfect for
brands who aren't afraid to put themselves out there like Coca
Cola and Netflix. Purple is the color of
royalty and wisdom. Brands use purples regal, sort of anything is
possible vibe to draw in customers who are looking for an experience that is a step
away from the ordinary, which is exactly why brands
like Hallmark, Cadbury, monster.com, and
the sci fi channel all leverage the
power of purple. Blue is a calming
color that conveys feelings of strength,
dependability, and tranquility. Technology brands
like Del, IBM, Intel, and Facebook take advantage
of Blues trustworthy message. Green is serene and it's peaceful and it conveys
the idea of growth. Many brands whose products
deal with agriculture in the environment
utilize this color like John Deer and
animal planet, while brands like whole
foods take advantage of the fact that people also
associate green with health. Lastly, black, white, and gray logos signify balance
and innovation. Car companies like
Mercedes Benz and Honda use logos that
feature silver. Apple uses white, black and gray or silver throughout
their brand and products, and then companies
like Nike just use a simple black logo for
a minimalistic look. But, of course, there are
plenty of brands out there whose logos and color schemes
are not this clear cut, and they don't just neatly
fit into one color category. And that's perfectly fine. But hopefully,
knowing a little bit about the emotions
that we associate with these different
colors will help you in creating content
for social media. For example, if you're going for a minimalistic and
innovative feel, you might use black,
white or gray. Whereas if the emotion
you're looking to evoke in your audience is
one of trust and calm, you might go for more
blue hues instead. You'll notice that even
different fonts here evoke different emotions on top of your colors and we'll talk more about that in
a later lesson. Canva themselves
actually have a really, really great resource
for this in case you're wanting to look up the
meanings of other colors. I've linked this within
your course guide. But for now in the next lesson, let's take a look
at how to actually create color palettes,
so I will see you there.
4. Hex Codes & Colour Palettes: Okay, so now that we know
a little bit about what different colors mean and what
emotions they are tied to, we will now be talking about color palettes and hex codes in different colors
and how they play together in forming a
brand color scheme. So brand recognition
is such a huge part of marketing and colors can be a really important
part of that. So you'd imagine if, you know, Facebook decided to
just go purple one day or Coca Cola
just went green. We've got these
different associations with particular brands for a particular reason
because they use the same color schemes over
and over and over again. So we learned to
associate those colors with their brand and their
logo and everything else. I mean, McDonald's, like,
the first thing you think of when you think of McDonald's
is the golden arches, and it would be super weird
if they randomly just stopped using the color yellow and
their signature red, right? So color schemes are such an important part of branding. That's one side of it. The other side is that I would encourage you
not to stick with a color palette or a brand color scheme just for the sake of
sticking with it, and then for the
sake of branding. It's totally okay to evolve. My own brand colors have massively evolved
over the years, as I felt my own
brand has evolved. I've changed my colors slightly. So it's entirely possible. If you look at some
even big brands like Sark and AR and B and B have totally
different color schemes from when they first started. So it's okay to change, but I would say not
too frequently. Because then people will never really recognize that
it's you coming across their social media feed if you don't have that sort of
consistency going on. So play around with things, but I would say
that at some point, it's good to just go,
This is my color scheme. These are the colors
I'm going to use in my marketing materials over
and over and over again. And these are the ones
I'm sticking to until it no longer makes sense for
these to be my brand colors. So If your clients, if you're doing this as
a social media manager, and if your clients don't
have a color scheme in place, you can use the tips within this lesson to help
them create one. And now you'll know why it's such an important thing
for them to actually have their own brand colors
and have them be really consistent in their designs on social media as
well. All right. Let's get into it.
