Manipulation in Canva
Matt Stevenson
Lessons
Intro to Canva: The Guy Kawasaki Interview
10:43 2The Power of Design: Canva Philosophy
05:41 3Canva Account Setup
10:35 4The Canva Interface
10:28 5Canva: Opening the Drawers
28:00 6Manipulation in Canva
18:43 7More About Your Account
12:12 8Canva for Work Account
25:59Lesson Info
Manipulation in Canva
Let's go back into a little bit more. Let's unpack some of these manipulation of text because Texas really, really important to design. So I tell you what, I'm gonna clear my stage, get rid of these guys, and we're going to sort of start with a fresh design. All right? So I'm still in my original White Square. I love this thing on. I want to go to my text drawer, and I just want to pull a piece of text into here on, We'll call it, uh, typography. Gotta have an exclamation point. Now, you notice something interesting when I typed and I got to a certain point, it said, No, we're not going beyond that line anymore. We're gonna were gonna come down here, so my exclamation point ended up being underneath my text. How do I fix that? Well, we have anchor points just like we have anchor points with everything else that we drag onto our stage. So if I grab one of these anchor points and I pull it out, it puts it on one line where I can shrink it, and it gets really crazy, so I'll keep it out he...
re. Nice. Ineligible for now, but that's how you change the size of your type area on that's useful for if you have multiple lines of types, let's say perfect for you. I can actually either have everything on one line I have here and fitted on my stage or by dragging this in Knox words down to create two lines detection. So once I've created my text, I want a position and properly. If you'll notice the P is not gonna it's gonna get lost. Its off the stage again. We're gonna edge. Click in order to be able to move this piece of type around and then you'll notice something interesting as I'm clicking and dragging. Um, a lot of little stuff is happening around there. Uh, designers recognize this as what's known a smart guides. It's telling me or suggesting that I align things on my stage. This is really, really, really important. Alignment is so important for good design. Everything has a relationship to everything else. So finding let's say, where the center of the stage is, it's telling this it's actually snapping my mouse and saying, You probably want to put this on the center. Yes, 1006 city. No, I can't. I can't. Indeed. So if I move my type all the way up here, that number turns into zero comma zero. These air coordinates, These are pixel coordinates. The When I created this design, I chose Social Media graphic 800 by 800. Those are my pixels. So it's telling you where the top left corner is in relationship to your entire stage. Designers will need this to figure out how far away something is or whether it's lined properly. But most of the time, non designers really don't need it. It's just kind of cool in handy. It z there it for you if you want. What we want to focus on are these pink dotted lines that show up. So here I've vertically centered it. And if I moved down there, there is telling me you are now in the very center of this stage. Um, you've totally centered your text, which is great. Now what if I don't want sent centered on centered everything center? What if I want to push it to the left? Um, I'm still clicking and dragging so I could move it around and I can align it with the left edge. Now, typically, I don't want to do this because as a design principle, having things close to the edge kind of throws off the balance of a design, especially if my type was left of line. It would be very close to that edge. We always want to try to leave some sort of margin, and we'll get into that when we talk about design principles a little bit later. Um, but for right now, let's kind of a line it up here. And we have a problem because my text is still centred. When if I wanted to be left alive, well, that's where our tool tip up here are. Big tool tip bar comes in. Let's break this down a little bit. We have the font, which you can click on and change to any of these funds. Canada has a huge library of all different kinds of funds. In addition to these, if you have a can of a for work account, which is the premium version of Canada, you can upload your own fund, which is brand new. It's like a week new, and it's one of my favorite features because Now I can use all the funds that I want from all the different brands that I work with so we can change the font. Let's pick. Uh, you know what Helvetica ish? I love that title. So we've changed the fund to Helvetica. Very simple. It's just finding it on the menu. And then right next that we have the size, uh, you'll notice that there is no anchor to change the size. The corner of a text box, like you would say are square. So if we put our square in here, I'll just dragging on the stage notice I can change. Big, Small, big, small. I could do this all day big. Um, I don't I don't do that with type on. That's because Canada wants you to pick a number because that number should be consistent depending on your different designs. You you want to know that your headlines are in, let's say, 50 point type. So I selected all, by the way, it's the same committee key command in just about every editing program. Command A to select all, and then I can either pick a number from the list here. Four. I can type it in and it changed it for me. If you're working on a keypad and you don't know ipad, you know, where do you do that? I don't have a command. Right? Eso key commands on the IPad. Uh, it's actually easier tapping is much easier than doing something he commands and working with this stuff. So you used the interface instead of selecting all typically on an IPad. When you when you click on something, it'll say copy. And it will give you, like, the blue lines. And you can stretch those lines out to select everything We'll get into ipad interface. I can see you guys are doing it right now. That's so cool. I love that. