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Canva: Opening the Drawers

Lesson 5 from: Graphic Design Made Easy with Canva

Matt Stevenson

Canva: Opening the Drawers

Lesson 5 from: Graphic Design Made Easy with Canva

Matt Stevenson

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Lesson Info

5. Canva: Opening the Drawers

Lesson Info

Canva: Opening the Drawers

So we have a top bar, We have a drawer. Let's start putting stuff in our design. Everyone's like I could get to it. Matt, come on. Let's design something. We're gonna start very, very simple. We're gonna start with some shapes, most of these air free that they're showing us here, and we're gonna dio the simplest possible shape a square. Ah, ID. Let me do that again. Oh, I did. Who is? Take the square from its drawer and I pulled her right onto the stage. Let's talk about the stage a little bit before we were going to that, Um, it's the third piece of this puzzle. The grey area is not going to be seen. Uh, when you save your graphic, it gives you the gray area so that you can position things on the stage and automatically crops it for you. Aside from the gray and white area, we have a page number here which clues us in to the fact that you can create multiple pages. If that's not enough of a clue, the add new page button should probably probably do it as well. So here I can add differen...

t pages. They go vertically down so you can scroll up and down on. Then when that happens, you get these little arrows, which allow you to move your pages back and forward so I can take my Let's put a put a blue square on this page just so I can see the different as a blue rounded corner square. I have two pages and I can move the top one down and they just reverse. So it's a quick and easy way of changing your page orientation. The other two buttons that are on the stage are this little copy symbol and the trash. If I don't like it, trash the whole thing or I can copy it. So let's go ahead and trash that page. Wait a second. What if I didn't want to do that? What if I threw something away that I wanted to keep adding a new page in copying? Adding a new page will create a blank page. So if I click on this button, it's my favorite White Square again. If I click instead, copy, it'll take whatever's on the stage and place it on the new page that you just created. No, everything's if he had taxed, and that's correct. Okay, So, like so you have three squares and you only want to Can you delete one of them? You can. You can, indeed. So let's say I have. I'll drag another square here. Let's say I have these guys and I'm thinking this looks a little too crowded. My minimalist aesthetics air saying I just 11 square. It's a simple is clicking on one of the squares and you can see which square you're clicking on by the highlighted, uh, dotted line around it. And you can either click this trash can button or the keyboard shortcut is delete. Now let's say I go back where my client says, Hey, how dare you delete that blue square? That was my absolute favorite Blue Square of all time. I'm like, Oh, no, no, I dio We have a button that wasn't there before because there was nothing to undo. I had not created anything, but now that I have gone a couple steps, I had an undo button. It's this little backwards arrow, and if I click it it unda does my steps and you can undo multiple steps so I can keep going back to all the pages that I just deleted to all the new stuff I did all the way back to this original design. Does that undo history? State Stay in the file so that three days later, when the client comes back and says, I want that blue square, you can find it again. Uh, it does not. So once you close your session, um, it will it will delete that safe history. And it does that just to keep the file sizes that at a manageable level. What I do recommend is to save different versions if you're going to be working on multiple revisions and we'll get into that in the workflow session on version control, Um, so we have our stage. We ever items that we can place in their everything, uh, about the interface. There will be a couple things that will pop up that we'll talk about, um, one of the eso. We only did just the first button so far. Just the search. If you want a graphic of line and icon, pretty much anything designed related, other than text, you're going to go and click on the search button on it will give you these various buckets in which to pick from, and we're actually going to go through all of them a little bit later. Um, so search layouts, text backgrounds, upload. Let's stop on layouts for a little bit. Can va wants to empower you to become good designers? When I see a blank page, my favorite, uh, White Square. To me, it's It's a breath. Fresh air. It means that I can create something and I can start from scratch and whatever I want, it's gonna appear there because I know how to get it there. To someone who's not a designer, this could be really intimidating. It's like opening up a blank journal. You don't want to start it because you don't want to mess anything up. You're too worried or you just have nowhere to begin. Can Va has this drawer? The layouts drawer specifically for people who want to start with a pre made design, these air pre made layouts. The layouts are a rain or chosen, depending on which graphic you originally selected. So here I'll go back to my dashboard, my account dashboard. And if you'll remember, I clicked on the social media graphic That's what I felt like creating. If I clicked on presentation, it would have given me a different set of pre made layouts. So, canvas, trying to suggest to you this is what makes a good presentation. This is what makes a good social media graphic. It's everything from this is what makes a good business car. This is what makes a good flyer in a good poster there. Designers who have been doing this for so long are so good at it are encouraging you to use these designs as a starting point. So all it takes is one single click. And I have all of these elements to play around with and manipulate to create my own designs, to apply my own brand to all you can see here. As I'm clicking on