As an art director, I get asked all the time if I hate Canva. My answer is always resounding, definitely not. Although there isn’t anything I’ve found that can beat the personalization and professionality of using the Adobe Creative Suite, Canva has found its place within the design software ecosystem.
Here are the top 5 reasons why utilizing Canva might be right for your business:
1. You need to get a message out fast!
There’s nothing worse than waking up on a February morning and realizing you and the rest of the city are iced in for the day. But there’s always that one brave Gen Zer without groceries ready to pick up their favorite bagel no matter the challenge in the way. You’ll need to get a message out to them fast that your business is closed for a snow day – and quick! This is where Canva can come in handy. You can use one of their templates, or one created by your favorite advertising agency (Freestyle Creative, of course), to get a message out in less than 30 minutes.
2. Add animation easily
Motion graphics are no longer limited to animators or the one person on your team with After Effects knowledge. With one button, Canva can easily animate your designs, ready to be shared on social media! Create a graphic in Canva, then decide what kind of animation you would like to add. Super simple!
3. Customized templates
Canva has pre-made templates you can utilize, but they are often overused on social media. To avoid this, we recommend creating customized templates. These are templates created just for your brand with your unique identity. Utilizing Canva’s brand kit feature, your brand’s specific fonts and colors can be loaded directly into the website for design ease for your team. For many of our clients, we’ve made templates that clients are able to edit and adjust for their specific purposes.
4. Added features to make your work easier on a budget
Don’t have the budget for a stock photo subscription? In the free version of Canva, you get access to over 200,000 high-quality photos. Want to pay for premium? You just bumped up your access to over 60 million images. Also don’t get me started on vector assets. Not only are there vector assets easily available to pull into your design, but you can also easily change the color in the platform.
5. You’re on the go
Canva has a mobile app that allows you to make your designs right on your phone. Maybe you forgot your laptop at home and a client needs something immediately. Or potentially (knock on wood this doesn’t happen) your laptop is broken and you’re on a deadline. Could you make something better in Illustrator? Probably. But you can’t on your mobile device.
Unfortunately you can’t do everything on Canva. Designing logos isn’t ideal on this platform since it’s not vector based. Their templates can also be overused and there’s a limit to the customization a designer can use within the platform. So I’m not saying to cancel your Adobe subscription just yet… But if you have budget constraints, a gap of design knowledge, or want to utilize any of the features listed above, Canva is a great place to start.