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, Well, totally get into that in a little bit, right? Exactly. Yeah. The tools built a little bit differently. It takes into account the fact that you don't have some of those key commands, so I still haven't left line my text yet. That's coming in a little bit. So we went through changing the fund. Changing the size here is our lovely color wheel, and it gives you a set. Some colors, just the primaries. Um If you click the plus button, you'll get this lovely color real, which allows you to pick any color that you wish. Um, right now it has. It is as white. I can just move this around, and here you can see the huge changing on down here. You can adjust the brightness. We could make a color darker or lighter on. Then there's a color code down here, and this is important because non designers are usually not familiar with what this number is. This is called a hexi decimal code acts meaning six there six numbers or letters in this string. This is what the Web uses to pick colors. Have you guys heard of RGB before it's red, Red, green, blue or C M Y K. That's the print version of it. Will hacks is what the Web uses to denote colors. Um, there's no RGB picker here. You'll notice it's just hex. How do I find the hex color of Let's say something that I'm working with elsewhere? Um, there's a lot of different resource is on line. One of my favorites. It's so simple. Rgb two hex dot net Um, this is a great way to put in a RGB number. So you're red, You're green, you're blue if you have it in another program and it will spit out the hex number for you again the six letters or numbers and you can copy that and put it right into here. Let's say one of my favorites is a nice gray, uh 33 It's like a light gray. Maybe make a little darker and click your stage. I've changed my type now that completely illegible and I would never do in years. So to change it back, I could either undo or I could select everything my color button again. Oh, and by the way, it remembers the colors that you just used. In case you want to use them again. This is very similar to something. And Power Point does. Um, and I can click a different one like that. Still not left the line. Wasn't that the original thing that I wanted to dio? I'm not quite there yet. All right, so we went through, uh, we have the font, the size, the color. I can totally get rid of it if I want Teoh or my little wing menu. Now, this is the type wingmen. You here are all my other options. You guys were familiar with making something bold or italic or both under upper casing it, making it into a bulleted list. Or these three guys left center right here. My little check mark tells me if I couldn't tell before that it is central line to make it left. I just click on the one right above it. Now I'm left light. You get a couple more options. Text spacing, which is, uh, it's Oh, by the way, um, I know that Jim was curious about this the other day. They have adjusted letter space. Or you can adjust the letter spacing now, which is really great. Yeah, that's that's Ah, it's a tool in there. So, uh, if we want to do this, we'll get into when to do this. And why to do this a little bit later, or you can adjust the line height, which is the the It's the space between all of the lines. Go back here and I have a couple more options. I can copy this whole thing that I've been working on. I can make it into a live hyperlink or again adjust the transparency. You'll notice that these guys are great out. Move forward and move back. So again, if you have different items on top of each other, you can move their arrangement around. Um, they're great out. Any idea on why I can't move this thing forward or backwards? There's nothing else there. Yeah, it's so this is a great you know, these little user interface hints are great for Canada to show teach you about this stuff without you even knowing. Yeah, there's there's nothing else in front of it to move in front or back of. So that's manipulation of text. Uh, the last piece of manipulation that I want to get through with you guys. I'll clear this out is, um, images, text in images, text and graphics. They're two of the core components of design. So if I go into my search again up here and instead of shapes, it remembers what you last clicked on, by the way, which is very convenient. I don't want to shape, I want an image. So I go into a photo down here and let's pick a really cool picture of my gosh I love this bear so cool. I want to use this. So I just dragged it again in to my stage on here. In my handy dandy anchors, you'll notice something else interesting when I have an image selected as opposed to, say, a shape. Let's go back to that here. I'll put both on my stage case. You ever want to do that? Um, the text. The box has these anchor points, which allows you to adjust the aspect ratio of height to width. The image does not. Let's move this off over here or you know what, I'll just send it back. So if I click on it, I get a little menu appear, I'll send it behind my back. The bear does not, um, why designers are probably