So let's first talk about hex codes that represent the colors
on a page like this. So let's say if you're on
a website like this one, and you're like, Oh, I
love all these colors. I would love to use
them in my design, but you have no idea
what the colors are or how to get them
into your design. There's a really good
free chromic extension, which is this eye dropper tool which allows you to
essentially just hover over any color on a website or anywhere
else on the Internet. And it will tell you
what that hex code is. So hex code is essentially a representation of
how much red, green, and blue exist in this
particular color, and it's always six characters, which is a combination
of letters and numbers. With this, you can
continue doing this for as many
colors as you want. You can just keep picking
a few different colors, and it'll essentially build a
color palette here for you. Then if you're ever
interested in what that hex code is for
each particular color, you can find out
just by clicking on it or you can
export it as well. Now, at this stage,
we haven't yet familiarize ourselves
with the Canva editor, so I don't want you to
worry about it for now. But the one thing
I want you to know is that whenever
you're within Canva, a shortcut to this as well, is if you ever have
a photo that you want to bring into your
design and you're like, Oh, I really like those colors. Instead of going through and
using that chrome extension, you actually have this
built in within Canva. So let's say I want to change
the colors of these shapes. I've got a little
eyedropper here as well. And I can just do the same sort of thing where I
just go, Okay, well, let's change these colors to the colors from
the photos below. So just so you know
that you've got the eye dropper there as well, or you can use the
chrome extension to identify colors in
images or in websites. So that's all about
picking individual colors, but how do you actually go
about building color palettes? So we're going to look at a
few tools that will help. But first, I just wanted to say, I really love going to Pinterest to look for inspiration
first and foremost because there are already lots
of clever people who have put together some really great color schemes
that you can use, whether you're
looking for something like minimalist or Earthy or techy or whatever word you want to put in front of
the words color palette, and it will pop up with
some ideas for the kinds of color palettes you could use for this sort of brand with
this kind of feel. And Canva themselves also have an option for color
palette ideas, or you can go to their
color palette generator and upload a
particular image here. That you like the look of, and it'll build a
color scheme or a color palette for you,
which is really cool. And then additionally,
I want to point you to two resources that are a little bit more
graphic designer and web designer specific. One of those being Chroma. When you first
start with Chroma, it will basically look like
this because it's trying to get a feel for the
kind of colors you like before giving
you some options. So it'll say, choose a set
of your 50 favorite colors. So you don't
necessarily need to be thinking about color
palettes just yet. Just go down and go,
which colors do I like? I'm going to go
through this really quickly and just pick 50 colors, so I can show you what
it looks like once it's got those colors selected, and it begins training to build some color palette
options for you. Once you've selected
your colors, it's going to then
begin training itself and generating some data. Karma will then come up with some really cool color
combinations for you. You can also swap the
colors to see what it'll look like with
the other one on top. And then whenever you like
a particular color combo, you can just hover over the eye, and it'll tell you the
hex codes of each color. So, this can be a
really cool exercise. And at any point, you
can go to your settings and edit the training colors if you don't like what
it's come up with. It also has the option for web content
accessibility guidelines. So I'd like to have this
turn on to make sure the contrast between the
colors is nice and crisp, and we'll talk a
little bit about accessibility in just a second. But just so you know that
these are some options, I really like the way
that this tool thinks because these are
colors that I would probably not ever
think to put together. But a lot of the time you just think wow that actually
looks really, really cool. So this is just a way to get
some more ideas flowing. And then we'll move on to our final tool,
which is coolers. Coolers is a way to actually go in and build your
color palette based on all these different ideas and all these different hex cos that you might have
floating around. Of course, they have trending
color palettes as well, lots and lots and lots of them, so you can always go through and explore
their color palettes, but their power is
really in the generator. Similarly to Canva
within the generator, you can start from an image, but you can also completely
start from scratch as well. So let's say I wanted
to start from an image, but I want to actually
pick the colors from this particular image. It has a little bit more
flexibility with that, whereas Canva just kind of
decides those colors for you. So that can be really nice, and you can then open
that in the generator. But let's say I actually have
now seen this full screen, and I only like a
couple of these colors, and I want to try out a few different
combinations with these. So what I can do is I can
lock the ones I like, so I'm going to lock
this one and this one, and then I'm just going
to hit the space bar, and it's going to give
me some other options for the other three slots
for my color palette, and I can keep cycling through until I find
the ones that I like. But maybe I like this one, but it's a little bit too dark
for what I'm looking for. I can have a look at some
different options here. So I can look at
slightly lighter shades of this kind of minty
green and then say, yep, that looks pretty good. And then I can keep hitting the space bar to shuffle
through some more options. If you click on the actual
hex code number here, you can tweak a few things in terms of how much red, green, and blue is in this color, or you can head on
over to the picker, so you can hand select a
particular color or add your own hex code in
if you know you've got a particular brand color in mind that you
already really like, you can also move
these colors around, so if you want them in
a particular order, and finally, of course, you can export them. Once you've got a color
palette that works for you, you can head on over to port, either export this as an
image or a PDF or even a URL, if you want to share
it with somebody. Once you've exported your image, Here's what your color
palette will look like. You'll have your beautiful
hex codes there, and you can use these
within your cava design. Now, lastly, I did say I would talk briefly about
accessibility. So this is a really great
tool that I've linked within your course guide
that will allow you to build out your
color palette and check that everything is as
accessible as it needs to be. I'm just going to
put in a couple of my brand colors here, and I don't need
too many options. Let's say, these
are the only colors that I actually
want for my brand. I'm only going to have a
three color color palette, It will then tell
me how I can use these colors in a way that's
accessible for all users, meaning that it's going
to be easy enough for them to read the text if it's light text on
a dark background or dark text on a
light background. It'll essentially
tell me you can't use white text on this
particular color. I can't also use my turquoise
text on a white background, and this is a really, really great option for when you're selecting your
color palette to do a last minute check to make sure that you're
actually going to be able to utilize the colors that you're
choosing in your designs. A way that's really easy for all users on social
media to actually be able to read very clearly and engage
with your content. Hopefully, you're
starting to see how your design work is starting to take a
little bit of shape. In a little bit, we are
also going to talk about font and font pairings that
you can use for your brand. But for now, let's chat
about something we all need to be across
as content creators, which is understanding
different content licenses. More on that in the next
lesson, and I'll see there.
