Are you ready to uplevel your graphics?
This is an intro to Canva and color
theory. To get started head over to
canva.com and set up an account.
This tutorial is going to cover the
privacy overview of Canva, we'll look at
the design kit, design school, will color
match graphics, we'll learn about using
templates, we'll have an in depth color
matching tutorial, we'll look at
presentation templates, interactive
posters, creating infographics, and
designing from scratch.
Common Sense Media states what parents
need to know about Canva; parents need to
know that Canva is a graphic design in
photo editing cloud-based graphic design
tool for the web and for iPad, as per the
Terms of Service users are supposed to be
over thirteen, partly because the app is
designed to easily share users creations
via social media. If teens search for iffy
images they will find some, though
nothing graphic. It is a combination of
free and paid content but if users
choose elements that cost money they
only need to submit payment information
if they want to download their work
without watermarks. If teens connect
through social media accounts the app
can collect all their profile
information but they can also create an
account. Though users retain rights to
their content the developers can edit
and use anything created within the app
check out the privacy policy to find out
more.
To get started go to canva.com and
create an account. Canva is a free
program but also has a paid version to
start off with let's look at the brand
kit. The brand kit in the free version
allows for up to three brand colors to
be identified; so I'm just gonna go ahead
and set up some colors here and if these
are my brand colors what this means is
I'll have easy access to these colors
and all of my designs and I can go and
change them at any time. This is the only
component that I can set up in the free
version, everything else here is paid.
You'll notice in the paid version you
can set up custom fonts and add your
logos.
The design school has a bunch of
different resources including a bunch of
tutorials. These tutorials walk us
through different features of Canva and
are a great resource, they also go into
different design skills so if we just
look at the design course Canva for
beginners, you notice that there's a
bunch of different lessons here around
an introduction, templates, graphics, and
let's just have a look at this one
around color so lesson for customizing
colors is a really good overview of how
to use colors within a document, talks
about how to choose different colors,
what a complimentary, monochromatic, and
analogous color are, there's a little
quiz here asking a question around which
would be most appropriate for a wedding
stationery, an overview of emotion
behind color, and how to keep your colors
simple in a document so a really great
resource for students in order to learn
a bit about color theory so that they
have some understanding of how to use
color within their canva design. On the
design school page if you scroll to the
bottom there is the section that says
resources and to start off with we can
look at font combinations; so here we can
select any font that we would like as
our starter font and what happens here
is that Canva is selecting font
combinations that we can use so a really
great way for students to see what
different fonts would look like.
So how we might use Comic as a title and
then Quicksand as our paragraph so a
really great resource for font pairings.
The photo editor allows you to upload a
photo that you've saved to your computer
and there's a bunch of filters that we
can choose and you can also adjust the
brightness and contrast of your image,
you can crop your image, and resize
your image, rotate or flip, and then you
can save your new image.
Click on palette generator, upload image,
select an image that's been saved and
Canva will generate the hex color codes
for that particular image so here we can
customize our design based on the colors
of this image so I'm going to copy this
color I'm going to go back into canva
into my brand colors and we're going to
paste in the hex color code so now my
default color will be this green and I'm
going to get this light steel blue
and this one. Now if I'm working with
this image I have the default color set
and my design can be around those
particular colors. Click on logo maker,
and I'm just going to type in this one
that I've used before earth talks and
make my logo, so here Canva's asked me
what my industry is and I'm going to say
that my industry is games and it's going
to ask me to select up to five logo so
that they can know my style so I like
this one, this one, this one, this one, and
this one. Now they're automatically going
to generate a logo for me so here it's
earth talks and game developers and I
can use this logo within any of my
designs so a really quick way for
students to be able to create custom
logos. The color section allows for
students to explore color theory so they
can begin by typing in a color or
choosing from the colors below and when
you click on a color more information
about the color will appear you can find
out about the color, shows the hex code
for the color, I can explore different
combinations so I can see the
monochromatic colors and all of their
hex codes, the analogous color
combinations,
complementary combinations, and the triad
combinations, around with exploring other
color combinations, I can learn about
what this emerald green represents, and I
can see ways that it can be used within
design. At the bottom there is more
exploration of color including a quiz to
learn about which color matches your
personality, this is a great way for
students to investigate
color theory and learn about how the
color that they're using influences the
mood of the design. Design size guide: the
design size guide allows for an
exploration of different types of
documents and social media in order to
see how large the setup of your document
canvas should be. So for example, if a
student was creating a poster they would
go into the poster section and see all
of the different sizes that a poster
could be setup for in order to pick the
appropriate size for their project.
