If the covid pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that there is tons of money to be made online. Some were lucky enough to make the transition to online work smoothly. However, others were forced to rethink their careers and learn to market their skills in an entirely new way.
The free web design tool Canva has revolutionized the world of marketing.
What used to take days or weeks of back and forth with a professional web designer now takes minutes on your phone or laptop. And did we mention it’s free?!
When to Use Canva
Canva is perfect for businesses and entrepreneurs who need graphics for blogs, social media posts, email marketing, and other content that must be produced quickly. With Canva’s myriad of free templates and themes, you can choose what works best for you and return to those features again and again to create a consistent brand image.
If you are a new small business or are simply building a side hustle, this gives you the freedom to have complete control of your brand without having to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars working with a graphic designer.
When NOT to Use Canva
Now, all of that convenience we just mentioned is great for quick content turn-around. However, you also run the risk of not looking as professional as you could.
If you are looking to create content that will represent you long-term such as a logo, a website landing page, or business flyers, it would be wise to seek the guidance of a bonified graphic designer.
These talented professionals are not only trained in more advanced software like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. They also know how to use color schemes, logos, and captions to create content that is specifically tailored to help you grow your business. If you rely solely on your own creativity, you could potentially be making huge marketing mistakes and missing out on the wealth of knowledge that professional graphic designers have to offer.
What Do Graphic Designers Think?
The subject of Canva is a divisive one for most graphic designers. From their perspective, here is a free tool that istaking their jobs and essentially making them irrelevant. Many of them also see Canva templates and themes as merely watered-down versions of the designs they create for their clients every day.
How to Get the Best of Both Worlds with Canva
Now that you know the pros and cons of Canva, it’s time to find some middle ground. Despite the disdain of many professional graphic designers, it is still one of the most popular and widely used web design tools of our time. It gives amateurs and those with a smaller (or nonexistent) marketing budget the chance to harness their own creativity to bring their brand to life.
The challenge with this method is creating designs that truly stand out from the crowd. Because Canva’s main feature is offering pre-made templates, color themes, and backgrounds, it can be difficult to create something that is truly original.
This is where professional graphic designers come in. If you are approaching things like logos, colors, and elements for the first time, work with a trained professional who is guaranteed to know the rules of marketing better than you. Once they have helped you with those larger tasks, you can use the information you’ve gleaned to make small-scale graphics for things like Twitter posts and blog thumbnails that still adhere to your overall style.
The worlds of the professional and the amateur don’t have to be at odds. If we all work together and share our knowledge, we can create beautiful content that will forever change the future of small businesses and working online.