5. Understanding Licensing: Okay. Okay, so as we go into
this particular lesson, I did just want to jump on here and say that this lesson is not intended to freak you out because I know it
can have that effect. Whenever you start talking
about licensing and restrictions and copyright
laws and all of that stuff, I know it can be
quite intimidating. So please just note
that First of all, everything in this lesson is intended for guidance
purposes only. I'm not a copyright
lawyer, so always, always, always check the
licensing restrictions on any new software
and tool that you use, and we'll go through
how to actually check that on the different platforms. But just know that it's not as scary as a lot of the articles
out there make it seem. It's really just sort
of best practices. So the actual
resources that I'll be giving you that are 100%
free for you to use, make it very clear
from, you know, the very first home page through to their terms and
conditions that you can use their images and
their videos and their graphics for whatever
you need to use them. So if you're ever not sure, just pull from websites that you know are 100%
free for you to use. If you're ever not sure, then make sure that
you seek advice from people who do
this for a living or make sure that you're
actually outright purchasing the assets if you're not sure if you're able to
use them for free. But we are going to go into
exactly where to look for information on all the
different websites and how to know what's free, what isn't and how
you can use it. So please don't
worry too too much. I just want to give
you this information so that if you ever
come across it, you'll know what it means and you know what it
means in terms of how you can use the material that's found there. All right. And hopefully, you're
a little bit excited. I know this is a
little bit too nerdy, but I just wanted to
preface it by saying, it's not as scary
as it might seem. And we'll get
through it together. All right. Let's jump in. So some basic terms
to be familiar with in terms of
taking images, videos, artwork, photographs,
and music off the Internet and using them
for your own purposes. Royalty free is a license type that grants the buyer
a determined set of rights to use content in multiple ways for a
flat one time fee. This means you only pay for the license once and
you can use it forever within the accepted ways without any further
payment obligations. So you'll often see stock image companies using this term, so you can, for example, just purchase an image
once from a company like Shutterstock and then use it on your website as many
times as you want. Then there's creative commons, which is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to building a globally accessible
public commons of knowledge and culture. They essentially
just help creators license their content
according to the type of restrictions that they want to place on people purchasing
and using their content. So CC zero or creative commons zero is the least restrictive
type of license out there. It lets others
distribute, remix, adapt, and build on even commercially without needing to attribute the original creator
of the work. Other creative commons licenses might also allow
for free use but might require actual attribution back to the author of the work. Then let's talk about
noncommercial versus commercial. So noncommercial
means something is not primarily intended
for or directed towards a commercial
advantage or monetary compensation by an
individual organization. So for example, if
you're using an asset in a lecture presentation
in a class you're taking at a university or for
a personal project, then it would be classified
as noncommercial. Commercial use of an image or video or what have you
would be to reproduce it in any manner that is
primarily intended for or directed towards
commercial advantage or monetary compensation. For example, any images
or media that would be used in TV production
or use in advertising, where you're actually getting money from using that image. The important thing
to note is that music distribution is the most monitored of all
content use because it's also the easiest
for programs to pick up. So obviously, this is a
little bit more murky now with TikTok and Instagram
reels, for example. But if you were trying
to use a popular song by DJ allied as the background
song for your Facebook ad, it'll automatically
get rejected. Or if you're using
it in YouTube video, you might get a
copyright strike. So generally, best practice is for you to either
use content that is totally free for
you to use without having to attribute
the original creator. Or for you to actually
go and purchase that asset to use for
business purposes. And the good news
is that there are so many platforms
dedicated to providing you with either free
or paid content who are dedicated
to transparency, so it's super easy for you to find out whether
the content you're taking from the web is free for you to use or
should be purchased. If there are any copyright issues on your work, by the way, you'll usually just get a
warning to re upload your work without the
copyrighted element on platforms like
Facebook and YouTube. So don't read all of the scary articles out there that tell you this is
the end of the world. It's really not. But
that being said, just get into good habits. Make sure you're pulling content from the platforms that you know are 100% free for you to use
and do whatever you want. Just in case. So that
means not Google images. Please don't pull from Google
images. Just don't do it. I've had so many
clients do this. And that is when things
get really, really risky. So I'm going to give you lots
of really handy resources that will allow you to get
access to so many free assets. So just use what you know, and if you're ever not sure, make sure you're
reading the terms and conditions of the platform that you're pulling
content from. And in the next lesson, we're going to get into all
the amazing free platforms that will give you
all the assets you need. So I'll see you there.
