Canva Reflection | Week Ten

For my Public Relations Publications course this week, the class shifted away from Adobe’s heavyweight design programs to the light-and-nimble upstart, Canva. It’s a nifty web application designed to crank out quick and easy graphics. As a no-fuss tool for pumping out social media graphics, I love it. However, I’d probably grow frustrated quickly trying to use this for anything more comprehensive than quick social posts.

I designed a set of graphics promoting April’s National Organ Donation Month for nonprofit Hayden’s Hope. Canva allowed me to quickly whip up first drafts of all 4 pieces: a Facebook cover, timeline post, Twitter cover and Instagram post. Unfortunately, my tone and feel across the set varied widely by the time I finished — necessitating a second draft of each. After revising my fonts and backgrounds for consistency, I’m fairly happy with the end results. Next time, I’ll pick a set of elements from the beginning and follow through. My biggest grip with Canva has to be its difficulty in managing layers and multiple elements. Clicking-and-dragging becomes rapidly imprecise and frustrating, despite its simplicity. For light graphics, I look forward to using Canva moving forward.