Canva: Quickly create professional looking designs with little to no experience
August 27, 2018
Canva: Quickly create professional looking designs with little to no experience
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Canva
We use Canva across our development/fundraising department to quickly and easily design cards and invitations to special events. The platform allows a variety of users with any level of design experience to quickly create professional looking event collateral. There is very little training needed, and the software guides users through the design process with on-screen tips, guidelines, and tons of great looking templates. This allows us to create our design materials in-house without hiring additional graphic design staff or costly consultants.
Pros
- Design professional-looking postcards and flyers using a wide selection of adaptable templates.
- Create print-ready brochures, flyers, and presentations with high quality graphics with little or no graphic design experience.
- On-screen tips guide you through the design process, so literally anyone can log onto the system and initiate or complete a design.
Cons
- There is very little I would do to improve Canva, as the platform seems to regularly update itself with new content and features. My primary area of improvement would be the the pricing model, which is subscription-based. I understand this is the new way that most software is moving, and it makes sense given the regular updates and new content being added; nevertheless, from a business standpoint (and this isn't necessarily a problem unique to Canva!), while monthly subscriptions make software affordable from a cash basis, over the long run it feels like you pay just as much as you would to buy a professional software off the shelf.
- The monthly cost is easily absorbed into our department budget, and allows us to create tons of design collateral at an accessible price point.
- Combining Canva with PaperlessPost helps us keep costs down for our monthly donor events, providing us with a sustainable model over the long run.
- Canva provides the tools for our regular staff to create professional looking graphic designs without the additional cost of hiring a graphic designer on staff, or as a pricey consultant.
Prior to implementing Canva in my department, we relied on Adobe InDesign and occasionally Photoshop or Illustrator. While much more powerful than Canva, these platforms required a lot of staff support, outside training (we even sent staff to expensive classes). Our versions of these software alternatives also did not live in the cloud. Canva lives in the cloud, and can be used by a staff member with little to no design experience, and no outside training or technical support.
Using Canva
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Align text and graphics in elegant proportion with the help of on-screen guides and snap-to-grid visualizations
- Quickly create professional looking designs using a wide variety of built-in templates
- Easily export files for professional printing or emailing
- Large blocks or text, or high volume use of text is slightly clunky. This software is best for a balanced use of text and imagery/graphics
Yes, but I don't use it
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