6. Finding Free Images & Videos: But your brands out there will often either stick to taking their own photos or
purchasing photos from sites like Shutterstock
or Adobe stock, which are high end
professional photos that are very specific. So what I mean by that is if your client is looking for
an image of something like a woman in business attire
shooting a goldfish or cats having a picnic and reenacting scenes
from the Titanic, Then, yes, they will
have to purchase these because they're so
ridiculously specific, you will not find them for free. But I found that most of the time people are
just looking for a nice background image for a quote graphic or something
to include in a blog post. In which case, some of the
free websites that we're going to be discussing here will totally suffice for that. So my first go to
resource for big, beautiful arts images that are
completely free for you to use on social media or
anywhere online is unsplash. In here, you can either just browse through
images that they've gotten in there or
you can search for your own using some
of the keywords. So you'll notice that just
for the word animals, it's got about 10,000
photos in there. Some will be completely free
for you to use and download. There will of
course be some ads, and then there's also their
unsplash plus subscription, which is a paid service, which are often lack
very specific images. But in my experience, everything you need you can
get from unsplash for free. Once you click into
a particular image, you'll have some options for the dimensions of the download. So you'll notice that
the original size photos because these are
taken and submitted by professional
photographers are often ginormous and way too big
for what you'll need, especially for social media. So when you're
downloading photos, think about how big you need the image to
be for your purposes. So, for example, if you're just creating an Instagram post, it's never going to need
to be wider than ten ADP. So I would just download
the medium size image here, which means it's going to
be a smaller file size, and it's not going
to take up nearly as much room on my computer. While I'm in here, if I'm
also logged into unsplash, which is completely
free for me to do, I can also like an image or add it to one of my collections. So I can create a
new collection. These are all
completely private. You'll see the lock there, so
no one else can see these. It just is a really good way to sort of organize
your thoughts, especially if you're working with a few different clients, and maybe you want to just
chuck a bunch of images all into a folder and then decide later whether you
want to download them. This can be a really
easy way to do that. Of course, with free
image websites, the downside is that
there's going to be a lot of downloads
of the same image. But if your clients want
something really unique, then of course, they're going
to have to purchase it. If you keep scrolling
down as well, often, it will give you related images to the image that
you've just selected. But they're not necessarily
from the same photographer, so they might have a slightly
different look and feel, which is why Kaboom picks
is another great resource. So we're going to jump
into that website next. But one thing I wanted
to point out is if you head on over to the menu and
head on over to license, here's where you can
read all about how you can and cannot use
Unsplash images. You can basically use them for anything except
putting them up on a competitor website or selling them because they're
providing them for free. So, of course, they
don't want you actually selling the images that
they're giving you for free, but you can sell the end product that you've
created using their image. So now heading on
over to Kaboom picks. This is also quite a artsy kind of feel in terms of the images you'll
find on Kaboom picks. Their search engine isn't nearly as strong as
it is for Splash. I find that it is a little bit limited in terms of what
you can search for. The categories tend
to be quite good, but the actual searchability
here, a little bit limited. But the thing that
I really like about their particular engine is that when you find
an image you like, you will not only
have a color scheme here, which is quite cool, but you will also
have all images that have come from
the same photoshoot. If you're creating Instagram
carousels, for example, or just a collection of images
that you want to have in a blog post that
you want them to all have that same
look and feel, then this can be a
really great resource for that because
you know that it's taken by the same photographer in the same day
of the same area, and it will give you that
consistent look and feel. Likewise, with Kaboom
picks and their licensing. If you head on over
to license and FAQs, it will tell you pretty
similarly to what Unsplash told you you can basically do anything attribution
is not required. But of course, it's appreciated, but it's not always possible, especially in
social media posts. So just know that legally, according to their
current licensing, so always check
with every website. But according to
this, at this stage, you're able to use
their images for whatever you want
without attribution. Then I want to move
on over to Pixabay, which is another great resource. It offers much more sort of
stock image kind of images and videos that aren't quite right for
every single brand. I've had very few
clients where they would want images like this
on their social media. But there are definitely especially more
corporate brands for which this is the right
kind of look and feel. It also means that
their search engine is actually quite good. It's similar to sort of Google images where you're able to get much more detailed images based on the keywords
you're putting in. And the benefit of Pixabay is that you don't
just have images. You also have vector
graphics and illustrations, which can be great if you're putting together a presentation, for example, and
you want to have some illustrations included
in that presentation. This is a really great go to, whereas the other two websites don't have this functionality. And of course, they have videos
as well, which is great. But again, they're a little
bit stock kind of stocky. Yeah, they can just be
really, really random. And I can't imagine
too many clients that W a man with a chocolate
egg in a ribbon. I don't know what this is, but anyways, you can
download it for free. And yes, so we'll look at a slightly different
website for videos that I find to be a lot more suitable for
a lot more brands. But the last thing I want to
say about Pizza Bay is that they also have music
and sound effects. So that can be really great if you're looking for something, let's say, inspirational,
and up Mat. This is where you can go to find music that's
completely free for you to use even in advertising in the
background of your reels, in the background of your
videos, et cetera, et cetera, and then you can
go by genre and by mood and just download that