We have information about poster sizes
and their common uses, so if we were
designing a large poster we would know
that it's for decorative imagery, events
concerts, small movie posters, outdoor
advertising, etc. This helps students
understand size and relation to the
scope of the project that they're
creating. If we are creating work for
social media we will click on the social
media section and here we would be able
to view all the different types of
social media, so for example if we were
creating work for YouTube
we see here that we'd want to create our
channel icon, and we have our set up
along with our channel art, our desktop
display, our tablet display, and our video
thumbnail, and then we have some
information specific about YouTube and
about the different types of artwork and
where it would go within our YouTube
channel along with some examples of
professionally designed YouTube
templates. So here we have Facebook,
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Pinterest, and for our gaming students we
have Twitch, we can see all of the
different sizes for Twitch, along with an
overview of what we would need within
our Twitch account, including our avatar
and our banner, and some examples of
professionally designed Twitch templates.
This gives a chance for students to
create a social media campaign or social
media design based on the account that
they're most interested in designing for
Support: the support section has a
variety of different information but the
information we're most interested in is
Canva for Android and Canva for iOS.
Canva operates slightly differently on
different devices so this provides
information about how to create our
design and layouts on our iOS device so
if students are unsure of how to go
about doing that this provides
information about how to do so. Teaching
Materials: teaching material section has
a variety of different workshops around
visual arts and graphic design along
with lesson plans by EdTech educators.
It's worth exploring this section for
ideas, inspiration, and for actual
resources that apply directly to your
classroom practice. Ideas: the ideas
resource allows for an exploration of
thematic ideas. So let's look at the
circus party ideas; here we can see all
the different templates around the theme
of circus party. This is great when we
want to show how a thematic idea can
look visually; we can explore the way
that color has been used with within the
circus party theme, and it's a great
resource for students to explore and
understand how different designs can be
utilized.
To get started with content
creation we have the option to search to
set custom dimensions or to create a
design from the selection, so I'm going
to create a social media post and this
shows that my social media posts will be
800 pixels by 800 pixels. The different
templates will appear and we have the
option of free templates as well as paid
templates so any template that says free
is free and any option that doesn't say
free will have a watermark show up. This
one is not a great example of watermark
so I'm just gonna find another one so
that we can see what the watermark
actually looks like, so here we go here
is a watermark, and this will actually
show up with this watermark so not the
best example to use I'm gonna scroll
back up to a quote social media post I
like this one and we have the brand
colors set based on the picture that was
previously uploaded so here are the
brand colors that have been set so I'm
just going to change this and I'm going
to upload the picture that was based on
these brand colors, it's on my computer
so I'm just going to upload it
and it's gonna show up over here in the
panel and then I can just click on it,
and it will appear. Now it's quite a bit
smaller than the picture that's
currently there so I'm gonna have to
actually make it bigger and then I'm
gonna have to change the position and I
want to send it backwards a number of
times, so that's too many and I will
bring it forwards and I'm going to go
through and just change some of the
other colors so I'm going to click here
and let's change that to the green and
this is a little bit dark so let's see
what happens if I change it to there all
right so this is what my design would
look like and then if I wanted to change
the quote I can just click and change
the quote itself or I can go and change
the font.
