How to Make Digital Stuff that Looks Good Even if You're Not Artistic
Use Canva to do anything that requires some sort of graphic design skill -- whether that’s making a slide deck, a poster, a flyer, or a digital ad.
Canva’s best feature is its huge library of templates
In our startup ideation process, David and I have used a lot of different software tools. Most were ok. A few were so bad that we considered building a replacement ourselves. One has been a standout: Canva, a graphic design platform that makes it really easy for you to make good-looking slide decks, logos, flyers, and ads. (Note: this post is not sponsored by Canva).
I’ve never been someone who was super visually minded, and always bemoaned the fact that my presentations looked bad compared to other peoples’. This was not surprising, because I didn’t understand basic design fundamentals like which colors and fonts go well together.
Canva kind of obviated the need for me to learn any of that (and I think in many cases obviates the need to hire a designer at all). The main things it does well are 1) reducing parameter tuning fatigue by providing templates + bundled fonts and styles, and 2) providing extensive libraries of stock images/videos and graphic elements like arrows, pencils, that are semantically searchable. This means that if you’re creating a presentation about say, dentistry, you can search for “dentist” in the photo gallery:
Then maybe add a tooth element somewhere:
Then add some text, selecting a “bundle” of fonts and colors that automatically looks good together.
I know that platforms like Google Slides offer similar capabilities, but while their libraries/elements often look somewhat dated, Canva’s feel modern. Canva also has some particularly nice features around graphical representations of software. For example, it has “laptop frame” and “iPhone frame” elements that instantly class up a screenshot.
Canva’s large library of templates for each type of graphic design product means that you don’t have to look up dimensions for an Instagram ad and be manually resizing stuff in Adobe Illustrator.
And it’s collaborative, so you easily ask for feedback from coworkers.
We’ve used Canva now to build flyers, Facebook ads, decks for product demos and VC calls. It’s been a significant time-saver for us -- I hope you guys find it useful too.