Digital marketing. Transform your online presence and drive results.

In this half-day Canva training course, you’ll learn how to create beautiful, professional graphic designs, even if you have no prior design experience. Effortlessly create eye-catching graphics using Canva’s intuitive templates, drag-and-drop features, and extensive content library. You will design portfolios, presentations, marketing material, print material, posters, videos, social media posts, and web layouts from scratch with Canva, an all-in-one design tool.

Aims

The aims of this course are to:

• provide you with the skills and knowledge to create professional-quality graphic designs using Canva, regardless of prior design experience
• provide hands-on training to help you understand and utilise Canva’s features effectively, enabling you to produce stunning and impactful visuals
• confidently create and customise graphic designs for various purposes, such as presentations, social media posts, portfolios, and more, using Canva’s tools and resources
• show you how to navigate Canva’s user-friendly interface, utilise its drag-and-drop functionality, choose and customise templates, and access its vast content library to design professional-quality visuals from scratch.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to: 

• navigate the Canva Editor
• create a new document from scratch
• use and customise templates
• upload and use photos
• use Canva’s design elements
• work with text
• work with colours
• work with graphics and images
• upload videos and audio
• share your designs in multiple formats.

Content

Opening Canva and exploring Canva’s homepage

• Logging into your Canva account
• Free versus Pro versions
• Homepage overview
• Navigating the various Editor panels & tabs

Creating your first design using templates

• Creating a design using a template
• Customising a template
• Navigation controls
• Changing template text & images
• Adjusting colour themes

Creating a blank custom design

• Creating a custom-size design
• Adding, duplicating or deleting pages
• Navigating pages using scroll or grid view
• Using the Editor Design tab to adjust templates, layout & styles

Elements and images

• Elements tab overview
• Adding grids and frames
• Uploading images
• Adjusting images, add filters and crop
• Create shapes and lines
• Editing and transforming objects

Editing text & graphics

• Creating and editing text
• Aligning and distributing layers
• Grouping elements
• Text effects and transparency
• Saving brand colours and styles
• Creating a QR code

Video and audio

• Uploading video & audio
• Using the video timeline
• Trimming and adding transitions
• Adding text and graphics
• Animating elements

Save and share

• Saving your projects to Folders
• Sharing your design
• Publishing to social media
• Downloading finished designs
• Choose formats (PDF, PNG, JPG, MP4 Video)

Intended audience

This course is ideal for beginners with little to no graphic design experience, who want to learn how to use Canva to create professional-quality designs.

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with the basic functions of a computer operating system such as navigating the environment using a mouse and keyboard, starting applications, copying and pasting objects, formatting text, creating folders, opening files, saving files,  accessing the Internet, and using common web browsers.

Delivery style

Half-day workshop using your own device.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught training
• Online training via the platform Zoom

Face-to-face classes

You will need to bring your own device with access to Canva. You should ensure it is fully charged as access to power is limited. Please note that the University does not carry any responsibility for your lost, stolen, or damaged devices whilst on the University premises.

Online classes

You will need your own device with access to Canva. We also recommend using a computer with a larger screen, or two screens/devices. A small laptop screen provides limited space, and it can be difficult to manage following the facilitator’s screen and using your own software.

Materials

Any course materials are provided electronically using Dropbox.

Before the course

You will need a Canva account (free or Pro) to participate. Please bring your account login details to class.