straight to your computer. Lastly, let's look at pixels, which is my preferred
website for getting free beautiful videos
and photos as well. They do have photos,
but generally, I just use them for their
video functionality. Also because you can
filter by orientation, which is great if you're
specifically looking for videos that can work in
the background of your reels, your TikTok or
you're looking for horizontal videos for your longer YouTube
videos, for example. So I find these to be, you know, just a lot more human and approachable
and beautiful. And they also often have
similarly to kaboom peaks. If the particular creator has shot a couple of different
things all in one shoot, generally, you'll see some
related videos underneath. It's not always the case, but sometimes you
can get a couple of different shots
of the same model. So, for example, this, this, and this is all the same
creator and the same model. So if you click into one video, you will see the other
ones underneath as well, which can give you that really
nice sense of consistency. Now, with photos,
we talked about downloading it in the
appropriate format, so it's not too big. With videos. Likewise,
you probably don't want it taking up too
much space on your computer. So if you only really need it for Instagram or
something like that, don't go ahead and download a four K video because
it's going to be gigantic, just download it in full HD. Once you know what dimensions
you need for the video, type that you're creating, you can just download that here. And like on unsplash, you can create collections and like a few different
things once you're logged into pexels so
that you can create little collections and save
them all in your folder. Once you go through to
download the video, it will actually say, you can potentially help to
support the creators. But if you were to check
Pexels license, once again, you don't necessarily need to give attribution to the
photographer or the videographer, but it's always appreciated. And in terms of organizing
all of your assets, I would make sure
that you're creating some sort of a Google
Drive folder or folder on your computer that is dedicated specifically to these
assets so that you know, whether it's three years from
now or ten years from now, that these were assets you pulled from pixels or unsplash, and they're completely free for you to use as many
times as you like, so that you don't accidentally confuse these with your
other images that you might have in your folders that you've maybe gotten
from clients that might have stricter licenses
or copyrights in place because those might
be assets that your clients purchased
from Shutterstock, and that means they are the only people that have
the license to use them. You cannot use them
for future work. So make sure you are dividing up your assets by things that are completely
free for you to use, and then any assets that you may have purchased or
gotten from your clients. So those are my top resources. Of course, Canva have a
really great collection of their own photos and
videos that have been submitted by
different users, but some are also pulling through from sites like Pixabay. And you can use those directly
within Camva as well. But often they're only
available for pro users. So these websites are really great for those
of you who are on Canvas free plan
because you can go and download these beautiful
images from these websites, bring them into
Camva and you don't necessarily need to
be on the P plan. So that's a cool
little workaround. Now the next lesson, we'll
go into how you can find fonts for yourself and for your clients as well.
So I will see there.
7. Finding Your Fonts: In this lesson, I
first want to talk about the different kinds
of fonts that are out there and how to potentially
choose font combinations for your clients or for your
own brand for your designs. Now, this gift here is just for fun because
I love the office. But it's also how designers often feel about people
using fonts like comic sans in a professional
marketing material or papyrus for their logo. And I've actually included a really funny Saturday
Night Live skit about this in your course
guide featuring Ryan Gosling, that makes me laugh every time. Definitely make sure
to check that out. But the point is that when
it comes to any design, but specifically when
it comes to fonts, the simpler, the better. Don't try to pack a
really small graphic with six or seven
different font styles because it just makes people
really confused as to what the most important
information on the page is. Let's now talk
about the different kind of font styles you might encounter in Canva and
in your other design work. Generally, you will
find sera San serf, script, and handwritten fonts. There will also be
other categories like decorative fonts
and slab sera fonts, for example, but these are the four main ones that I
want you to focus on for now. So largely, you'll be dealing
with serf and San serapons. The main difference
here is that seraponts will have these extra
little tapers or lines, which might also be
called tails and feet, which extend out at the
edges of the letters, Was other fonts don't
have these serfs, which is why they're called sand seraph meaning
without the seraph. So Serafonts like
Playfair Display here are often
considered classic and traditional while
sand seraponts like pen Sands are considered to be more minimalistic
and modern. The script fonts like satisfy here are considered
elegant and unique, while handwritten fonts
like permanent marker are considered much more informal,
playful and artistic. So let's check these
out in action. You might have a Serafont
like these two as your heading font paired with a San sera font as
your paragraph font. Or you could actually
choose to go San sera for both the heading
and the paragraph fonts, but just choosing a
slightly bolder font for your headings to make them stand out a
little bit more. Or you might decide to go with a really fun and
playful rounded font for your main heading font. I perhaps your brand is
targeted at a younger audience, and then you could
pair this with a more traditional sand
sera font that has slightly harsher edges or another rounded edge font like Quicksand on
the right there. But the point is that
there are lots of different font
combinations out there and some great tools which
can help you out when choosing what the best
option is for you, but make sure
you're not choosing more than three fonts
total for your brand. Otherwise, things can get
very, very confusing. So there are sites
like font pair here, which can assist with just
giving you some ideas of different font pairings
that work well together, and there's lots and lots and lots for you
to browse through. But my preference is to actually start with
font joy here, which works really
similarly to coolers, which is a tool we covered in a previous lesson for
creating color palettes. It allows you to essentially
lock in some fonts, so you can just go through generate a whole bunch of
different font pairings. It also has three