Now the Canva templates are already set
up with fonts that are actually meant to
go together
so it's not recommended to play too much
with the fonts and the designs in the
pre-made templates. So right here this
would be the design and I can upload
this to social media, or I can put it
into a presentation; I could add it to
for example, a Google slide deck, or
if I was creating a Google site this
could go on the Google site. I can also
name it, so I'm just gonna call it new
template, this is a cloud system so it
does automatically save changes. Here I
can actually share with people so just
like Google Drive I can invite other
people to be part of my Canva now this
means that people will actually be
invited to see all of my Canva,
people could view, or people could edit;
so if I was doing a group project for,
example, I could invite a number of my
group members to actually edit my work
and I would invite them by email and I
can now go if I'm done and download this
so I have the ability to download as a
PNG file as a JPEG as a PDF now with a
PNG I do not have the ability to have a
transparent background because that is a
paid feature but if I download as a JPEG
that would work for most situations
where I would want the picture and it
will just download to my computer and
that is a quick way to create graphics
in Canva.
This template
is an Instagram template so to begin
with I'm going to go into elements and
here you can search for all of the
different elements, photos, or graphics
and again they'll indicate if they are
free or if they are paid for so I'm
going to go into my photos and I'm going
to just grab this photo that I've been
using, and I'm going to move it and
you'll notice as I move it in this
template it actually clicks into the
middle. So it automatically goes right
into the background in this particular
template using the positioning so
sending it back doesn't actually work
because what's gonna happen is it's
going to go behind this area so as I
bring it forward, forward again, and just
to make sure it's on top of everything, I
actually need to slide it into position.
Now looking at this particular template
you'll see that the colors don't look
very good now. So I am going to again
just click on the actual picture and
you'll notice that the colors will come
up here
I'm gonna close this panel and I'm going
to go in to my colors and pick my
different colors that I want to use here;
so I'm going to click on the green to
change that, I'm gonna select the
background, and you'll notice it comes up
as the red now if I wanted to pick a
color from here I can click on it and
the color panel will fly out and I can
add a new color you can go through the
color picker this way but I'm actually
going to bring in one of my brand colors
and see if I like it that like if I like
that. If I decide I don't like this green,
I can click on it and it'll indicate
that I've selected and I'm going to go
back to white
there we go
sometimes just need to make sure that
you clicked in the right position and
sushi place no longer makes sense for
this image so I'm going to change it to
nature and you'll notice that it doesn't
fit so I need to stretch and here I can
move it around and I actually don't
think this font works very well for my
new image so I'm going to go in and
change it and I can change the size as
well and I'm going to make a bold. There
we go.
So here again I can download this I can
share it and while it has saved right
now you'll notice all changes have been
saved it's still called the sushi place
so I'm going to call it nature template.
Adobe has a great tool for pulling color
from photos visit a color adobe.com. You
can import our image. It's going to pull
colors from the photo similar to what
Canva does, the difference is under
change color mood you have options and
each option will select different areas
of the photo you can decide on the color
combination that best suits the mood of
the work that you're designing. So I'm
going to go with dark this time and you
notice that these are all of the colors
but I don't yet have the hex code. In
order to get the hex code I need to go
up to the color wheel and here are all
the hex code colors that I can now
import into Canva in order to have this
dark color scheme.
another great feature of Cava
is the ability to create presentation
templates, so I went ahead and set up the
color combinations from the photo and
now I'm going to create a design but if
you notice when I click on create design
I have to look for presentations and all
of the templates are shown here you can
also get to that feature just by typing
presentations and all of the
presentations will load so there's more
than one way to get to the presentation
feature some of these presentations are
free and some of them are paid so I'm
just going to select this one and it has
25 different presentation pages that I
can add and I'm just going to do them
one at a time. So I'm going to start off
with this title page, and then add new
page, I'm gonna click on the second one
add new page,
add new page, so for the purpose of this
demo I will have four. So to get started
I'm just going to actually change the
color combinations so when I click
you'll notice that the color is this
blue color which is not part of my color
scheme combination so I'm just going to
click on everything that's blue and it's
indicated that I have the right
selection and I'm just going to go
through and change the color then I'm
going to change the color of this as
well so I clicked on these
quotations you'll see that it shows that
it's selected with this bounding box and
it comes up to indicate that it's white
so in order to change the color I'm
going to click on the white and then go
in and click on my color combination.
