Whether you’re starting a new business or charity or building your existing brand, there will come a point in time when you need to create things that have your brand stamp on it. Maybe you’ve been getting by using photography on your socials or creating presentations in Powerpoint? But I’m here to tell you that Canva can help you to create more impactful on-brand assets to add to your marketing suite with much less pain than some of the age-old software available. Even if you're already a Canva user, you may not be getting the most out of it for your brand. Read on to find out why...
Full disclaimer; I’m not affiliated with Canva in any way, I just love it as a small business owner / branding specialist and want to spread the word :)
So, if you’re new to Canva, you’ll no doubt want to know straight up about the price:
There’s a free plan for single users with plenty of design features to get you started
The Canva Pro plan is currently £100 a year for one user, and gives lots of extras (see below)
Canva Teams costs £90 per user (minimum 3 users), but FREE for non-profits - as well as having all the benefits of Canva Pro it allows real-time collaboration, comments and feedback on designs, documents and presentations.
There’s also a workplace solution for larger companies who need to manage multiple teams and brands, but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll focus on the options above.
I first started using Canva when I worked in the marketing team of an SME in the retail industry. It was exciting for me to create pretty cool graphics super easily, especially as social media was really taking off! In fact, it was actually using Canva as part of that role that made me realise my passion for design, prompting me to retrain as a graphic designer! It wasn’t long before I realised I wanted to specialise in what brought me the most joy - brand design! This allowed me to work with other entrepreneurs, small businesses and organisations in creating stand out, authentic brand identities that spoke to their target audience.
Now as a brand designer, you might think I’d be a bit of a snob about software tools like Canva. On the contrary my friends! Why? Because I firmly believe that it has a huge part to play in helping small business owners to bring their brand to the world!
Let me clarify something though. I’m NOT saying I recommend creating a brand identity from scratch on Canva!
Firstly, whilst you technically can create a logo from one of Canva’s logo templates, these designs are not exclusive to you (nor can it be trademarked)...and isn’t that the whole point about creating a brand, that it is unique to you and your business? If you do pick a logo from their ‘bank’ you will undoubtedly need to change things like the business name (unless you freakishly happen to have the same business name as one of the examples). As soon as you do that, you’ll need to play about with character and line spacing, placement etc. This is where it pays to invest in someone who has the training to ensure your logo looks professional, tidy, aesthetically pleasing and not a copy of someone else’s!
Secondly, a logo is not your brand! It is but one element of your wider brand identity, and trust me, even as a designer it would be virtually impossible to create your entire brand visual identity on Canva alone. I undertake a 360 brand review with every client to ensure that every brand identity and set of assets I create is customised to their specific brand values, inspirations and audience. Plucking a logo from a Canva template (or using any other AI logo maker tool) simply cannot achieve this.
So why do I love Canva so much for building your brand?
Well, I don’t believe in gatekeeping - good design should be for everyone and all businesses deserve to shine!
For me, the answer lies in how Canva’s software can be used in applying your branding to your wider marketing assets. A Canva Pro account will give you the most useful set of features for ongoing asset creation and management, so you might want to consider subscribing to this, if even temporarily to gain access to these benefits (at the point of writing this article, you can get a one month free trial when you register, so make the most of this!).
So, I’ll take you through some of the main features of Canva Pro that I recommend my clients regularly use when they’re creating their marketing assets in the real world.
Option to upload your ‘brand kit’
Uploading your brand kit into Canva means you can easily add your logos, brand colours and fonts to your designs (speak to a graphic or brand designer if you don’t have these!).
Canva’s own fonts are available to choose here if you happen to use one of these in your branding, however you can also upload font files to your Canva brand kit if you have an OTF, TTF or WOFF font file downloaded on your own computer.
Access to a bank of marketing templates
Whether you’re designing your own social posts or email newsletters, or creating a deck for presenting, Canva has a gazillion different template options available as a starter for ten. This can feel overwhelming at first, so have a think about the purpose of your post or document and what information you are trying to convey, then select a template that fits with this. My advice is usually keep it simple, especially if you are doing this yourself rather than using the services of a professional. Then use your ‘brand kit’ feature explained above to customise it for your brand in terms of colour palette, fonts, logos etc. Most importantly, continue to repurpose this template, or a similar style going forward to keep the consistency in your brand design. They will get to know and trust you and your brand better with this approach!
3. User-friendly alignment guides
Not tech-y? No fear! Canva makes it easy to align text, and drag n drop elements of your design so they are in alignment or centred properly. If you’ve ever experienced the pain of doing this same thing in Powerpoint then you will know what I mean!
4. Easy creation of video / reel content
Creating videos native to Tik Tok or Instagram is great, BUT what if you want to reuse the same video across different platforms without any annoying watermark? Upload your videos from your mobile and Canva’s video editing tools have pretty much the same functionality as the social platforms, allowing you to add text, stickers, voice overs, etc. One drawback though is their music library (it’s so bad, don’t even waste time exploring), so I recommend downloading the video you’ve created in Canva and then adding music on Tik Tok / Instagram.
5. Access to premium stock photography and graphics
Whilst stock photography can be kinda cheesy, I still think that for some brands it does have a place, so Canva’s library for photography can come in handy especially if you don’t have many high resolution brand images you can use. The little graphics are great too, with shapes, simple or detailed illustrations etc, but bear in mind that other than colour, many of these won’t be editable (again where your friendly graphic or brand designer can help).
6. Photography adjustment and background remover
You don’t need Adobe Photoshop to tweak colour, brightness etc. on photography OR remove backgrounds with Canva Pro! Great for creating designs like a standout profile pic for your social media, or designs that need that mix of photography and graphics!
7. Automatic resizing of designs
Ever needed your images or designs to fit different dimensions than those they were originally created in? ‘Magic resize’ on Canva Pro will help with this for images you created (or have editorial access to). You’ll most likely still need to perfect the final image, but it is a great starting point!
8. Other AI features
Canva recently introduced a host of additional AI features to help its users. For example, you can use the ‘magic write’ tool to suggest copy edits or animate text / graphics on your design (I’ve not had much success with this previously but I’m sure it will improve over time!).
9. Share on socials
Canva allows you to share directly to your social media accounts. And, even better, has its own in-built scheduling tool that can save you time and keep you consistent with your socials! Alternatively, you can plug in the Later app or save your designs to MailChimp directly from Canva.
What about other similar software to Canva?
You can see why I feel Canva is so great for helping business owners to get creative! Honestly, I’ve tried Adobe Express (Canva’s closest competitor) and I feel Canva definitely has the edge. Also, having followed their own business journey for some time, I love their down to earth (Aussie) approach and core ethos of design accessibility for all, which I believe 100% accounts for their global success for this type of product.
Of course, I’ll continue to use my go-to tools - Adobe creative suite (Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop) and Procreate - for creating one-of-a-kind, artisanal brand identities for my clients. BUT I will also continue to use Canva for creating the on-brand marketing assets I know they will need to continually repurpose in the real world!
Need some help creating your brand identity? Happy to help with one of my curated small business packages, or a bespoke package that works for you! And if you’re looking for help or guidance on Canva, drop me an email or DM on social and let’s chat :)
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