Alright, ready to learn Graphic Design
for Newbies? Maybe you need graphic
design but you don't have the time,
energy or budget to learn Photoshop. This
video can make anyone a graphic designer
in less than 15 minute. Seriously, let's
get into it!
What's up busy people? Welcome to Five Minute Social Media. If you have had "figure out"
social media for my brand or business on
your To Do list and it keeps getting
pushed down because you don't have the
time, or you're overwhelmed, or you don't
know where to start, you are in the right
place. Every week we release a quick
video to help you with a different part
of your digital marketing strategy. My
name is Jerry Potter - yes it rhymes with
the boy wizard - and today we're helping
out Debra who wondered where I make my
YouTube thumbnails, if I had somebody
that she could hire to do that. My answer
was no! No, don't hire anybody, you can do
it yourself. By the end of this video
you'll be able to do basic graphic
design using a free program, and not only
for social media, for flyers, posters just
about anything. These are all things that
I've designed using Canva. I remember
back in the day somebody would tell me
they knew Photoshop and I'd be like, "Wow,
that's really impressive. That's less
true now. Now you can do so much great
stuff using Canva and you can do it on
any computer in a web browser. On some
computers Photoshop takes like 5-10
minutes just to open the program! So
start off by going to canva.com. It'll
pull up their login page here. You do
need to create an account if you don't
have one but it's totally free. You can
also create your account with a Facebook
or a Google account. So this is the
screen you'll see when you first log in
and the first thing you have to decide
is, "Okay, what am I going to create? So you
see "Create a design" here. You can start
by clicking on that and it'll bring up
all of these different templates. So at
the top are some of the most popular
ones, a Facebook post, A4 letter size, a
program, a desktop wallpaper, social media,
which is just a generic 800 by 800 pixel,
so all of these are kind of the most
common ones. Then you scroll down you'll
see all kinds of other things you can
choose, a square social media graphic, of
course you can do an Instagram post here,
these are all pre sized for what you
need, presentations, letters, letterhead,
magazine covers, book covers, ebook covers,
logos, all kinds of stuff. So what you can
do is go through here  - (reading more) Etsy shop cover,
Etsy shop icon - find what you're looking for. If
you can't find exactly what you need you
can come up here and click "Use Custom
Dimensions and then you can put in
whatever numbers you happen to want for
whatever you are creating. So just to
show you some of the stuff that's in
here I'm gonna go ahead and click on
Magazine Cover, because why not be fancy, and
the first thing it'll do is it'll bring
up all of these different layouts for
magazine covers. So you can actually just
take one of these and then change it to
something else. So let's say that, let's
see, oh I like this one, so you click on
it. It has different layouts for
different pages within the magazine so
let's click on the cover. Now I can
double click on the text and change it
to whatever I want. So you can see the text went a little
low there, I can come up here, I can
change the text size to something
smaller if I want, to move it I can just
click on the graphic, move it around the
screen. If I wanted it to be a different
color I can make it red if I want - I
would never do that, it looks terrible,
but you get the idea. You can also, if you
clicked on an image you could crop the
image by clicking crop. There's just all
these features and they're all right
there on the screen for you. That's what
makes it so easy. I want to take you back
to the beginning again Let's say instead
we want to make a graphic for Instagram. So I'm gonna click on "Instagram Post"
instead. So Instagram posts are 1080 by
1080 square and you've got all of these
preset designs that you could choose from.
So let's say you have somebody who loves
pizza - boom! Here you go. It's a
Valentine's Day card. It's already done.
You don't need to do anything now, but since
this is a fake website you might want to
take that off. So you could highlight it
and then click up here on the trash can -
boom - that's gone, and then you could
replace it with something else. So I'll
show you how to kind of build around
these in a second but I just wanted to
show you a few of the layouts before we
get into the building part. Let's say
next you wanted to create a Facebook ad.
Here's a template for that. Now you can
go through and use one of these, or if
you want to make your own thing you
already have the sizing done right here
So I want to take you through the
different menu elements here. So layouts
is where it will go
by default 'cause a lot of people just like
to start by using a template that
somebody else created. And you can see
all of these ones I'm showing you right
now are all free. You can take them and
make them your own. A lot of times what
I'll do is I'll find one and go, "Oh
that's really neat looking. I don't want
it exactly like that, that kind of gives
me an idea," and then I'll build mine from
that. So that's what's under layouts here
If you go to Elements this is where you
can add all sorts of different things
They have free photos. These are all free
photos that you can use. If you would
like to search you can also search for
photos. So let's make it a motivational
quote. So I'm gonna search for a
landscape
Lots of landscapes here I click on one
that I want, it automatically shows up
here, populates the window. Then I can
drag it to the corner, and then I can
drag the corners to resize it to fill
the space. You want to make sure the
resolution is high enough of course, boom.