different fonts, not just two, which is
a really big benefit. You can keep cycling through
a few different options. Then once you find one
that you really like, you can lock it
in place and then keep generating font pairings that work well paired with the font that you
have already chosen. You can even put in your
own text so you can see how something might
look in your brand voice, and then you can
also use the sliders here to try and find fonts that are similar
to the one that's there, but maybe slightly
different or you can actually search
for a particular font. So if you found a font in a previous tool or in another tool that you
really, really like, you can search for it
here and add it to your trio of your
font combinations. Another great tool I want to introduce you to is
called mix font, which allows you to see
different font pairings in action on sort of
a dummy website here. And it works similarly
to font joy, where you can just hit the
space bar on your keyboard, and it will cycle through
a few different options. And then when you find one that you like, you
can say, Okay, I'm going to lock this in
place and keep cycling through a few different
options that work well with that as
the heading font. I like this because it's
a little bit more visual, so you can see how
something might look. On a live website, maybe not so much in designs, but it can give you a
lot more perspective of how things will look
in a more visual way. The downside is
that you can only use two fonts instead of three, like you could with font joy. Now, bearing in mind
that not all of these fonts will be available
within Canva, of course. But if you are on
the Canva pro plan, you can import your own custom
fonts into your brand kit, and we'll go into that
a little later on. But for now, if you
just want to look at font combinations that are
available within Canva, I've also added some resources for this within
your course guide. Otherwise, you can
also head on over to something like
fonts.google.com, and you can search through different fonts based on the style that
you're looking for. So if particularly, you
don't really want to be looking at Saraf
or San Saraf, but you actually want
to be looking at something like a
handwritten font. This is a really
great way to do that. You can put in your own text and then find fonts
that you like. And once you find ones that
you like, for example, satisfy is already
available within Ca, I know that much, so
we could actually go through and start
using it straight away. But if it's one that's
not available in Canva, you can just
download it here and then upload it into
Cambra as well. Also, in terms of finding
fonts that you like online, you can use a free chrome
extension called what font. Once you have it activated in
your Google Chrome browser, you will be able to hover over any font on anyone's website, and it'll tell you exactly
what font you're looking at. So that's a really, really
handy way to find out what fonts people are using and potentially use them in your
own marketing materials. Lastly, if you're looking
for something really, really custom, then I would go to something
like creative market.com, but knowing that you
have to purchase these different fonts
because they are custom designed by designers, and they can get a
little bit pricey. If it says, you know, $28, that may not be for the
full commercial license, that might be for a
personal license. So sometimes the different
licensing options will make a big difference. For example, if you wanted
to use this font on an app, it would cost you
a lot of money. So it just depends on what
you're hoping to use it for. But this can be a great way
to just get some really, really unique font options
into your designs, and can be a great
option for clients that don't mind spending a
little bit of extra money. Overall, the reason
that I like searching for fonts outside
of Canva first like this is because it allows you to think a little bit
more objectively about the fonts themselves before thinking about how they're
going to look in your designs. But if you prefer to
just jump straight into Canva and try out a few
different font pairings there, then by all means, do
whatever works best for you. All right. And now
in the next lesson, we're going to go into
some key design dos and don'ts to consider while you're creating, so
I'll see you there.
8. Design Dos & Don'ts: In this lesson, we're
going to clarify a few common terms in the design world as
well as covering some key design dos and
don'ts that are based on some very common mistakes that people make when they
first begin designing. It does hurt me to
think about some of the very first designs I ever made for
myself and clients. But I know without them, I wouldn't be here teaching you how to learn
from my mistakes, so they've served their purpose. And please don't be afraid to go out there and get
creative and make mistakes because each and every single one of
these will teach you something about what you
can do better next time. And also just definitely make
sure you're saving all of your work somewhere
in a Google Drive so that in a few
months or a few years, you'll be able to look back
at those designs and see just how far you've come
with your design skills. So, let's get started
with some key terms here, JPEGs versus PNG files. You've probably heard of
both of these at some point, but just to cover the basics, some quality is compromised when a raw image that's taken on a camera is converted
into a JPEG. And the reason for that is that the compression is
what's called loss, meaning that some
unnecessary information is permanently deleted
from that image. But it does allow you to create a smaller file size than
you would with a PNG. The main advantage
of a PNG is that it will allow you to have
transparent backgrounds. And that can be
really beneficial if you're creating graphics with irregularly shaped objects or you're trying to cut
people out of an image, in which case, you would
have to use a PNG file. Now, generally
speaking, I always save my designs in PNG format because this format also holds really crisp lines and gradients a lot better
than JPEG images. So if you're going to be
including a couple of different colors to create
a gradient in your graphic, then JPEGs just won't cut
it a lot of the time. But photographs that
you'll be pulling from the web will often
be in JPEG format because they're already
edited and don't have the design elements that your finished
creation will have. Effectively, unless
you're trying to really save on space because JVs are generally
smaller in file size, I would always save in PG file. Now there are also two
different types of digital graphic files,
rasters and vectors. A stographic is made up
of a grid of many pixels, whereas a vector graphic is instead made up of
many lines or paths. One of the biggest differences
between a vector and raster is the ability
to scale the graphic. Because rasters are made up of just a certain
amount of pixels, at some point of scaling, they will essentially
