Canva is a graphic-design tool website that provides tools for both web and print media design and graphics. With an easy to use drag-and-drop interface and access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts, it can be used by non-designers as well as professionals. For this non-designer, the tool is simple to use and offers templates, graphics, fonts, and settings to manage them easily. There are a number of features available with a free account with more advanced features available with a paid plan. As a first time project in Canva, I selected an inspiring template as a starting point and personalized my design with uploaded images and adjustments to the colour scheme. Although the template provides it’s own colour palette, it can be customized using hex colour codes. Templates also provide font suggestions that can be interchanged with others available within the tool (uploading personal fonts is available with a paid plan). That being said, without using a template to begin, a variety of frames are available to begin with a blank document. There was a little negotiating with the tool to figure out how to make it do what I wanted at times. Canva doesn’t quite suit the purpose of creating the academic poster I required, but I was able to produce a reasonable facsimile (see post EdTech Enhancement Proposal). It took some time to learn how to use the images within the framed areas. Capturing and moving multiple elements around was a breeze if they are directly on the background, but if they are within other elements, it was a one-at-time process. However, the snap-to feature and guidelines were helpful in laying out elements. If all else fails, there tutorials and design tips are available within the tool. Sharing the finished product is easy. It can be shared within Canva and, once it is made “public”, there are options such as sharing with specific people, sharing with a link, sharing to Twitter or Facebook, code to embed within a site, or download options such as as a pdf or image. With more to explore, I’m sure there are other features I have to look forward to. Having used mainly Microsoft Publisher for this type of work, I may be a Canva convert for its sheer simplicity alone.
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What's this about?Documenting my exploration of Ed Tech and how it applies to the field of Adult Education. These are my Ang-ventures. ...see more Archives
April 2017
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