How to make beautiful graphic designs with no experience

Sachin Mistry Guides & Tips, How To, Manual Mondays

A tutorial to help you make simple, elegant and beautiful graphic designs for just about anything.

Maybe you have started a new blog and need a blog header, or want to make a simple picture for social media. Well, Canva is the only online tool you need. When you sign in, you are presented with a mixture of templates from the different categories that they offer. You can create pictures, posters, headers, flyers, presentations, letters, social media banners, channel art, article images, info-graphics, gift cards, invitations, postcards and adverts just to name a few!

Pro Tip: Take your created images and use them in a storyboarding collaborative tool called Milanote. Check out how other creatives are using the tool! Click here.

If none of the templates suit what you want to make, then you can select ‘use custom dimensions’ this is so you can type in the dimension you want to work with. You can also change the measurements if you want to mm or inches, but they use ‘px’ which is short for pixels. Once you have set your preferences you can let loose your creative juices! The layout is simple so that it is easy to use as well, you have the blank image in whatever size you chose and to the right, you have a tools bar. It has big icons and also texts under the icons to indicate to the user what each tab is for. There are five main areas of customization:

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Search

Once the tab has been selected it gives you hints of what to search for (like frames, shapes and images etc…) and you can also select one of the categories which will then provide you with a list of all things in that category. The search bar will stay at the top of the toolbar, so even if you are in a different tab you can still have quick access to the search bar.

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Layouts

This is for people who don’t really know how they want their design to look like, it helps as you can scroll through the different layout designs, which will help you come up with some design ideas. If you are really stuck on what to design then you can just select one and it will appear on your preset digital blank canvas and all you have to do is change the text to something relevant for your company, blog, social media etc… For example, if you like the presentation of the text on one of the templates but like the background on another then you select both of them and they will appear on your digital canvas and then you just delete the background on the first one and then delete the text on the second one.

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Text

Then there is the text tab which is all things font! you can choose from the main title to a subheading, and also the main body text, these are preset sizes but you can adjust the sizes if they are too big or small. Underneath this, there are hundreds of preset text graphic templates that you can use. The templates enable you to have many different styles of text which you just select and you can re-word it to suit what you are making. Also, you can choose from 163 fonts, which you can also change the color of (Yes! I did count them).

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Backgrounds

The next tab is backgrounds which you can choose a solid color from, or you can choose one of the preset pattern design which they provide. However some do cost, as it’s not an entirely free service but most of it is, this includes also some font templates as well. I wouldn’t be put off by this because the free pictures and templates are amazing! The templates, pictures, and designs are vector images, this means that they will not lose quality or become fuzzy when re-sized. If you cannot find a good background that you like, then you can choose from some preset colors or if you have a specific company color then you can type in the color hex code for that color or use the color wheel provided when the ‘+’ button is selected in the preset colors.

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Upload

Finally, the upload tabs allow you to upload your own photos which you can re-size, crop, and enlarge however you want. You can also use images as backgrounds as well.

Once you have completed your design you can save it as an image, or you can save it as a PDF which can be handy if you want to send it. Head over to their website today try it! and for yourself!

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and we sincerely hope you found it helpful and enjoyable! Please feel free to leave your thoughts down below in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to Bane Tech on YouTube, Google+, Facebook, Twitter & Instagram!

Sachin Mistry
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Sachin Mistry

Sachin is an Editor at Bane Tech, where he loves exploring the latest in the Android/Google universe. When he's not buried in words, Sachin is a student at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK studying his first passion which is training to become a culinary arts Chef.