5 tips and tricks that will save you time in Canva
I became aware of Canva on about day 2 of starting Balance VA Services. I don’t know what rock I’d been living under as I now see how useful it would have been in my last ‘proper’ job 
Still, I soon began losing many hours going down various rabbit holes of designs and templates, playing around with my branding colours & generally getting to know the product. You’ll see this quite clearly from my IG feed as it takes a while before I get consistent. In fact, I used January 2021 as an experiment to see which designs both I & my followers preferred.
It turned out I only liked a couple of them and have since changed up my designs completely, and for me, that will evolve.
Well enough of my rambling, onto the good bit.
Here are 5 Canva tips & tricks to help you – a lot of people would use the term hack but I really don’t like it so am trying not to use it, even if it may improve my SEO.
1. C T R L
This is my favourite.
CTRL – Circle Text Rectangle Line
When you type C T R or L it will automatically populate your design with a circle, text, a rectangle, or line.
Just Like That
2. Searching for images
This may seem like a supremely obvious tip, but it’s amazing what passes you by if you’re not looking. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?
Picture this – pun intended! 🤦♀️
You’re looking through millions of photos for that perfect image that is going to speak to your audience, only to find it’s part of the bloody pro package & you’re on freemium. Frustrating, right? 🤯
Not anymore.
When you go to the search bar for photos, click on the filter to the right & you can select free, which will only bring up the free photos. You can also filter for colour, but I’m not sold on this feature. It seems to only filter for background colour, so you’re better off putting your desired colour in the search bar.
3. Grouping elements
Do you create multiple textboxes or elements & then want to move them or resize them all to find you have to do them one by one?
To save time & hassle you can group elements together. This means they stick to each other like glue if you want to move them around plus you can make them larger or smaller. You can do this with as many elements as you like, maybe go easy on this though & start small!
All you need to do is select the items you want to group by clicking on them while holding down the shift key, once you have selected them all, at the top right in the toolbar select ‘group’ & hey presto!
Equally, if you download a template & find everything is stuck, click on the ‘group’ in the design& select ‘ungroup’ on the toolbar. You will then be able to change each element separately, & delete anything you don’t want to use.
4. Create folders
This feature is so useful when working with multiple clients. I have so many designs not just for my clients, but also my own projects and then the community projects I’m involved with.
To manage the ‘noise’, I create a folder for each client and project – it’s pretty straightforward.
To create folders you can go to ‘all my folders’ and create one there, but there is a quicker way. I love a quicker way!! When you hover over a design, 3 dots will appear at the top right, click & select ‘move to folder. You can then either add it to an existing folder or create a new one.
5. Create a team to share designs
If you’ve been following my tips on social media – here is my #bonustip number 5!
This is one of the best features for me on Canva as I share designs with clients or vice versa, it makes for a much easier dialogue when looking at designs and what does and doesn’t work for them.
What’s great is that you don’t need a free account – whoop!
On the menu select ‘Invite members’ – enter in the email address(es)of the person (people) you’d like to invite to your team. You can invite someone to be a Member, ideal for clients as they can edit existing designs & download them locally, or Administrator, which would give them a little more control.
You can choose which designs you share through the folder set up in tip 4. You can either create a new folder or go to an existing folder & change who has access by selecting the 3 dots & clicking share.
There is so much you can do with Canva and as I discover more I’ll continue to share my tips with you, if you’ve got any hot tips, please do let me know, I love to learn.