Canva Tutorial: How To Use Canva for Beginners

(upbeat music) - Hey, It's Marley with Marley Baird Media. Today I'm giving you a very quick tutorial on Canva. That's C-A-N-V-A.

com. You ever have any problems where you're like, ooh, I really wanna make this picture, or I need to make a logo, or I need to make a design for my Facebook page, or my website, or my YouTube, and you don't have any graphic design experience? Good news, you don't have to go to graphic design school, you don't have to take a course.

Really, you can watch YouTube videos like this to learn how to do just about anything. You can actually use it for free. There is a free version, which you can honestly use forever.

I used the free version for probably about six months before I bumped up to the paid version because there's a little bit more functionality on it. I'll show you both, things that you can do with the free version and the paid version. So I'm gonna give you a quick tutorial on how to use Canva.

So, let's get started, let me show you. This is my Canva account, and you'll see on here that a lot of my stuff is for my mother in law, who is my biggest client. Yeah, mixing business and family.

You do also have the ability to organize your folders by client or by project on the left side here. Say, if I needed to go very quickly and find one of the fliers that I made for Carmel months ago, instead of scrolling all the way down here, which would take forever, I can go right into fliers, and it's all right there. When you first come in here, you'll see up here some options for designs you can make.

You can click more, and it'll give you tons of templates that you can use for a Facebook post, for social media, YouTube thumbnails. So if you're making a Facebook post, you can go here, and it's already the correct dimensions. Social Media, this one's great for Instagram, if you wanna have just a square image.

Although, you can use this on other sites as well. YouTube Thumbnail, I use this a lot because I post YouTube videos. When you upload a YouTube video, they give you three options.

They just take random screenshots throughout your video to give you, and sometimes you might look kinda silly. You might be in the middle of a sentence and it catches you when you're like, eh or something. So with this, you can make a really nice cover photo for your YouTube video instead of taking the three that it gives you for an option.

Let's start by actually making a Facebook post. So let's take a look at making a Facebook post. It's very easy to use, very user friendly, and there's a few other things you can use here.

So, for example, say if I wanted to find a picture of a doctor. There's all of these photos. These ones you have to pay for.

It says right here, it's a dollar, American. And then right in Elements, you can see the free photos folder. So we can look through any of these if you wanted to use one of these.

And some of these, the quality is fantastic. I really like them. That's kinda cool.

There's also options for the photos here too that I can put a filter on, the same way that I would with Snapchat or Instagram. There's some premade filters already, or I can go into the advanced options and decide for myself. If I wanna use these, I can make it blurry.

I can tint it a different color. Lots of different options. I can also crop it.

So, say if I only wanted that part, I could crop it to that. I can also flip it horizontally, vertically. And I'm gonna undo what I just did.

I can also make it a little bit more transparent. If I don't want it so bold as it is right now and I want it a little bit faded, I can do that. Pretty cool.

And let's say I wanna put some text on top of this image. So I'm gonna put here. I can choose a different font.

I can choose the size. I can choose the color. From here, I can actually pick a specific color, through here, if I know my color code.

Say if I have a specific color that I use for my branding. If you know the color code you can use that. Back to Elements.

There are a few other options for things you can do here. Grids shows you a template for if you wanted to add multiple photos. Frames, you can kinda put a frame for a picture on top of the photo you already have.

I like to use this. This one's kinda cool, like a phone. In the shape of a phone.

Make it go to the side a little bit. And then, you can drag a photo in or upload a photo. So I'll go into my uploads that I already have.

I wanna put in my ebook in there. Maybe someone's reading my ebook on the bus. You can go into these shapes if you wanted to.

Say if I wanted to put in just this circle, and maybe I'll write something inside the circle. Different lines that you can use. Kinda cool.

And they change throughout the year. Sometimes they'll change them depending on the holiday coming up. Same with these icons.

They're also free images. And charts are nice to use, especially if you're making an image or a PDF where you need to put some statistics. These are kinda cool to use.

And Canva has their own folder so you can show off how much you love Canva. Background, you can pick different colors if you didn't wanna put a picture as the background. And uploads, I have them all categorized and organized by project.

Transparent images, I said I was gonna get to that, and that's really important. So see these pictures of me, how they're transparent, there's no white border around me? That's a transparent image.

So here's one of the transparent images I have of myself. I had to create it in Photoshop. So say I wanted to put myself on top of this image, I already have it saved into one of my folders, and let's just have a great day.

And I might put my logo in there, maybe in the top right. Subtle logo in there. And if I'm done, again, I can download it, share it.

Let's go back to the main page of Canva. Now, some of these are paid features, but I'm showing you the benefits of paying for Canva. You can create a team.

So you can have other people that will log in, and you can all access these designs. So say if I'm working with a team, and I say, "Hey, Louis, can you log in "and can you adjust this graphic, "or can you make a graphic for me? "Everything's in the folder already, "just use the stuff that's in there.

" Great, great teamwork. Your brand. I love this.

It's so, oh, there were so many mistakes that I made in the past. I didn't realize that this was in here, and I would go into Photoshop, and I would make my text in my custom font that I use for my website. And then I would have to export that photo, upload it to Canva, place it on my picture, and then export it and be able to use that picture.

Now that I'm paying for Canva, I see that I can actually add in my color palette. So these are the specific colors that we use. Remember when I was talking about those color codes?

This is a specific pink that I use. This is a specific blue that I use. Then when I scroll down I also can upload the fonts that I use.

So one of the fonts that I use all the time is this Dancing Script font. So instead of going into my Photoshop, making an image, making it a transparent image, and adding it onto the photo, I have it right here. Let me back up and explain to you what it means to make a transparent image, because this is also a paid feature in Canva.

Let me make a transparent photo for you, just for an example. So let's go into a social media graphic. Let's go into the shapes.

Go into Elements, and I'm going to take one of these stars. And I'm gonna make it blue. Say if my background is pink.

If my background on my website is pink, and I download this picture as it is, it's gonna be this purple bluish star with a white background around it, with a square white background, 'cause this is exactly how you're downloading it. But if I want just the star picture, here's what I do. I download it as a PNG.

It has to be a PNG, a JPEG doesn't do this, and click transparent background. Okay, so that's ready. Now, say if I go back into this post, and I upload into my uploads, and you can see here now it's transparent.

So see, if I put this on top, it doesn't have that white square around it. This is so important to me. I use it online all the time.

It may not be important to you, but now you know how to do it. So that was my tutorial on Canva. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you have any questions or need any clarification, please don't hesitate to either comment below or send me an email. Please subscribe to me on YouTube, follow me on Facebook. I post lots of free tips all the time, and if you have any questions, I would love to use it for a future video, so send me a message.