The words that you write are important, but it’s the visuals on your blog or website that get your readers’ attention and draws them in. According to Financesonline.com, articles with visuals are 200% more likely to be shared than those with text only. If you are a writer but do not consider yourself to be an artist, creating visuals to go with your content can be challenging. Having the right tools is essential, and this Canva review will explore this option for beginners and professionals.
Why visual content is important
Visual content is king this year and continues to be an important content marketing component, regardless of the type of digital contact you produce. You can say much more in a single picture than you can with words alone. You can also use visual content to give additional meaning to the words on the page. The importance of visual content in blogging cannot be stressed enough.
In addition, visual content can help you build brand recognition and reinforce the image of your business. The colors, fonts, graphics style, and layout are all elements that enhance your brand image and make it memorable. It lets your readers know that it is you as soon as they see it, even before they have a chance to read the words on the page. Now, let’s explore Canva, and why it might be the perfect solution for helping you to create visual content to enhance your blog.
Is Canva any good?
We have all seen the professional results from programs like Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, but these programs are pricey. Besides, if you are a beginner, the interface is intimidating, at best. Professional graphics design programs like these have some impressive capabilities and customization options, but it can take quite some time to learn these programs and become proficient using them. For most bloggers, these programs are more than they need or will ever use.
That is why Canva was invented. Canva is an excellent solution for those who want a program that is easy for beginners and that gives professional results but without the expense and technical expertise needed for a full-fledged graphic design program.
Let’s explore what it can do.
One thing I like about Canva is that it has easy drag-and-drop functionality, and you can learn it in only a few minutes. This means that you do not have to spend a lot of time learning it and can be creating your first project within minutes. Also, you can find a long list of YouTube videos that gives you tips and tricks to get you started quickly and that have plenty of tips and useful hacks. When it comes to learning and ease-of-use, Canva is a top choice.
Canva offers a wide selection of free templates that you can use to spark your creativity and to get the project started. The templates are high-quality and professionally designed. You can also customize them to get the look that you need for your brand. That being said, if your project involves editing photos, this is probably not the best option because its functionality for this purpose is limited. You can do some basic changes, but you cannot do extensive retouching or add effects to photographs, and something like PixlrX might be a better choice.
Canva allows you complete control over font, color, sizing, and many other aspects of the project. It even lets you dabble in animation a bit, too. Canva lets you save your projects in the cloud, and you can go up and edit them whenever you want. For instance, if you have a post that you want to make once a month with a different photograph, you can create a custom template and only do a few small changes without having to start over again every time.
Canva Tools and Features
The ability to make the design process streamlined is one of the best features of Canva for bloggers and regular content creators. Even its free version has plenty of useful features. Here are some of the best Canva tools and features.
- Free forever
- Thousands of professional templates
- You can use your own photos and videos
- Has cross-browser compatibility with most browsers
- Streamlined designing process
- Allows for team collaboration
Canva Pro value + worth
You can sign up for a free account, or you can pay extra to access additional functionality with the Canva Pro version. They allow you to try out the pro version for 30 days before you decide to buy it. The price is around 9.95 per month if you decide to opt for the pro version. They also have an Enterprise version that is $30 per month.
Canva is affordable, especially if you will be using it regularly, but the question is whether you would be better off spending the money and time to learn to use a professional, and expensive, option like Photoshop. The answer is that it depends on what you will be creating. Canva is perfect for creating graphics for websites, pamphlets, ads, and logos. If you are doing these types of projects, Photoshop is a bit too complicated, and you will be paying for functions that you never use.
With Canva Pro, you get a little more functionality. For instance, you can resize your creative designs quickly and easily. This allows you to create images that are appropriate for PC, mobile, and tablet screens with a single click. You also get a few graphic design functions such as Alpha transparency for PNG images, and you get a large library of stock images. When you compare the library of Canva vs Canva Pro, with the Pro version, you get over 60,000 templates as compared to over 8,000 with the free version.
The Pro version allows you to create your brand identity using a set of custom logos, colors, and fonts. With the Pro version, you can also create custom templates, and you can create as many folders as you like. With the free version, you are limited to only two folders. You can also upload your own logos and fonts with the Pro version.
With the Enterprise version, you get everything in the Pro version, but you also get the ability for team members to upload and access a project. You can lock templates so that team members cannot change them. You also get unlimited storage, and built-in workflows to make the design process easy. Additionally, you can upload your own graphics, photos, and videos for use in Canva projects.
Whether the Pro and Enterprise versions are a good value for you depends on how much you intend to use them, your level of expertise in graphic design, and whether you want the ability to collaborate with teams for your business. For the average user, the advanced features in the Pro version might not be worth it. If you already know what these features are and what they do, you need to consider whether the limited advanced functionality of the Pro version is worth it or whether you should move on to a full-fledged graphic design program. The final verdict is that Canva does more than enough for the blogger, YouTuber, podcaster, or for anyone where the focus is on creating consistent, frequent content.
Variety of templates
One of the best features is the template selection. With Canva templates, you can find templates for a wide range of categories, and you have hundreds of selections within each category. Canva claims to have over 8,000 free templates. You can do almost anything website or social media-related with these templates. They also have a selection of video templates and regular business templates, such as proposals and reports.
The number of templates and types of templates is one of the areas where Canva stands out and beats any other graphic design program out there, either free or paid. Their templates are easy to use, and they are well-designed. Here are a few examples of the 100+ categories of templates that you can find.
- Posters
- Logos
- Presentations
- Flyers
- Cards
- Videos
- Business cards
- Zoom backgrounds
- Infographics
- Instagram stories
- T-shirts
- Instagram posts
- Brochures
- Resumes
- Invitations
- Book covers
- Coupons
- Reports
- Memes
- Many more categories
Final Canva Review Score
In the final analysis, here is how we rate Canva for bloggers, website owners, and content creators. Five stars indicates the highest rating, and a one is the lowest.
- Ease of use: 5 stars
- Easy to learn: 5 stars
- Number of templates: 5 stars
- Quality of designs: 5 stars
- Supported formats: 4 stars
- Good for professional designers: 3 stars
- Price vs. Value: 4 stars
In the final analysis of this Canva review, the Canva app will not do everything that a professional, full-fledged graphic design program can do, but for the average blogger or website owner, it is more than enough. The best features about Canca are its ease of use and an enormous library of templates. Hiring a graphic designer may be out of the budget, but you can easily produce everything that you need quickly and easily with this software.
In my opinion, for the average person, the free version of the Canva app is more than enough for most purposes. It is made for the non-graphic designer or the beginner. It is perfect for website owners and content creators who need to make graphics quickly and easily. The ability to streamline the process is one of the best features of Canva, and you can’t beat its library of templates. If you need to make professional-looking graphics for Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and many more, Canva is an excellent choice.