screaming like, Oh, my gosh, you know, you're taking away all these core tools that I need Designers be patient. This is for this particular instance, is for people who are not designers, how many times I've run into instances where a client has taken a beautiful image. They're like, Oh, it doesn't fit in the space and they scrunch it. And all of sudden, everyone's face looks like this war like wide if they do it wide. We want to keep people from doing that and making designs that may not be the highest quality that they can create. So we take away the Canada takes away that option if designers, If you want to change the aspect ratio of your image, I definitely suggest doing in a program outside of Canada and then bringing that image in eso. We have our image. We have our shape now. I could do a couple things with his image. I can apply a filter. Thank you, Instagram. Everyone actually knows what a filter is Nowadays. I can creek crop the image which doesn't stretch. It's just changed What's showing in the frame. I can copy it again, moving back and forward. Delete it or ah, Wing menu looks a little bit different than the type when we men use a little less intimidating again. Ah, link or transparency, or I can flip it horizontally, horizontally or vertically. If this looks like a left handed bare and I wanted to be a right handed bare, I can flip it. Be careful when flipping images that have sensitive things on it, like clocks or text. Or if someone wears a watch or their wedding band on their right hand or the on the left hand, you flip it, it's gonna be on the left hand. Be careful when swapping those things out. So I got my right hand bear. He's on here, and I want to apply a filter to him here. I could do that and it gives me a beautiful menu again. Busy week. What you see is what you get. It's showing you what the effects are going to look like with little previews. The drama. Callie Uh uh, sharpening edges here. Epic. I love that. I just want all my images to be epic grayscale. There's a ton of these guys in here. It's pretty much gives you anything that you want, and then you can also adjust the intensity. So let's Goto. Let's be epic here. Make my bare epic and I can make it super epic. Or I can make it just a little bit epic, which, to me, is kind of an oxymoron, but you can adjust the intensity of the filters as well. Um, designed Tip. Be judicious and pragmatic with your filters. It's okay to use them occasionally. But make sure that your image, the true content, shines and not your filter instead. So we only have a couple minutes left for this first segment. Do you guys have any questions on what I've covered? Are you able to cut out certain sections like you just want the bear and no background? Or you do that in this great question? Um, in the current Canada environment, you cannot. I know exactly what you're talking about. Is called Scylla wedding. Uh uh. Designers usually do that in photo shopper Illustrator. You can actually do it in power point to where you can say, make background invisible or make this color invisible. There's nothing like that in Canada just yet. Eso the work around would be to bring it into another program. You can always then import that silhouetted image into can va and it'll show up in your uploads. If it's a PNG or an s or actually would be a PNG, then it would have a transparent background. So that's how you would get that in there. My second question is, are you able to merge two different images like let's say you had, ah, line drawing with a white background. And could you bring in those two pieces to create one long piece like you had two drawings on two separate sheets of paper and you uploaded the men? And then you put in one and then you go on, put another. Can you do that seamlessly? Uh, you can certainly upload both images on position them next to each other. What you're talking about is, is a technique. It's Ah, it's an image editing technique called stitching. A lot of programs like Let's say, your IPhone panorama. It'll stitch images together for you. There's no stitching function in Canada, but you can get close by at least uploading those images, and you can put them around the same area of each other. Uh, someone else. Have a question. Before, when you were doing your first piece, you had dark background text, dark color text on a like Lord background, and then you switch the background to a door colored background in the text automatically switch toe white. Did I? Yes, it's on there. So this is something This is so cool. So let's say I'm a by my bare let's say I have a piece of text. Uh, let's go. My text. Par and I'll drag this guy here. Um, and I'll save dark. Or you know what? I'll say. Yeah, dark. It's on a light background right now. If I Let's make that a little bit bigger just because I want people to be will see it. Yeah, join the dark side. Um, no, I want to join the light side. Oh, OK. Well, in that case, all you have to do is apply a dark background. So this is it. My gut tells me, like a designer might get a little frustrated this cause it's, like, changing for and you don't want to change. But designers, please remember, this tool is for everybody. So where you are going to see something and think Now, you just created an extra step for me. Someone. The majority of humans are not designers, and they're gonna see this and maybe not even realized that it happened, but they're Texas still gonna be visible. Can va is preserving the integrity of the design over giving you more manipulation tools
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.