All right, so that's a good start. Now I'm
going to want to change this picture
because my presentation is actually
going to be about food so I'm just gonna
click and hit delete and I'm gonna go in
and grab an element search for photo I
want to look for one that's free and one
that looks like it would fill up most of
my page so for example something like
this is not going to work so I'm gonna
grab this milk one and resize it I'm
going to hold shift on my keyboard and
drag it and I'm gonna send it backwards
that's far back as it will go but the
other one was transparent so I want to
go in and set the transparency. All right
that looks good to me; I'm gonna change
this title, the presentations about milk
so I'm going to ask the question why
milk? But I can change these fonts if I
like. I can change the color of the font
or I can change the style of the font.
However, like I said before Canva was
designed so that all of the different
templates actually work together and
the fonts were chosen intentionally so
I'm actually not gonna play around with
those. Now this one here if I wanted to
keep the color you'll notice that this
color doesn't actually fit anymore so
I'm going to select just that and change
the color to white that's better
and then I would go in here and I could
find another photo that I felt worked
better so this time something like this
might work oh I didn't realize before it
was two pictures so if I wanted to use
that I would either have to expand it
which would mean I would lose some of
the picture and so instead I'm just
going to put it more in the middle I
could use the positioning area here so
that I know exactly that it's in the
middle or that it's center so I chose
the middle and that moved it to the
middle that looks good to me I'm also
gonna change that so that the
transparency. There we go. And I don't
really like the color background anymore
I think it's too dark so I'm gonna go
and I'm gonna change that to one of the
other colors that we have and then I
would go in and modify all of this I can
change this text color.
And if I was finished and I wanted to
present this one automatically changed
up here you notice that the title has
changed based on this title here and it
has been saved so students can actually
download this or they can present right
from their computer so I can go into
presentation mode and I can download or
I can just present. Here it allows for a
transition styles to be added or I can
leave it as none and I can present as an
autoplay. One other thing that I'm going
to show you which I did not, is that you
could actually go and add presenter
notes so just like you can do in Google
slides or in Powerpoints you can add
notes as well and this will show up only
in the presenter view and then I can go
and I can present.
And there we are. So a really great
feature something that is just a
different way to present and everything
is all in there ready to go and most of
the present adaptation templates have up
to 25 different slides that can be added
and customized.
Canva allows interactive features as
long as the final graphic is exported as
a PDF so here I just searched for poster
but there are no poster templates
available, however, you'll notice that the
templates are available have poster
like qualities. So let's say I'm doing a
research project on pizza
I'm gonna grab this design here and I
can link links within the elements so I
have a picture here of pizza and I'm
going to go ahead and link a pizza
restaurant and apply and down here I'm
going to link a YouTube video about how
to make pizza and now when I export as a
PDF this will have interactive elements
that can be clicked on and viewed as an
interactive poster. I have not found that
this feature works when importing your
PDFs into a Google site the actual links
are broken and they no longer work.
However, this is a great way for students
to create interactive posters and
interactive presentations.