each of the elements, we have a bit of text, a graphic. All of these little graphics are the kind of designer who has come up with this beautiful design has given us a gift of a layup. Um, I can change it here. You notice that I went from this guy to this guy and start all over again if I wanted to. One thing to beware of. If you if you change this to, let's say we'll get into editing type a little bit later. I just want to show you guys what happens when you change this Mets Thanksgiving and I click on Let's say I don't like that design After all. I just don't like the font or something about it, and I click on a different design. My work goes away and we'll talk about that in the workflow section. What I should have done is if I go back with my handy undo button. What I should have done is added a new page and then added a new layout. That way you get unlimited layouts, you get unlimited pages. It's not like a paper where it's finite and you're going to create a huge stack. Take advantage of the fact that you get this digital infinite set of canvases that you can always experiment with and try out. New layouts don't get too much into layouts right now because we're still going through. There are drawer, so I'm gonna clear my stage here. The third part of our interface tour in the drawer section is text, obviously very important to design. Here we have three types of text. Ah, heading a sub head or a body text. Designers will recognize these as they serve as visual hierarchy. They direct your eye as to what's read 1st 2nd and third for not designers and a great hint. Headings are usually bigger than sub headings and subheadings air usually bigger than text. In addition to these guys here, we also have pre made layouts. This is very similar to all the pre made graphics that pre made, actually no full layouts. Here we have pre made pieces of typography that are beautiful eligible, and you can use, uh, either for free or the premium versions. Um, if I'm not mistaken, I believe most, if not all, of the text pre maids are free. So again, just like anything else in Canada, when we pulled from the drawer, we're going to click and drag, and it goes right onto our stage. When we do that, it is a grouped set of type that has been the size has been predetermined. The relationship between the big Tex and small Texas predetermined. If I don't like that one, I can always go back in here and let's say, uh, do another one. This is a very stylish one that has some lines at the top and bottom. It comes with it and it's fully edible, so you can just double click and array. I always used exclamation points. I don't know why. So that's another drawer of goodies for us. The texture. So so far we have let me clear this for you. I'll show you have that later. So we have all all of our graphic tools here layouts. So our pre made layouts and our pre made bits of text down here. And also, if we just want to add just plain old normal text, one of these guys either heading a subhead for a body text once we're in there, that's really small. Look forward to that. Once we've added again, just dragging it onto my stage, make they make it as easy as possible. Um, once we have text on here, and actually, once we have anything on the stage, I want to go over what we're seeing around the edges of it, because some of these are intuitive and some of them are not, so I'll have a piece of text, and I'll also throw in one of my beautiful minimalist squares. So when I click on an object in Canada, I see a dotted line. The dotted line is telling me that that object is selected. Whatever I'm going to be working with, that's that's where it is. Um, around it are these anchor points, these little circles here, and when I mouse over them, you'll notice that my mouse actually changes to tell me what it's going to do. We're gonna stretch or we can change the size. If you click on a corner, it will change the size of the entire graphic. If you click on a side or the top of the bottom, it'll change. It'll skew it. It'll either pull it out long or pull it out up high so I can make this rectangle pretty much any shape. Any ratio that I want so dotted line is letting you know that it's selected. The circles are anchor points to change the size, and then we have one more little guy. Hanging out down here looks very similar to the undo button, but it does not undo anything. It is the rotation tool So when I click on it on anything in Canada and it's selected, it gives me the option to rotate it by clicking and dragging. I can move it around in a circle along its center axis. Designers out there, you'll you'll want to know, and I'll talk about it later. You cannot change the access on which the axis on which it rotates. It always is around the center, so plan for that accordingly. When you're when you're trying to manipulate things, Um, here is showing you where the center is. See that little little dot there and I could just twirl it around till my hearts content. I think that's about it. Same thing happens with tight, So here I've clicked on it. I've selected it first. It's saying, Oh, you wanted to end Edit the type. I did not want to add it, the type canvas. But thank you for suggesting that the reason why I highlighted it in blue is because here or click off of it again when I click on it, it thinks I want to add it. The type Great. No problem. Um, I could that's type exclamation point hope for interesting. All right. But what if I don't want out of the type? Would have? I don't like where it is. It's not positioned correctly. I can click on the edge. This is something that happens in a couple other design programs. I know that Power point does it. So excuse me. Maybe a little familiar. It may not be in order to move a piece of type around without editing the type you're going to click on the edge and that allows me to pull it around, put it wherever I want. I can also change the width of my type field. And if I want to change the size of the type, I'm going to do that through the type tool tip. A tool tip. Is this bar up here? It's a quick way to change the settings of whatever it is that you have selected. If you guys noticed when I clicked