What is Canva?
Canva launched in 2013, is considered an Australian unicorn startup founded by Melanie Perkins. This is a website graphic design tool with a mission to empower people around the world to design anything and publish it anywhere.
Canva makes design so simple that everyone can use it, even those who don't have a lot of graphic skills. From there, you can create beautiful products with easy-to-use tools, designed on Canva's friendly and intuitive interface.
In my point of view, Canva is easy to use, even easier than Microsoft Paint. Once you've chosen the layout and template you want, then come customization. Everything is drag-and-drop, and the text can be edited just like the text boxes in any other graphic design software.
But Canva was harder to use when compared to PicMonkey. Canva required a learning curve and didn’t have all the features I wanted.
I ignored it. But I experimented with it again about two or three years ago and liked it so much that I replaced PicMonkey with it in my tools trio. Canva had introduced a ton of features that made it easier to use and provided support to do more.
Who Is Canva Suitable For?
Canva is best suited for small businesses, online entrepreneurs, and marketers who want to design things quickly and/or create their brand identity. It is also viable for beginners or non-designers as the app does not require any prior design experience.
It is highly recommended for small business owners, online entrepreneurs, and marketers who don't want to spend a lot of time, energy and effort designing everything and want beautiful designs ready in a few minutes.
Its comprehensive features make the app's functionality seamless. It is suitable for inexperienced users and the user-friendly interface just makes everything work smoothly within seconds!
Some great features of Canva
TEAM UP
The Canva app helps you design together as a team in real-time at lightning speed. Whether you need to design for a presentation, Instagram Post, or blog featured image - all you have to do is add the team to your Canva and collaborate.
Collaboration can happen from any device and anywhere around the world. It requires no hassles, no approvals, nothing. Just invite your team, decide on access and start creating your design!
SHARE PHOTOS PICK UP
Collages, magazine spreads or photo compositions - these are all very impressive graphics that include multiple photos as a single photo. However, every detail counts in such images, from the margins, straightness and straightness of the image.
You can easily rotate photos from any angle with canvas features to make sure they are as straight as a pole. It squares to your surface and horizon.
This implies that even if you are not the best photographer in the world and have taken pictures like a nervous paparazzi, they will help you straighten your photos and design them tastefully. You can do this on both your iOS and Android device, for free!
STAR PICTURE EFFECTS
Go even further to turn your gorgeous photos into unforgettable ones by adding glamorous beauty to them. Glamour is added through Canva's photo effects, bringing world-class effects to your photos. All effects are simple on Canva and suitable for all types of devices, including laptops, phones, tablets, and more.
They have various trendy photo filters that make your photos stand out and give them a distinctive look. The process is also simple as all you have to do is click on 'filters' and scroll through the effects. When you see a filter you like, apply it to your photo.
If you want to design a filter yourself, you can do that too! Click 'advanced options' and experiment with Canva's photo editor sliders and create a filter of your own.
DRAG AND DROP SPEECH BUBBLE
Speech bubbles, text boxes, bold side effects, and more are at the heart of any comic or related piece of content. Add these bits to your storytelling with Canva and make them more expressive and look better.
It's easy to do this via Canva's drag-and-drop editor for speech bubbles. Just choose a design and add them to your dialogue with one click. The digital speech bubble is also editable and you can change its dialogue, color, and size whenever you deem necessary.
BLUR PHOTOS
Canva's blur slider is a great tool for stimulating depth of field in photos. You can blur or even sharpen your photos using Canva's editor on your phone, desktop, tablet, or laptop. It renders the results inside the layout view to avoid guesswork.
Make your photo look aesthetic with blur function by making the atmosphere blue or play around with photo editing.
VIGNETTE BRILLIANT
To give your modern photos a vintage look with vignette effects, Canva gives you all you need! It saves you from spending thousands of dollars on a vintage camera to get that iconic black and white matte look on your photos with vibrant vintage effects.
Easily add photo textures to any image in Canva. Not only that, Canva also allows you to create your own vignette effects and add filters to your photos.
Pros and Cons of Canva
Pros
Design a variety of applications in many fields
Canva provides users with millions of different designs that can be applied to many fields and jobs. A student, teacher, employee, student, shop owner, etc. can find the publications they need right on the software. For example, menus, covers, presentations, charts, posters, etc.
Simple, easy to use
The biggest plus of Canva is its simplicity and ease of use. Anyone can design professionally on the software without having to go through complicated design courses.
Links to many other platforms
Canva connects to various social networks and hosting platforms to host designs. Thereby, users can post back and forth between Canva and these platforms easily.
Can be used on multiple platforms
Canva can use both software versions on Mac, Windows, Android, IOS and also on the browser.
Have a shared group
While other editing software has to publish the design and put it on another platform for common storage for a group of people. Canva is shared for groups right on one system.
Cons
Unable to create complex effects and editing requirements
For those of you who do professional designs that require a lot of effects and complex editing, Photoshop or other software is still a preferred choice over Canva. Because the software can only do simple operations such as cropping, changing the size, image and adding a few other objects.
Unable to self-extract from the added group
When you are added to a group by someone else, you cannot get out on your own, you must be kicked out by the creator. This is sometimes annoying because there are too many folders in your design repository.
Canva Requirement
According to Canva Admin:
Internet connection
To avoid saving problems while designing, make sure your internet connection is stable.
For security reasons, using Canva requires connections with a TLS version of 1.2 or higher. We don’t support versions 1.0 and 1.1 because they’re not considered safe and have been deprecated by the IETF in 2018.
Desktop and mobile browser
Update to the latest versions of these browsers on your device, and make sure that JavaScript is enabled:
Google Chrome, version 57 or higher
Mozilla Firefox, version 52 or higher
Safari, version 12 or higher
Microsoft Edge, version 89 or higher
Opera, version 44 or higher
iPhone and iPad mobile apps
Operating system iOS 12 or higher
Minimum of 150MB free memory space
Android app
Operating system Android 5.0 (Lollipop) or higher
Desktop app
Canva Pro Pricing
Canva allows users to pay monthly or yearly depending on the user's economy or needs, below is the price list of Canva:
Monthly list
The Pro plan is best suited for certain consumers, so whether you run a business or have a team of more than ten people who need to collaborate at Canva, the Enterprise plan is for you.
In short, the Pro plan is suitable for employees or small business owners, while the Enterprise plan is suitable for larger teams that need specialized features and control over teamwork.
We recommend trying Canva Pro for free for 30 days, and then upgrading to an annual plan to save money.
Conclusion
If you can't afford to hire a graphic designer and are looking for a graphic design service that's free, easy to use and won't take you months to learn, we recommend Canva.
Canva is reliable, with a simple user interface and drag-and-drop features that enable simple and fast design.
It may have some notable flaws, but that doesn't make it any less useful than some other online graphic design apps. Canva is here to support you in your design journey, whether it's infographics or Facebook messages.
I hope myCanva Review has helped you determine if it's right for you. And, as you know, it's completely safe. So you can test it out for yourself and let us know how it goes.