Now I've got an image there. Now if you
will see some of these say $1, all of the
images that are not free you can buy in
here for $1 and you can edit them up to
24 hours. Considering a lot of stock
photo sites cost 10 bucks for like the
cheapest image, a buck is a pretty good
deal. If you only wanted to see photos,
click photos. If you only wanted to see
illustrations, you can click
illustrations. So also under elements
there are grids, so if you wanted to
divide this up a certain way, I click on
this. Now let's put a grid on there and I
could drag three separate photos and
they would automatically pop right into
place
Frames - add frames to your pictures and
different designs. Shapes - if you wanted
to add a shape, solid or transparent. 
Different lines. So you can click on all
these things and these are all different
things that you can add to your image
anytime you want. So let's put a hot dog
on the landscape, sure why not.
I want to rotate it. I'm gonna click on
this arrow - it's getting weird isn't it?
Now there's a hot dog floating in the
sky. Icons - if you're making an
infographic or just need something to
spice it up these are icons. Also not only
can you use them but then you can come
up here and make them any color that you
want. Charts - if you're trying to make a
chart you can put a chart in here. Click
on data and you can actually change the
data. So if you're making a presentation
or something like that. Down below that
you can choose Text. Let's get rid of
this light bulb here - we'll keep our hot
dog in the sky - and so if you want to add
text right here you can just simply
click on any of these and it will add it
to the middle of it by default. Or if you
want to use one of these fun designs
down here you can add stuff that's
already designed like that. Again, there are
just so many pre-made pieces that you
can use and customize as your own
So obviously this black doesn't look
very good on here so first I'm gonna
make this white. After you change the
color you can change the font, you can
change the justification, the spacing, all
kinds of different things. You can also,
if you want to up here, on any element, is
you can make it partially transparent so
it kind of lets you blend things in a
little bit there. Below text over back on
the left we have Background. This is if
you want to choose a background or a
background color. So let's go ahead and
just get rid of the the pictures that we
have and maybe instead we want to have
just a blue background, green or there are
different patterns down here you can
choose if you're designing something
Lots and lots of free ones - there are
some at the bottom that cost a dollar if
you wanted to make something special
with them. And then finally below that
you have Uploads, and this is where you
can upload your own images to make a
graphic out of. So I can drag any image
here on upload. You see it's gonna upload
As soon as I want to use it I click on
it. Once you have everything all set the
way you want it you can come up here to
share if you want to email it to
somebody to look at or anything like
that, or if you want to download it to
put into Facebook or one of your
scheduling software programs or to print -
I've done posters in here - come up here,
choose your file type, the pages that you
want and hit download and off it goes. And if you did choose any of the paid
images that you had for a dollar this is
where it'll say, Okay this is gonna cost
you a dollar. Is that okay?" And then you
can pay for it. It really is easy for
anybody. And I want to show you a little
secret, actually I've never told anybody
this, but I'm gonna click on logo and I
actually made my Five Minute Social
Media logo just by taking a template
that was here in Canva and then tweaking
it. I think I started with this one here
and then played around with it until I
got my Five Minute Social Media logo. If
you need any help Canva has incredible
support on all sorts of different things, so there is plenty of help available to
you. Jump in there - the best thing to do
is choose a size, jump in, look at the
templates and start playing around. Once
you've used Canva you're gonna wonder,
"How in the world can this program be
free? This is so cool!" Well of
course there is a paid version that
starts at $9.95 a month and here are some
of the things that you get with the paid
version that are not available in the
free version. You get lots more free
photos, illustrations and templates. You
can use what they call "magically
resizing" your design. So if you
design something for Instagram and you
wanted it for Twitter, it'll
automatically resize it. You can upload
custom fonts if your brand uses a font
that's not found in a lot of programs or
you're a font nerd like my wife is, then
this is a really cool tool to have. You
can download your designs with
transparent backgrounds so then you can
apply them to other images or place them
over videos. And you can export designs
as animated GIFs. And by the way Canva's
not only on computers, they've got
pretty slick apps for iPhones, iPads
and Android devices. So jump into Canva,
by tomorrow you can call yourself a
graphic designer.  Well maybe, we'll see. You got a question>
Leave it down in the comments or join
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