Opinions on Canva?

[Svrtnsse]

Is anyone here using Canva, and what are your thoughts on it?

My thinking is that it seems like a good tool for generating promotional images, like for online advertisement, but beyond that I don't really know what to make of it. The ability to browse and use (or purchase) stock images seems like it'd be handy, at least for "low profile" promotions.

I got myself an account the other day and have been tinkering a little with a possible promo-image, but I don't have anything to really show for it yet.

If anyone has any comments I'd be happy to hear them.

EDIT: for anyone not familiar - the address is http://www.canva.com

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We've been using the heck out of Canva and are seriously considering upgrading to the Canva for Business side of things. My wife/writing partner handles most of our marketing and uses it to make a lot of our graphics for Twitter and Facebook and they look fantastic! It should be noted that we already have some amazing promotional artwork from our book cover design team, so that gives us a leg up, but even without that artwork Canva is a very useful tool... when it's not having a buggy day, like it was last night.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Cool. Good to hear it. I'll take some time off to mess around with it properly in the coming week. My story has a few good one-liners to represent it, and I figure putting them on a nice background may be a cool way to make an advert.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

That's pretty much what we're doing all this week for Virtual FantasyCon 2017. Canva is practically smoking from how much work my wife is doing with it, creating our graphics. And this is one she made yesterday for a Twitter writing game.

https://twitter.com/AELowan

 

[Svrtnsse]

Nice one.

Err... this is perhaps a silly question, but since I've got your attention: is there any cost associated with using the images you create for promotional purposes, or are you allowed/able to use whatever you create aa you see fit - provided you pay for any stock images etc you use?

 

[A. E. Lowan]

As long as you have paid for the license for the stock image, the free version of Canva does not charge for use of their service. My wife says, "Be careful and check your saved images, though. The free version can sometimes not save correctly, making you make several attempts. It does eventually take, though sometimes it's after you've redone the image."

 

[Svrtnsse]

Good call. I'll remember that.
I have a hunch I'll be spending a few hours toying around with that when I get home from the pub later.

 

[Chessie2]

I used Canva for promotional materials, much like our A.E. Lowan here. It's really fun but I found it sucked the time out of my writing so now I just pay someone to do it for me.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I thank goodness every day that there are three of us on Team Lowan. Makes things like social media and marketing much easier.

 

[Chessie2]

I'm actually about to start using Canva in order to do my print PDFs. Sooooo....I'll probably curse a lot and then come tell you guys about it. (now, if only I could figure out how to download the Create Space template before the site shuts down)

 

[Chessie2]

Figured I'd show you guys what I made in Canva for my title page and chapter headings. Next, I need to do the pages holding character names, provinces and lineages. These images will replace the chapter headings currently in Jutoh so they'll be published with the epub when the document is ready to go. I used the Logo templates provided by Canva:

And:

 

[pmmg]

Sorry, Chessie, those don't show for me. If you don't see it, its a box saying you need to upgrade your account to enable third party hosting.

 

[Nimue]

If they’re on Photobucket, you should probably just use the photobucket share links rather than uploading them to the forum? At least I’m guessing that’s the problem

 

[Chessie2]

I can't get them to work as image urls. http://i1364.photobucket.com/albums/r727/Tiwiak/The forest6_zps0phw8wvq.png

Photo by Tiwiak

Photo by Tiwiak
http://i1364.photobucket.com/albums/r727/Tiwiak/The forest3_zpspn7oyyys.png

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm sorry Chessie, that still didn't work. :/

If you have the image files you can upload them to the forums directly. It's a bit iffy, as you have to add them to your media first and then link them in your post, but it works, and then they can be relinked later. To add the images to the post you use the camera button (Media Gallery Embed).

I tried out canva for a bit and made these two promo images recently. I'll probably be making more soon.
View media item 1108View media item 1107

 

[Chessie2]

I'm sorry Chessie, that still didn't work. :/

If you have the image files you can upload them to the forums directly. It's a bit iffy, as you have to add them to your media first and then link them in your post, but it works, and then they can be relinked later. To add the images to the post you use the camera button (Media Gallery Embed).

I tried out canva for a bit and made these two promo images recently. I'll probably be making more soon.
View media item 1108View media item 1107

Thank you! I wonder if it works now?
View media item 1111View media item 1110

 

[Chessie2]

I can't view your media, Svrt.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Weird, I can see yours.
Looking good.

 

[Chessie2]

Weird, I can see yours.
Looking good.

It says error that I don't have permission to view your album. I put mine in the member pictures media area. I wonder if that makes a difference?

 

[Svrtnsse]

It's probably related to that. I'll see if I can figure out how to change it.