I don’t know about you, but whenever I see an aesthetically beautiful presentation, the presenter instantly gets my attention. Of course, there’s more to an effective presentation than its looks. However, I trust that you have your own experience and/or domain experts on your side to ensure your content is worthwhile. The hard part is making your content stick, and as a consultant, it should be your goal that your participants walk away with actionable steps. In today’s blog, we’re going to introduce to you Canva, a freemium graphic design powerhouse to help you, help your organization.
By background, I am a software engineering professional to the core. The only content that I created before being introduced to Canva were slides for meetings and the occasional flyer to advertise an upcoming event. On top of that, my experience with graphic design was whatever I could muster with the smart diagrams and clip art found in Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides. Therefore, I’m probably missing out on a lot of capabilities that Canva has to offer, and I won’t do this platform justice…
However, we want you to swallow any fear or anxiety you may have and dive right into this world of graphic design with us. The good thing is that Canva is easy to get started with and has a great user interface. So, today, we will highlight how we have used this platform to generate workshops, publicize events, and tell a story to inspire innovation, engagement, and creativity.
Generate Workshop
As a freemium tool, Canva has a mixture of templates, graphics,and layouts for basically any use case from teaching a concept to pitching a product to playing a game. In most cases, the free version is enough. You’re able to use a good number of layouts and elements and share your content across your organization.
In our case, we often use the presentation template to generate content for our workshops. First, we choose a theme like “minimalist design” or “technology startup.” After that, we add our content just like we normally do for a PowerPoint presentation. Like the other tools on the market, you’ll be able to share your content with your peers so that they can edit it with you. Finally, we leverage Canva’s flairs, such as its library of elements that includes graphics, photos, videos, and more to tie our presentation together. The cool part is that once you select a particular thematic element, like plant imagery to reflect growth, its AI capabilities will suggest similar items for you to include in your presentation. From there, you’re free to present within Canva or download it as a pptx or pdf file. Note that when you download it, you might lose some of Canva’s features. However, its presentation mode is very similar to Powerpoint’s in which you can add timings and see your speaker notes.
In addition, one of the benefits of upgrading to Pro is that you can import your organization’s brand toolkit. This comes in handy if you want to replace the colors of its out-of-the-box graphic or slide layouts with your own. That way you can tailor the layouts to fit your needs and create a sense of consistency as you move from one project to the next.
Publicize Events
Now that you have your workshops created, you’re probably thinking about how you’re going to advertise it. Canva has an answer for that with its wide range of social media designs that can be shared on Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. Beyond that, it also has designs for print, which include flyers and posters.
Recently, we hosted an Objective Key Results workshop and wanted to generate buzz and excitement. We leveraged Canva’s LinkedIn Video ad templates to create a 30 second animated ad. Once we figured out our content, it only took us one hour to put it together. First, we searched for designs that were centered around teaching and education. After that, we changed the content to match our context. Finally, just like we did for the workshop itself, we replaced the elements to match our workshop’s theme. Voila. We had an engaging video that highlighted the workshop's details and benefits. It could also be shared across all our social media platforms with ease.
When making ads, it may come in handy to unlock some of Canva Pro’s features. For example, you will need Pro if you want to change the audio. You’ll also need the upgraded version to download your creation as a mp4.
Tell a Story
As you read in our previous use case, Canva shines because it allows us to tell a story by building upon a theme. Each of its capabilities, from logo creation to personal uploads to its brand toolkit, lets you create a seamless experience for your co-collaborators and your audience.
For example, one of our favorite use cases of Canva was when we used it to throw an innovation week for our organization. Our theme for the week was to develop something that was “out of this world.” We created our own space theme logos and used them in our presentations and flyers. Each day our team was excited for the morning report, and we had the most teams participating ever.
In another use case, we were creating the pitch for our organization’s internal hackathon. For our hackathon, we were showcasing the power of OpenAI models to create a chatbot to support our internal users. My organization is a gaming company, and Canva had the perfect video game themed design for us to tell our story. We used Canva’s existing graphics to show how our protagonist leverages the power of AI to automate our help desk. Although we didn’t win, we received a lot of praise for our video.
Engage your audience today
In conclusion, Canva is the perfect tool for your day-to-day employee to get started with graphic design. With its collection of templates and graphics, you’ll be sure to find something that fits your needs. However, remember, a tool is only as good as the content you have, so use Canva with caution. Don’t go overboard with all the neat offerings and forget your goal: to empower your teams to be the best they can be. Do experiment and get feedback on the features that your audience appreciates. And, if you’ve found a special trick, be sure to comment below. We are still unlocking all it has to offer, too.
Want to learn about the other tools we have in our toolkit? Check out our articles on Kintone and Confluence. Need to work on your mindset instead? Check out our review on Multipliers & Drive.