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Introduction to CanvaWhat is Canva? A graphic design service that provides simpler approach to making less complicated but very attractive and beautiful graphics for posters, invitations, cards, website graphics, multi-page presentations, book covers, and many more design projects, is offered and provided free by Canva.Canva is an amazing tool for the beginner graphic designers, and often comes in handy for professionals. The simplicity and richness of the designing tools will get you return to Canva for more almost every day, and I am here to show you how it is done.RegistrationFirst of all you have to Register and Log in to CanvaThere are different ways to Log in to Create your Canva accountYou can sign in with FacebookYou can sign in with GoogleOr create your own account with your e-mailI suggest that you sign in with your e-mail.Are you ready to sign into Canva? Let’s do it. Type in the Google url: Since I already have an account with Canva through my Google e-mail, my Canva web page will show on the screen. So, in order to show you how to open your own account I am going to another search engine, in this case Safari for my Mac. After I type in the new page will pop up and there will be a window with Canva logo on top asking are you new to Canva. This is where you enter the information they require. Since this is mostly for your personal use select Personal.Click on it and the new window will pop up. Select the method of signing, and click on your choice (in this case e-mail)The new box will ask for your name and e-mail address.Once you’ve created your own account, you can Log in and start designing.Canva will open the page where you will see at the top the initial set of templates, and you can start making your own designs using one of the choices.If you do not want to use the template you can go to the upper right corner and click on USE CUSTOM DIMENSIONS.This will open the measurements of the design frame on your workspace where your graphics would be placed. Before you type in the values click on down arrow next to px and select either pixels, millimeters or inches, then type in the sizes of the work frame.However, we will use the ready-made templates in order to make it easier for you to understand and use the Canva design tools. We will click on the plus sign box (More) and there you’ll see a larger assortment of templates for all kinds of applications. They are categorized as popular design types, social media posts, documents, blogging & eBooks, Marketing materials, Social Media, Events, etc…We’ll start with book cover design and click on the Canva Book Cover under Blogging and e-Books called A Tousand Words, and we’ll create a sample e-Book cover. When we click on the template of our choice we will see the blank frame in the workspace. On the left side you will find Canva Layouts Heading and underneath you will find a number of predesigned templates for your workspace. Some of these templates are free, and others are ‘pay for’ with a dollar sign at the bottom of each. These ‘pay for’ templates are Canva designs and each costs a whopping $1 per picture. So if you like something that would be suitable and attractive for your new design you click on it and you will pay for it before you download your design.But for the sake of learning without complications, we will select the free template and work with it. Whatever elements are in the design it is very easy to change them.We will select one of the free samples for our design, let’s take BARENESS IS BOLD. On the left hand side you will find the major tools applied in all designs. We will start by clicking on the text of our selected template. You will see a dash-line frame around the text. Now let’s change the title and call it: THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, by DATADANWe can replace the background photo by clicking on the Elements tool. Select Free Photos icon and thousands of photos will scrawl down with large assortment of free and paid for images.To remove the existing background click on the photo outside of the text box and click delete twice to get a blank background. If we want something different for our background we can also use free photos from the Elements toolbox. We’ll click on the Elements and select Free Photos. There will be thousands of free photos in this option. Scrawl down the photo images and select the portrait size image to fit your book cover design frame. We’ll choose the typewriter image as it is very appropriate for this design.If you double-click on it, the small frame will pop inside of your design frame. If the image is now over the text frame and the text is not visible, click on the space where the text box is located and then click on the More drop-down command where you’ll see the text tools. Select Arrange and click on the highlighted setting, either Forward or Back. The text will re-appear and you’ll be able to continue. Drag the corners to the ends of the frame and fit the image inside. This cover design is basically done, but we have a lot more to learn and do to make it attractive and beautiful. We can replace the font by using the font drop-down menu and select the one we