7 Things I’m Loving About Canva

Have you heard about the image editing/creating site Canva?  I know a lot of people who are using it, but I’m currently on a mission to share it with as many people as possible.  I used to use PicMonkey, but I am now a full-fledged Canva convert.  Here are some of the many reasons why:

1. Canva has a wide variety of pre-set design sizes: The front page of Canva features optimized image sizes for social media, posters, Facebook covers, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and more.  I love taking the guess work out of image sizing.  That said, you can still easily create designs with custom sizes.

2. Canva saves uploaded images: When you upload images to Canva, the site saves them for you.  This is awesome if you have a logo or watermark that you use regularly. 

3. Canva saves your created designs, for free: Every image I’ve ever created in Canva (over 50 so far) is saved in my account.  You can make your life even easier by naming your designs for simple searching.  It’s so easy to go back to an old design (my Media Kit was made in Canva, for example) and update it as necessary.

4. Canva has so many options:  Fonts, text designs (shown above), backgrounds, pre-made layouts, photo grids (also shown above) and many other “accessory” categories (above) abound in Canva.   I tend to keep my blog designs pretty simple, but it’s very exciting to know there are plenty of options available.  I’ve made good use of some of the more creative options for cards and mix CD covers.

5. Canva provides opportunities for additional customizations: Canva allows the spacing between text lines and characters to be adjusted, so you can make your text look exactly the way you want them to.  It may sound silly, but I actually use that feature a lot.  You can also change the colors in the text designs, background patterns and clip art.  So much personalization!

6. Canva’s public designs and sharing with friends:  Just like you can make a Google Document public for others to view, you can provide your readers and friends with links to your designs.  You can also make them publically searchable through the Canva website.  I haven’t had a lot of use for this function yet, but I think it’s neat and could be great for collaboration or showing off your design skills.

7. On Canva, you pay for only what you need:  Despite my love for Canva, I haven’t given them a dime yet.  There are so many free options in all the categories, I haven’t needed to.  However, Canva does feature many paid (often $1 stockphoto) options to add to your design.  The pricing is clear and reasonable and only affects you something when you choose options with a price.

There are a lot of other little things I love about Canva and I find myself using it all the time.  It’s replaced both PicMonkey and Picassa for my image designing.  Are you using Canva?  What are your favorite features?