on the square, even that has a tool tip. See this little guy up here? This whole gray bar that is related to the thing that I have selected. So not only does it give you a dotted line conveniently to say, Hey, you're gonna manipulate this thing. It also gives you a tool tip toe allow you to change the properties off that thing that you have selected. A great analogy is if you guys are working in Microsoft Word or any kind of text editor, usually these options live up here in the menu bar. Remember that. So if you want to change the font, you click on the text, and then you got to go all the way up and then change the font in the size up their canvas makes it a little bit easier by giving you all those tools that you're usually up there right at the thing that you're manipulating. So you're going to find everything from copying and pasting something to moving it forward and backward on the stage, which will get into later to deleting it. Not only can you use the key command delete, but you can also click our little trash can and changing the color. We'll get into all this a little bit later, but in addition to those, we have a little what's called ah wing menu or extras. It's things that if you really want to manipulate a little bit more, you can always click on our little down arrow, and it gives you a couple more things. I could either make this object into a link, which is really cool. Uh, or I can adjust its transparency, so make it more or less opaque. Um, basic to a designer for a designer, their basic is just kind of figuring out where they are. Usually with every new tool that we pick up. We gotta be okay. Where do they put the transparency this time? Well, here it's gonna be in the the tool tip. Any questions? So far, Group objects. You can group objects. You certainly can. That's in a segment that I have coming later. But I'll give you a hint. It's usually the same as how you're gonna group something in any other program. The key command is gonna be command G. So if I want a group, this item, this item, another hint holding down shift will allow you to select multiple items. And then I'll hit command G. And now they're grouped so I could manipulate all of these at once. I can either move them around where I can scale them up or down. And the relationship to each other, states the same. Adding elements to the stage. Are you creating different layers, or is it all on one layer? It's all in one layer. There are no. So if you're familiar with using something like Adobe photo Shop or illustrator, they have multiple layers that you can click on and off. Canvas simplifies things. It's saying all one layer. The um exception to that is with backgrounds. Backgrounds are treated a little bit differently than what's on your your stage normally, and that's great because that's actually the next piece of the drawer. Um, so if we go into backgrounds, we get a couple different options again. We get our lovely search bar so we can actually search for backgrounds just like anything else. But then they also give us a series of colors and whole bunch of really cool textures and images. Rather than dragging these to the stage, I can simply click on them and it assigns it to that page. I can also click on it to manipulated um, and it always puts it behind everything else, and it's sort of stays back there. You can if you want, um, it notice in the tool tip. I can move. Let's ungroomed this really quick. I'll show you guys how to do that in a bit. So let's say this. I have this type here and I'm like, Oh, I designed something that's totally illegible. What am I gonna dio? I can click on mats type and again click on the edge on I can. I'll get into this. This is the type a tool tip that it's a little intimidating, but I'll get to in a bit. I can move it forward, and all of a sudden it's in front of this. However, with the background, I don't have that option. Uh, it's to simplify things and make it make you less likely to put something over top of your entire design on and a limited everything else. So when you're in the backgrounds drawer and you click on a background, it puts it behind everything else, and it keeps it there. You can still manipulate it. I can still click on it and move it around if I want Teoh, but it will never be in front of my non background items. So the last drawer, the last bit of goodies the last set of tools that we can put onto our stage comes in the uploads tab. When you first get to this, you see a nice big green button. Usually a green button in Canada means do something really important here. You can upload your own images or it's saying, Hey, you can also just drag them there from your desktop. I'm a big fan of doing that. Just because I think usually I don't like the type stuff in, um and then that will show up. It will show up here. I don't have anything in there now, because remember, this is a brand new account. You can also link your Facebook account to your canvas account. I'm not gonna do this because this is a temporary account. But if you go in here and you click on this, it'll say, Okay, great. You want some images from your Facebook that you want to pull right into your design? Go for it. What do you want? What you want to do, and then you could pull from any of your account images. So I'm gonna show you guys what this looks like. If I upload an image, I'll do I'll click on the button and I'll navigate to some prepared images that I have. Let's use uh, the school poster I designed. So I like this pre prepared image, and I want to use it in a design. I just click open and Canada thinks about it for a second. I definitely encourage you guys to wait until your upload is done before dragging it anywhere. We want to make sure that it can't gets it, and it's like, Okay, I'm good. You can now use it for your design. You'll know because there's a little loading bar. It happened so quickly in this one, I could let me see if I can get a bigger image so you can see what that looks like. This guy's pretty big 1.5 megabytes G's, so I'll click open. And here you can see Oh wow did it really quick. We have a really faster Internet connection here. Trust me. There's a