Working with infographics: Canva has a
variety of infographic templates in
order to increase the size so that you
can actually see what's on your template
you just click at the bottom here and
you can get it to fit or choose a size
that will work. Now once I zoom in you'll
notice that these are actually images
that have watermarks on them so if I
wanted to remove the watermarks there
would be a cost or if I had selected
this template but didn't notice the
watermarks when I go to download there
is a option to pay five dollars and have
the watermarks removed so it's best
practice to find a template that doesn't
have any of those watermarks on it so
I'm gonna change to this template and I
can go through and edit all of the
information I still have my brand colors
identified so I can go in and very
easily change to the colors or change
these colors to different colors that
I'd like to work with and you'll notice
that all of the default colors in my
template are also listed here. Canva has
a variety of different graphics that I
can select from so if I'd like to change
these people I can click on elements
and graphics and see there a variety of
different graphics I can scroll through
to select the ones that I'd like and
again there are paid and free graphics
so I'm going to select this one
and resize so that it fits and you
notice as I'm moving it around there's
an alignment tool that's showing up
asking what I would like to align it
with and I can go in and change that
graph that color show you one of my
default brand colors or one of the
default colors in the template. And I
would go through and change all of the
information in this graphic now when I
get to the bottom you'll notice that
there's the ability to add a secondary
graphic so if I'd like to double this or
make it longer or add a different style
of infographic I'm able to do so
So let's create an image in Canva from
scratch
so I've imported my bitmoji into 
coloradobe.com and I'm going to create some
different brand colors.  I'm just going to
go through and toggle through the
different ones until I find what I like;
I actually like the muted so I'm going
to click on that and grab my color wheel
I'm going to grab this hex color and
back in canva in the brand kit I'm going
to change my colors I'm just going to
toggle between the websites in order to
do so.
Remember I can only pick the first three.
All right, so this these will be my brand
colors and if I wanted to use anything
else I can go back and for example if I
wanted to use this sort of beige pinkish
color I can do so but I'm not able to
set it as my brand colors because I can
only select three. Alright, so these are
now my brand colors and I'm going to
create a design I'm going to create a
custom design but if you are creating a
custom design based on a template we can
actually hover over and see the size so
if I wanted to create something that
would be like an Instagram post I'm
going to create my template to be 1080
pixels by 1080 pixels
the default is pixels but you can also
change it to inches, millimeters, and
centimeters. 1080 by 1080 and create
design and I still have templates that
are showing up on the side here but I'm
not going to use any of those templates
I'm instead going to use a background so
I can click on my background elements
and see a bunch of the different free
backgrounds that are available within
the program, I could search for a
background that is just a solid color.
I'm going to go and grab this water and
you'll notice here that it shows up as
the color background but instead I'm
going to go and change that to one of my
brand colors and you'll notice that the
image just changes slightly and now I'm
going to click on adjust here I have the
ability to adjust the image and
adjustment is available in all of the
different templates so I could be
adjusting a photograph that I had
uploaded as well. So
go and I'm going to use the blur tool
I'm gonna blur it out so that it's just
a background and you can't really tell
its water anymore, that looks good to
me. I'm going to upload my bitmoji and
make it smaller.
I'm going to center it in the middle and
center and add an element I'm just going
to add a circle send it to the back a
circle smaller position that in the
middle and the center as well good group
the graphics move it up and add a border
going to make this border one of my
brand colors so I'm gonna make it blue I
just want it to be bigger so that it
actually is border
and just make sure that it's centered
add some text onto here make it a
headline and you'll notice that it pops
up just in the middle so I'm just going
to select it I'm gonna add a heading and
select it, and move it down, I'm just
using my arrow key to move it down.
Put my Twitter handle in there, I'm
going to change the size,I'm going to
position that in the middle, oh, I wanna 
position it actually at the bottom in
the center. Just move it up a little bit.
I want to change this to my brand color.
Make it blue. And I'm going to add
another border
this border I'm also going to make blue.
I'm actually going to change the color
so I'm just going to move this it can be
tricky to select the graphics when
different graphics are on top of them.
And I'm gonna add another element I want
this circle to be goofy and I send my
circle to the back and you can move
around the different elements if you
notice that your arrow is selecting the
incorrect element I'm going to select
these two and I'm just gonna center them
and if I'm happy with my graphic I'm
gonna go ahead and download it as a JPEG.
So give Canva a try see what you can
create, try a couple different graphics,
check out the templates and when you're
ready share on Twitter and tag me at
@ideasmashing.