feel it would be more suitable. So we highlight the text and go to the palette tool bar above.If you find the font size too large you can change it in this drop-down menu to fit the dashed frame on the page.Next to it you’ll find the color swatch with the default palette where the main colors are selected, or you can click on plus sign and get a spectrum of colors where you can make your own color pick and get a color code number that you can use later if you wish to duplicate it in another element.Next you’ll see the font tools such as:Bold, Italics, Text Align – Center, Left, RightUpper Case commandList of items for table of contents, or itemizationSpacing – Letter Spacing, Line Spacing, and Anchor Text BoxIf you want to have BOLD text, check if bold command would apply to this font. Look up and see if B for bold in the tool palette is highlighted. If it is not, you have to change the font that will allow you to use Bold font. Let’s do one other font that would show the change from a regular to a bold text.The same rule applies to Italics type. If you wish to italicize the text you need to find the proper font.Text alignment has three settings, Center, Left and Right. There is no justify command. AA represents the Upper Case tool. You click on it and the letters will change to the Upper Case. Click again and they’ll go back to its original setting.There is also List of Items command for listing table of contents, itemize list of items for sale, etc… When you click on it your typed text becomes an itemized list. Click again to go back.Spacing is a very important tool in designing text around your design elements. Sometimes you may not have enough space to allow text elements to fit properly within the text frame. So you use Letter spacing to resize the text, and Line Height to reduce or increase the line space. Each tool has a slider and you can use it as needed.In the drop-down menu MORE you’ll see other tools:UngroupCopyArrangeTransparencyLinkUngroup applies to the text on Android tablets. Don’t click on it because it will fade your design commands. But if you do, click on the UNDO command in the upper command tabs to bring back the working frame, or click on Group command to do the same. Please, don’t ask me to show you what it does, for I have no idea. You will have to learn this on your own if you are an Android user.Copy is simple. If you have an element that you want to copy, highlight it and click on Copy. Immediately next to it you will see the copy of your text, or graphic, or picture, or whatever element you wish to duplicate. Move this copy in another location of your design frame, or to the next page. Or if you want to be really fancy, change the color of the copy text and see what happens when you look at your design. You have made a shadow effect. Now it’s dynamic, attractive and exciting. You made the title stand out, and everyone will now buy your new book.But you have also created a duplicate text in the subtitle frames below and you need to either do the same shadow effect or delete it and retype it.Because the text for subtitle and author’s name is small it is a bit harder to work and achieve the same effect as in the book title font, it would best to remove the text and re-type it using another font and size.Here is how we do it. Go to the left and click on the Text tool. It opens the three text fonts you can use. Top is the Main Heading, next is the Subheading, and bottom is the Body Text. We will click on the body text and a small text frame will show in our design page. Retype the Subtitle and the author’s name and you are done with text.Arrange offers two commands, image Forward and image Back. With image Forward command you will see an already typed in text on top of the background image. If you click on image Back your text will disappear and the background image will cover the text box out of sight.Transparency is one the highly appreciated tools in the graphics design world. It allows you to make a strong or weak impact by increasing or decreasing the contrast between the elements. For example if we highlight the background and reduce transparency it will bring out the Text elements up front with a powerful impact. The last and the very important tool for those active with the social media, blogging, website, and internet highways, The Link is a valuable tool in promoting your products, ideas, views and arguments. Click on the Link icon in More and open the URL text box. Type in your URL address and link it to your website, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Blog or what have you, or send it to someone else and drive them crazy.This about covers the design tools for creating a Canva Graphic.Now we will proceed with learning other important commands and tools provided by this excellent program from graphic designs.At the top you will see a set of Canva program tabs.FILE provides the information about the actual size of your design frame (page) in pixels.In the bottom half of the File drop down menu you’ll see two commands: SAVE and Make a CopyCanva provides an automatic save action that would be stored in your design folder. But to make sure it is saved, click on the Save command before you go to download