little loading bar. If it's a big image, uh, just wait till that's done. So now you've actually uploaded to images, which is great once I've uploaded them, if I hover over them, you can see that it gives me a little information button here. If I click on that, let's say I did not mean to upload that t shirt. Um, I can delete it as of right now. Little tip? Yes. Besides that flooding time, does it file size make a difference at all with and photographs? It does, yes. The more photographs in the higher resolution that you upload, the bigger your file is going to be. However, having images just live in the drawer is not going to affect this. Designs file size. This drawer is yours to use across all of your designs. If I went to go Make Hill, it's to it. So my first design, it sometimes can't. It takes a little bit to upload the preview, so be patient. It'll have mats type and the big pink square there in a little bit. One thing that I could do is create another design. Let's say I want to do a presentation, opens it up for me. I see all of my menu bar my stage in my drawer, notice it's giving me a different set of layouts, so it it says, Okay, you want to make a presentation now, Here are some great looking places to start. If I go into up loads, I can see my file so you can actually create a whole library of images on graphics and icons that are yours that you've created that will live in this drawer that you can use in any of your layouts. So it doesn't affect the file size when it's here on Lee. If I put it on the stage now, I've increased that file size. More questions from the mind rate. Fantastic. So, um, one of our students would like to know Does can tell you what is the optimal size of the file to import resolutions can point Uh, yes. If there are articles that Canada has written that describe best practices for file size. They are in the design school link that I mentioned earlier. I definitely encourage you to go see them. We'll talk about what happens when you save out files a little bit later on. Today you get a very specific DP eye doctor per inch on. It saves it in a very specific size. But as far as uploading files, you want to upload three kinds of files. The first kind is what's called an SV G. An SPG, you'll often hear is a vector graphic, meaning it's not bit mapped. Each little pixel is not designated. It actually does math first, which means it has infinite resolution, most icons that you see on websites, even even my presentation, which will go back to in a minute. All of those use vector graphics. Aside from SV G's, we have PNG's PNG's Our Bit Mapped files, usually created by something like photo Shop. They are. They can have transparent backgrounds so you can have a circle and it stays a circle, and they are pretty medium file size. Most things other than vectors that you see online are gonna be in PNG dot PNG format and then the last file type that you want to include or that you want to be able to upload R J pegs J P G's or J P. E. G s, as they used to be known as, um J pegs are have a higher level of compression, which means that they're going to be lower quality on the quality that quality is adjustable. For the designers out there, you can you know that you can make J pegs that look super crappy and J pegs that look beautiful, depending on the file size that you want. Uh, an important distinction between P and G's and J Pegs, which would which are two bit map types, is that J pegs cannot have a transparent background. So if I'm uploading a logo that say is round or has some strange shape to it, it's going to as a J peg. It's going to have a box around it. J pegs are best used for images that are going to be in the background. For instance, if we go back Teoh to my stage here, this image is, I believe, a J peg. And they're used for things that are going to take up large spaces and don't have to have transparency associated with them. Great question. It was good to know, Thank you. Ready for number number? Give it to me. Clarification. So this is a brand new concept, right? And there's a lot of confusion of like, hey, if you up, if you put, bring your photo and you upload it for one of your designs in Canada, does canvas now own your photo A lot of questions about this. And like when you make a design who owns it does can vote in the copyright to it to you on the copyright to it. But I think the short answer is is that canvas should be treated? It is cloud based, yes, but it's just like importing. Ah, file into in design. Yes, right. It's just up on the Web. But you own everything, right? That's correct. It has. Um uh, It has, uh, settings similar to or you think about it the same way as you would your facebook page. It's the easiest way to do it. Um, you're putting your your work into the Web, which can always be a scary thing. And there are some caveats that come along with that. Of course, anyone who's worked for the client who has high security needs knows that the only way to avoid all risk is to just work off like that's not the type of tool that canvas creating. We wanna be empowering. We want to give designed to everyone. Um, I'll look into what happens when you're uploading your own photos in there. There is a section in canvas website. Uh, it's Ah, the can va off finding a second. It's, ah, the licensing agreement. So it has to do with all of these photos and layouts that you're using for your design. How does that work? Licensing wise. And we'll get into that when we talk about the premium items that we were seeing. Show up for a dollar if you want to use them. It says here, if we go into, let's say our search far and we go into photos so all of these have the little free tag, which is great. But every once in a while I go down far enough. You'll see something that says When I hover over, it's got a little $1 sign. All of these premium graphics are always a dollar. I don't think I've seen anything that's more than that, but there's licensing agreements that go along with using this and paying for its one time use licensing agreement, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. When we get into the Canberra for for entrepreneurs, for Business