become really, really blurry or pixelated, but a vector doesn't
actually have this problem. Now, since a vector can be
scaled to about any size, without losing the sharp
edges of its shapes, it's generally the
best option for logos, which often have
a large range of applications that
you want to be using them from from the tiny, tiny side of a little pencil to the giant giant side
of a giant building. Mva does now have a
feature for you to export in SVG files,
which are vectors. So if you need a
small graphic to be printed on a
poster or a T shirt, you'll have the ability to
export it as a vector and be able to scale it up
without losing quality. But keep in mind
that any photographs cannot be made into vectors. It only applies to shapes or other elements
in your designs. So if you're, let's say,
importing an iPhone photo into Canva and you're trying to
export it as a vector file. It still will not be able to be scaled to the size of
a billboard without getting blurry because it was originally a raster image
because it was a photograph. So it was not designed
for that purpose. But if you design
something like a logo that is just made up of
lines and different shapes, then you would be
able to scale it up. Now, other than just size, it's also important for
you to know whether you're designing for
web or for print. If you would like to
have the potential to use a graphic
for both purposes, then design for print because it's going to be the
higher quality format, and then you can
repurpose it for web. But the main
difference for web and print in terms of using
free tools like Canva is that your dimensions
will either be in pixels for web or inches
and centimeters for print. Now, that is important
because web graphics will normally be 72 PPI, which is pixels per inch, while print materials will
have a resolution of 300 DPI, which is dots per inch. Now, all of that sounds
a little too jargony. But all of that really means
is that in web graphics, there will be 72 little pixels of color in every
inch of that graphic. And for print materials, there will be 300
color dots per inch, making them a much
more beautiful, solid color when it's printed. But all you really have to
concern yourself with is, do you need to
print your project? If you do, then just
make sure you figure out what dimensions you
want to print it at and put those
inside of Canva, and Canva will take care of
all the rest in terms of your resolution and
then allow you to export your document for
print once you're finished. We will be going
through this throughout the lessons as we talk
about how to make business cards and
ebooks and things like that that you might
want to print out. If this is not making
too much sense at this stage,
it's totally okay. It all will in the future. For now, it's just a
bit of an introduction. Then we get onto the
more common mistakes that I see my students making, which is not having
enough contrast between the text and the
background of their graphics. Make sure you're
keeping your contrast high to prevent this issue. And make sure you're not
over using capital letters, especially when it comes to cursive or handwritten
fonts because not only do capital letters
make people feel like they're being yelled
at in these types of fonts, but they can actually really overpower all the other
texts in the graphic. And then finally, just
make sure you're being careful of the type
size you're using. So it is better for
your text to be too big rather than too small, but neither is really that good, not to mention that text
that feels too small on your desktop screen
will often be completely unatable
on a mobile device. Then within the world of design, hierarchy refers to
the arrangement of visual elements in order
to signify importance. What this means is that you want your most important elements to hold your viewers
attention through things like scale
and color and type. And the least important elements should be made to
hold less attention, by making them slightly
smaller, slightly less bold. And that also allows people
to sort of scan your graphic at first glance and
know exactly what the important bits are that they should be taking out of it. Because just remember that when everything stands out,
nothing stands out. So don't be afraid to highlight the most important parts of your design for your audience. Now, we've talked a
lot about branding up to this point, but
a lot of the time, it's easy to get caught up
in Klein's brand in style and forget who the actual intended audience
is for your design. So remember that while your
design may look fantastic, if it's not right for the right people that you're
trying to communicate with, it will probably
still miss the mark. So always be reminding yourself
of who you're designing for in terms of the brand as much as the target
audience as well. Then let's talk about
space because often overloading your graphic with way too much information can
really work against you. The emptier parts of your
design can actually just be just as important as the parts that you
fill with stuff. Space can help you put more focus on a specific
aspect of your composition, and it can let your design breathe and help balance
out the elements, or it can potentially add some sophistication
to your design. So, again, this is a really, really common beginner mistake, but even seasoned
designers often forget that sometimes
less is more. And whenever you think, Oh, is there too much
stuff in this graphic? You probably are correct, and perhaps it might be time to strip a few things down
and try to simplify. Finally, calls to action are prone to being over
used in graphics. This is more the case with website design than
graphic design. But even on simple graphics, sometimes you'll see companies
advertising a sale and asking for an e mail and asking for a subscriber and a follower. And linking them to their Instagram and
their YouTube channel. And it's so much that
often people end up doing none of the things you're asking for because you're asking
for too many things. So in a social mediographic, only ever be asking for
one thing at a time. Now, we've covered this in a lot of different areas
up to this point, but just remember that
when it comes to design, less is always more. And finally, always check
what your designs are going to look like both on
desktop and on your phone, because if you are designing on desktop on a bigger screen, That does not mean automatically
that things are going to look good on your phone and
on social media platforms, on apps, on Instagram,
what have you. So always make sure to check your design on
different devices. Now, I know that's a lot of
information, and don't worry. We'll be putting all of it into practice throughout
these lessons. I just wanted to give you
some context ahead of time with covering some of these terms and best practices, and now it's time for us to jump into Canva and take a
look around some of the features that
are available to you and how you can use them in your design workflow in the next few lessons.
So I will see there.
