Your First Step into Graphic Design: Canva Made Easy

Graphic designers are not the sole professionals who invest considerable time in the creation and dissemination of various types of content. Recent data from HubSpot indicates that 66% of marketers anticipate an increase in their content marketing budgets, with 90% of those engaged in content marketing intending to persist in their efforts.

In today's environment, both B2B and B2C marketers are under heightened pressure to produce a diverse array of visuals to effectively communicate their marketing messages. The demand for documents that are professionally designed and align with brand aesthetics has surged dramatically.

In the past, a sales letter typically consisted of a text-heavy document printed on company letterhead. In contrast, today’s sales professionals are expected to develop visually engaging, customized presentations tailored to each potential client they approach.

Social media marketing teams are required to share on-brand, visually appealing posts across all platforms, encompassing text, video, and image formats. Posts for feeds and stories must be designed, scheduled, and published on a daily basis.

Entrepreneurs must ensure their pitch decks are updated with the latest statistics to secure investments or clients, and these cannot simply be created using the default (uninteresting!) PowerPoint template — everything they publish or share must adhere to brand standards.

We are now navigating a new era of visual design: digital design tools like Canva have made design more accessible than ever, leading to a significant rise in our collective expectations. This shift has also enabled design agencies to expand their operations and offer design services to individuals and businesses across various sectors — as every industry stands to gain from more efficient design that aligns with their brand.

Whether you are a designer at an agency or part of an in-house team, Canva Pro and Canva for Teams streamline a quick, easy, and enjoyable design process, empowering any employee to create stunning content within your brand guidelines — regardless of their design experience.

Canva for independent designers and agencies

Design agencies are established to assist businesses of various sizes in enhancing their branding and visual design initiatives promptly, without the necessity of employing a full design team. They serve as pivotal resources for small businesses across the board, which require assistance with tasks such as logo development, social media header graphics, and comprehensive visual brand strategy, in addition to routine design tasks for social media content, flyers, and blogs.

These enterprises often lack the time or financial means to manage all of these responsibilities independently, allowing agencies to intervene and alleviate them of this crucial work. Agencies can leverage Canva to ensure their clients achieve design success consistently

Moreover, platforms like Canva can contribute to increasing your agency's utilization rate by enhancing productivity and efficiency.

Templates designed by the team that can be utilized by everyone within the client’s organization

The pressure of tight design deadlines can be overwhelming for both designers and marketers; however, in many workplaces, such situations arise daily. To alleviate this stress, agencies may provide a more comprehensive Canva Branding package for their clients, which includes uniform brand templates tailored for the client’s frequently utilized visual documents and content types.

Additionally, agencies can present customized packages that clients can combine as they see fit: for instance, a Presentation Package that features branded backgrounds, templates for branded presentation cover pages, and various options for the interior pages. Not only will your clients appreciate this, as their presentations will appear polished and aligned with their brand, but you will also eliminate the need for constant revisions and adjustments — they will be able to handle it independently!

Reduce the time spent on copy editing and increase the time dedicated to design.

In the past, prior to the advent of design platforms that facilitate real-time collaboration, minor errors such as a missing apostrophe or a typographical error could lead to hours of lost productivity, as designers were required to exchange JPG files back and forth with their clients.

Canva empowers designers to focus more on the creative aspects of their work and less on copy editing by allowing clients to handle these minor text adjustments independently.

With a fully online and collaborative platform, clients can easily access and modify the design either through their account or via an editable link.

Utilize the magic switch feature to adapt your designs for multiple platforms.

A significant portion of a designer's time can be squandered on the seemingly endless dimension adjustments required to tailor a design for the various formats it must accommodate. Instagram stories have one set of dimensions, Facebook feed posts have another, and printable posters require yet another configuration. Designers must not only ensure they are working with the appropriate file dimensions and sizes, but they also need to rearrange text, design elements, and images or illustrations to better align with each format. This task is neither enjoyable nor creative — it ranks among the most monotonous aspects of design work.

Conclusion

These days, content is king. Businesses are expected not only to produce their products and sell their services, but to tell the right stories and look great while doing it. That means developing a strong, recognisable brand, growing your community and gaining their trust through blogs and social media, and making sure everything you produce — from presentations to product packaging — represents your brand in the best light.