Ratings and Reviews

Jake
 

Pretty good course generally...especially part 2 & 3. Frankly, Canva's early adopters, like Sue Zimmerman (who I heard about it from) & the like...& therefore probably MOST of us entrepreneurs are probably NOT graphic designers by trade. That was the whole point of Canva being created in the first place!!!! That fact was hammered home in the way Matt presented how to use Canva by pro designers in part 4. Unfortunately, Part 4 was very hard to follow at times. When was he in the pro version of Canva & what could be done in the version we all know, love & work with everyday was NOT always clear. Part 4 was waaaaay too fast & very terminology heavy for most of even the in-studio audience. (It was funny.) I wanted to hug the gal that kept trying to reel it in & get on the same page with her questions. Thank goodness. Bought the course right away because I've been using Canva for over a year and need to go to the next level. I hoped to learn tricks for all that I waste so much time figuring out on my own. There were some. Alas, one main Canva glitch with regard to applying a logo over a background (uh...kind of crucial for business owners & a real time waster to work around literally every single time you use the program) that was raised as a question & re-asked by 2 other people AND several times remained completely untouched. Although the question was on topic & appropriate at many times during parts 2, 3 & 4 and a seemingly very popular question, the moderator chose to ignore it. Almost NO questions were taken from the online audience, in fact, despite there being surprisingly few questions online!! Incredibly, incredibly frustrating & disappointing but I don't blame Matt for that. Too bad there seems to be no course materials to go along with this...like the awesome tips Matt went thru one by one. What a perfect workbook or guide that would have been to go with this, in some form. Really too bad. And really surprising. So all in all, a good course with an EXCELLENT instructor (hope he does Prezi too) but some some big disappointments for this non-professional-in-graphic-design-or-tech, which, it seems is a SIGNIFICANT chunk of your audience...right?

Lonney
 

This was an absolutely great course for a beginner like me. Matt explained everything very clearly and in a pleasant way. I hope he, or someone, does a class on the new Adobe Spark soon. Thanks again; Lonney

Khaled Yasser
 

I like this course, becuase it is very simple to the users, and canva is the future for quick design I hope everyone can you it.

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