9. Introducing Canva: Okay, so we've covered some of the basic dos and don'ts and terminology and resources that you can use for your
creation process. And now it's time
for us to actually jump into Canva and
take a look around. So as someone who is not
naturally organized as a person, I have really tested
just how quickly you can get really disorganized inside of Canva if you're
not doing the right things. And that's just because
you could technically have a completely separate document for every single
thing you create. Which could be a disaster. At this point, I could have like 1,000 different documents
if I was doing that. And especially if you're
working inside of Canva, with your clients or with teams, this is just an absolute mess. So By doing all
the wrong things, I have learned how to
do the right things and passed them on to
you guys in terms of your workflow and
how to organize yourself and how to
get into really, really good habits and practices so that you're not
labeling your documents, cute kitten picks
when it's actually a YouTube thumbnail so
that you can actually find your documents in three years from now when you're looking for
something that you create today. Okay. So lots of good stuff
in the upcoming few lessons. I hope you're excited. If
organization is not your thing, I'll try to make it
as fun as possible. And if we can get through it, then we will save ourselves
a lot of time down the line when we actually get into creating our
beautiful graphics. So I hope you're at least
a little bit excited. I know I kind of am, and I'll see you in
the next lesson.
10. Canva Interface Update: As we talked about
earlier in the course, Canva changes quite a bit. Sometimes they do. Sometimes
they make updates, and it can throw things
off a little bit. So I just wanted to include this lesson to show
you how things in this course might look different from things on your screen if you're using the newly
updated version of Canva. These changes will
be reflected in the next version
of this course as I do re record the course in its entirety every few
months, depending on need. These are not big changes, they're not functional changes, so they're not going to
throw things off too much, but I just wanted to
do this so that we can manage your expectations
so that if you're like, Oh, my screen looks
different from that, you'll know why that is. On Canvas previous editor, which is what I'm on here, which is what I teach
in this course, Things might look a little bit different to what
it looks like now. I just wanted to show you how
things look in the editor, and we're going to go over
what all of the things are that you're looking at right now in the next few lessons. No to worry, this is just a
demo of the changes for now. So I've just written some texts here and you can
see that there's this bar at the
top that allows me to make some changes to
the background color, and will also allow me to change the text
if I click on it. It will allow me to change
whether it's bold or the actual font and maybe
the font size as well. I can change all
of these things in this bar that remains
static up top. And in the new editor, you
might have this section on the left hand side here that has some menu items that you need to close before you can
go into your design, and you'll notice that bar at the top is
not there anymore. It only appears when you click
on an element on the page. If I click on the
background versus the text, I have different options. With the background, I can now change the background color. And then if I click on the text, I can do all the
same things that we were able to do in
the previous editor. It just means that
this doesn't appear until I actually click on
an element on the page. So it's not really a
huge, huge change. It still functions
exactly the same way. So everything in the course
is still very much relevant. You're not going to have
issues of translating this In case you're in
a design document, you're like, my bar
is not up the top. What do I do? Just click on any element on the page,
and it will appear. Then there are a few sort of cosmetic changes
with the editor, for example, when you go to add a new page in the new editor, you can switch between them
by clicking on the new pages, or you can use the scroll view to go and kind of scroll
through the pages, which previously looked
a little bit different. But you can switch back to the thumbnail view just
like you would previously. Then the other changes that
on the left hand side, you've got all these
menu items that you can now access without
clicking into them. You can just hover over
these and they will pop up. And then when you
go away from these, they will hide themselves again. As I said, not a huge, huge change there.
It's pretty minor. The changes in the new
interface are just slight, but I just wanted to add
this lesson so that you feel confident in knowing that if things look slightly
different on your screen, than they do on mind as I'm going through the
course, it's okay. There are no functional
differences, really. It's just about maybe
where things are located. And I know that can be a
bit scary as a beginner. So I just wanted to manage your expectations
with this lesson. So hopefully that's helped, and of course, in the
next few lessons, we're going to go
through Canva and actually talk about
where to find things, how to create, how to do
everything within Canvas. So all of this is going to make so much more sense as you
go through the lessons. So thank you so much for
watching this one so that we can feel confident in knowing
that everything is okay, even when changes happen, and I know change can be scary, but it's all going to be okay, and I will see you
in the next lesson.
11. Canva Pro vs Free: Okay. So when you're
not logged into Canva, at this stage, we're just
on the cama.com website. You will have the option
to sign up for free or check out a few
different options here, or you can actually just
hit play with Canva. And this will take you through sort of a guided tour of everything you can
expect in the editor. So if you're ever not
quite sure or you don't remember exactly what I was talking about in this
particular lesson, that can be a really
great option to get yourself really
familiar with the editor. So we're going to start
off by jumping into my pro account so that I
can show you a few things, but then we'll also talk about how things might
differ if you're a Canva free user by jumping into my Canva
free account at the end. Depending on your own
account settings, your camera might be in
light mode or in dark mode, you can always change that within the account
settings option. But I'm just going to
keep mine in dark mode. And then what you're actually
seeing on your screen, whether you're cava
pro or free user will depend on how much
you've used canva. So it might have some
recommendations, for example, obviously, created hundreds and hundreds if not thousands
of designs within Canva. So it's got some recommendations for what it thinks are like, but you might be starting with
a completely blank slate. Same with your recent designs. So I have s
Maggie Stara, Creative Marketer & Top Teacher
