Meet Canva: The Graphic Design Tool Every Organization Must Know About & Use

As sure as the sun will rise in the east tommorow, every organization knows that good PR materials, flyers, and graphics are a key ingredient to a successful shiur or fundraiser. And yet, paying a graphic artist can cost a small fortune and cripple any organization. That’s why NLE Resources is incredibly impressed by and excited to introduce our readership to Canva.

Canva is a new online tool that makes graphic design amazingly simple. Anyone – yes, anyone – can can now quickly make beautiful graphics for free! It lives in a browser so you don’t need to download anything or worry about compatibility with your computer.

As a testament to how amazing Canva is, it secured three million dollars in funding — prior to launching in August. Currently, it’s in the beta testing stage. All that this means to you is that if you want to access the site, you have to submit a form and wait for an invitation before you can log in. Thankfully, receiving this invite shouldn’t take long at all.

As you read this, you are thinking, “This sounds great. But, why is NLE Resources telling me to signup for yet another site? I have so many passwords. Why should I bother?”

The answer is that Canva is different. Canva is revolutionary. It’s super simple and will change the way that you, your faculty, and your organization operate.

Why?

Well, let’s take your typical rabbi, educator, or any person off the street who isn’t graphically inclined or good with computers. We are certain that you are an amazing teacher and have wonderful sources and inspiring stories to connect with people.

Unfortunately, there isn’t the budget to properly promote your class or event with catchy graphics and material that will bring people in to your new shiur. And so, invariably it doesn’t draw the kind of crowd that you were hoping to see. After all, you don’t have to work in social media marketing to know that concise copywriting is only one piece of your job to marketing your events — you need attention-grabbing images.

Now, thanks to  Canva, you can take it into your own hands and easily help your events pop off the screen or page! Canva comes with a whole host of pre-designed templates for business cards, flyers, invitations, and even templates that allow you to make a custom Facebook cover that you can use to enhance your online branding.

Once you’ve chosen what type of design you are looking to create, you simply drag and drop. Next, it gives you access to a library of over a million images, an immense number of fonts and a whole host of other graphic design elements. You can also upload your own, which many organizations will find adds a more personal touch to your flyer, etc. The site also allows you to select paid images for only one dollar an image.

After completing your design, you can share it as a PDF, an image or a web link. Best of all, you are offered the option to even receive your graphic with the crop marks and bleed in place so that you can take it to a printer and they will know where to exactly cut the paper using the correct dimensions.

We are certain that even if you know how to use Photoshop, you’ll agree that Canva is a tool that gives anyone the ability to easily create stunning graphics in a matter of minutes.

The videos below give more information on using the tool.

Case Study: Alex Duffy — University Student

Overview of Canva

How To Use Publishing in Canva

Below, are a couple examples of flyers that we made in a matter of minutes using Canva.

After reading this post, head on over to  Canva and sign up for this “game-changing” tool that allows you to create professional looking graphics and other things that will make you and your organization stand out in any crowd!

You can also contact us here as we have arranged to give the first two people who ask us for an invite — instant access to  Canva.