the new design file into your computer. Next to File is the RESIZE command. This is an upgrade feature for those who subscribe to a paying Canva design service. If you wish to upgrade to a professional level of graphic designing click on the Upgrade button and you’ll see the monthly and the annual costs. UNDO and REDO commands are just as what they say. When click on UNDO it will remove any of your previous actions in the workspace. Click on REDO and it will bring it back. Simple as that.HELP provides basic information about the work elements and steps needed to do designing.ALL CHANGES SAVED is an automatic Save action by Canva program. Whatever you do in the work space gets saved into your design file automatically. SHARE command allows you to share your design with people you can work with and form a team of designers who would review and edit this design for your benefit.People Share is done through e-mail on the private basis and you can allow the design to be edited or just viewed.Social Media Share lets you put your final design on Facebook and Twitter.Link sends your design to the Canva collaborative sharing where you can allow edit or just viewing.Embed lets you place your design on the web, but it has to be made public in order to be embedded.Now we come to DOWNLOAD command for your graphic design to be sent to your computer design folder. This is when you have completed your design project and ready to post it, print it, and publish it.We click on the Download command and the box opens asking if we wish to save this as PNG, PDF, JPEG or? We will select PNG because this is the best file tag for transforming to another format, then click on green button for Download.It will open the Save As window where you can name your design as you please. We will name it The Man Who Knew Too Much, and we’ll choose Desktop to send it.We can step out from the Canva design page and open our desktop.Double-click on the file and it will open in Preview.Go to File drop-down menu and select EXPORT. In Export As, if the name is not shown, type in the file name, select where to export it, and select format of your file. Because of the images placed in our design the most suitable format is JPEG. So change from PNG to JPEG and click SAVE. The new file will be placed as JPEG file and you can use it for your further processing of your book cover or send it to your printer or publishing company for your book publication.That being done, we have only scratched the surface of this program.Now we can cover those major Canva design tools that we need to create many other graphic designs for our needs.Let’s design a new item.We will click on Canva in our program and then click on Create a Design. When we click on Create a Design in the left side platform we will see an assortment of templates we can choose from.Greeting Card is our new design. The blank work frame will open for the standard greeting card size, and we can see 7” X 5” if we click on File. On the left side you’ll find a bunch of predesigned card templates, free and pay-for, and we’ll again select the free design to make it for our family member, a friend, an enemy, or ? Let’s choose Happy Birthday. There are so many designs but we will select the one with a rose.Double Click on the template in the Canva Layouts and it will open in the design frame. Again, we can start working with the elements. Let’s click on the text box and highlight the name Michelle. Change it to Penelope and change the font, color and size to match the provided space.Note! Remember that Canva provides an important design feature for aligning the elements inside of the work frame. These are the automatic vertical and horizontal dash lines, visible when you are placing the text or a graphic. Greeting Cards have two sides and to make it we will need to add another page. Below our Page #1 is the text button for the second page. When we click on it the same size blank design frame opens.We can again upload another template from the Canva Layout folder, and we’ll choose Birthday Girl. We’ll just change a bit of text, replace the with my, and write down: Stay young, Penelope, I shall always love you.Andronicus. And the Christmas card is done.Now we use the same steps as we did with the book cover.First we click on Save in the File menu.Then we name the file: Happy Birthday, PenelopeClick on Download and the File Type text box opens. Since it shows PNG, our choice of the file format, we will click on Download and transfer the file to the desktop.Save As page will open and it will have the file name: Happy Birthday, PenelopeClick on Save and the file will be saved in a zip form on desktop.To open double-click on Zip file and the blue folder will show.Click on the Blue folder to open the files inside. You will see both pages that you have created for the Birthday Card.Click on the First page to open it in the PreviewClick on File and then click on ExportIn the Export As text box type in the name of your design file and add #1 for page 1.Because you have some elements (images, photos) that require Jpeg format change this file’s format from PNG to JPEG.The file now is in the Jpeg format and it is ready for printing.Do the same thing with page #2When