You’ve written a new blog post and now you need to find an awesome featured image. Finding the right picture for your blog post can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be.
Lately, I have been designing my featured images using a handy online app called Canva.com. Canva is a free and easy, must-use graphic design tool for bloggers and content managers. With Canva, you can have a unique image for your blog post in about five minutes; less time than it takes to find a features image you can use from the web.
Canva is a great way to create custom photos, infographics, presentations, buttons, and more. It has tons of free graphic elements and over 1,000,000 stock images for $1.00 each. Here are some helpful Canva tips to take your graphics to the next level:
1. Use Current Images as a Template for Future Designs
If you design an image that you love, you can easily use the same design as a template for future featured images. Simply make a copy of an image you designed and then make tweaks to the color and fonts to create a new image. This feature is useful when you want to keep consistency throughout your site.
2. Like a Font? Make it Your Default
There are some amazing fonts to choose from in Canva. I happen to love Raleway and Roboto. If you click on “Save Defaults” under the text option you can choose and save the default text for future designs.
3. Choose “Download as a PDF” to Add Links to Your Design
This comes in handy if you want to create a button or presentation that you want to add a link to. Simply download your file as a PDF so that you can add a link to your design.
4. Use Specific Color Codes to Match Your Brand
If you know the color you want to use and have the color code (or “hex code”, a six-digit number and letter combination with a “#” in front) then you can use it to create designs that match your brand. An extra tip: you can download a chrome extension called “ColorPick Eyedropper” to find the color code of anything on your screen!
5. Click the Arrow For More Awesomeness
You can flip an image, make it transparent, and much more simply by clicking the down arrow button when you have a specific text or element selected. This tool is fun to play around with and can help make those small finishing touches to your image.
6. Pick a Dimension, Any Dimension
There are several pre-set designs to choose from, but you can also choose a specific dimension. For reference, I like to make my featured images 620×420.
7. Gridlines are Your Friend
Gridlines are one of my favorite features of Canva. Making sure your text or design element is centered can be difficult. Gridlines appear whenever you move a text block or element to help you make sure it is lined up how you want it. They help you guide your element to the correct location without all of the guesswork.
We hope that the tips above will help you take your upcoming blog posts to the next level. We promise you, Canva is your best bet. Try it out and come back to share your Canva tips in the comments below.
Contact us today for more personalized Canva tips and help to utilize Canva in your digital marketing!