done, you can print your own Birthday Card and send it to everyone you know at the very low cost. Well, let’s learn about Canva major design tools. On the left side starting from the top you will see:SearchLayoutsElementsTextBackgroundUploadsSEARCH Tool allows us to look through million images, shapes, illustrations, and so on. If we click on down arrow, a box will open and it gives us a choice between Most Relevant and Free Only images. If you upgrade your free software to the Premium version you get access to 300K premium images, but you are subscribing to the pay version.If we click in the text bar, we get the choice for ALL, Photos only, Illustrations only.We will click on All and type in Boat, the folder will open with hundreds of selections but very few are free and others are $1 per image.LAYOUT If we click on Layouts, Canva Layouts folder will brings hundreds if not thousands of images. You can double-click on any image and it will fill up the frame on your workspace.ELEMENTS This folder opens nine ions of subfolders that contain thousands of design templates.Free Photos tab contains majority of images as free, but there is a number of premium grade images you may consider for your higher quality designs. Depending on the type of design frame we created, we can upload vertical or horizontal images accordingly, or we can do either if we don’t care about the size and location of its features. Let’s say we have a horizontal frame and we select the vertical image we like.Click on the vertical image and drag its upper and lower corners until the entire design field is covered with portion of your selected image. You will not have the entire image, but perhaps you liked a part of it that you wish to add to your design and there you have it. Now you can other elements. FRAMES serve as special effects for designs that require stronger impression. They come in various shapes and can be decorative, purposeful, illustrating, and basic frames for various types of graphic designs. They can fitted be into the design space as configured, or added to the previous elements such as backgrounds, photos, text, illustrations, etc… We can take a vertical frame and rotate it to fit the horizontal space in our design. (Show) We can also add another frame and make it even prettier. Just a matter of playing with it at home.SHAPES are wonderful for making your own logos, business cards, children designs, and many others forms. Just click on any one and play with it.ILLUSTRATIONS are very useful for making posters, flyers, announcements, etc… Just drag one or two or three, or as many as you want to play with and make a special design that everyone would admire.ICONS have their own use for many applications.TEXT we have already used for the previous designs, but there are many signs and posters that contain special font and colors not readily available in your regular palettes. If you scrawl down you will see dozens of choices.BACKGROUNDS the free choices are not very attractive, but the pay-for choices are very good. So, if you are considering a good design scrawl down and select the one that you like the most.UPLOADS is our final design tool that we need to know. Here you upload your own photos, images and illustrations and use them for your graphic design.I will demonstrate this with my own images and show you how it is done.Click on the Uploads. It opens the folder with all of your images, copies and illustrations that you have uploaded previously.Make sure you have prepared your design frame for the size you made in the Create Canva Design by choosing your own frame dimensions.If you do not have your image in the folder, all you have to do is click on UPLOAD YOUR OWN IMAGES (green box). This will open the Desktop with your images for upload. Select one and click on it, then click OPEN. The command will bring the image into the UPLOAD folder.Now you bring in this image into the design frame and start making your own design with your own images.This completes my presentation and I hope you have enjoyed my gobbledeegook and learned something.If you have not learned much, then get on the CANVA site, click on HELP, copy their one thousand pages of instruction manual and plow through, or go on Youtube and get more confused with dozens and dozens of various interpretations. In the end you will either like this wonderful free program or say: to hell with this, I can draw better.Once you have perfected your design skills and you start making some attractive and practical graphics, I have for you the name of an online printing company that makes excellent and reasonably priced products, such as business cards, banners, posters, flyers, trifolds, page markers, Christmas card, etc… and you may take one of my bus cards as a testimony to their good work. We have made an arrangement to have a slight discount if you place your order and type in Brevard Authors Society discount applies. The company web site: God bless, and if you have questions send them to Linda, and maybe, if they are not too complicated, I will help with your issues. It’s a wonderful program and it’s worth all your effort to learn it and use it. ................
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