Hi all! Last week I got an email from our friends from Canva who, despite all the hassle behind the preparation for the launch of their new project Canva for Work, took some time to ask for our feedback.
As you know, here at WebHostFace we’re big fans of Canva and often use it to help with the creation of image-based content for our blog and social media channels. We loved them so much that we gradually streghtened our relationship by offering quick Canva access from our cPanels, included a Canva plugin for WordPress installations and have our own portfolio on their website, where we frequently share new icon designs as a contributor.
So a week before the beta preview of Canva for Work we received an exclusive partner access to test and share our thoughts. Today, a day before the official launch, I’m super excited to reveal some of the details about Canva for Work!
If you haven’t yet used the Canva software for creating images, you now have even more good reasons to test it. Playing with your visuals has been simplified to appeal to any user, regardless of their experience. Simply select any of the pre-made designs, change images with the ones uploaded/selected, paste text and export. Piece of cake! You can use Canva for any form of posts in social media, web graphics, and for basic printed materials. The platform is aimed primarily at small teams that do not rely on their own designer, but still need to regularly produce new visuals. Canva is especially useful for bloggers who want to promote their content in an appealing and compelling manner.
From August 6th Canva for Work has been opened for testing and you can easily submit your email to gain access. The main amendments are related to the newly added options for standardization of visions and teamwork. Let’s take a look at those great new things that you have coming soon to your laptop or iPad.
Team members
One of the best new features added to Canva for Work is the ability to work with a team and add different levels for people: administrators, template designers, and members. This allows your teammates to add templates for you without having to email links back and forth.
Team members can add designs that show up in your Canva team designs and you can add comments to each other. The designs are also remixable. In other words, if I hit the green REMIX button, a new design opens and I can create something with the text, change the image or even hit the magic resize button ( we will get to that too ). You also have the ability to share designs in the team stream so team members can share ideas and comment on designs – a perfect way to do some brainstorming.
The best thing is that you can even be part of different teams and easily switch from one brand to the other from the drop down on your main Canva screen.
Brand Kit
As a Brand Manager I would not surprise anyone by admitting that in the WebHostFace Marketing Team we live and breathe for our brand.
In the Canva Brand Kit you define corporate colors, logos, fonts – basically all elements that distinguish your brand. This way you can keep your guidelines up-to-date and in one place, ready for whenever someone needs them. Once uploaded, these elements remain active for creating visuals by all team members- the fonts appear as standard options for adding text, logos are separated into their folder section Uploads, and the brand colors appear as basic options when choosing a text font. All this will make it clear that the team members will not allow themselves any form of “branding freedom” and your label will flow harmoniously into the overall visual communication.
Templates
Canva already had a great template library, and with Canva for Work you can now create branded templates that align to your organization’s specific content needs. The template feature allows anyone on your team to easily create graphics for everything from social media graphics to presentations — no extensive design training required. This saves loads of time, ensures consistency and empowers your social media, marketing and sales teams to create their own on-brand graphics.
For further standardization you can refer to the template generation – templates can only be created by certain types of users, and can be used by all members of your team for new visuals by the well-known formula. Again, the idea is to present the brand as best as possible for the consumers with less “complicated” design work. And Canva seems to be doing very well – requires minimal knowledge of design and a little to no effort for changing the themes.
Magic Sizing
The next big innovation from Canva is the option to quickly resize a design into all the formats you need – this is my personal favorite, a a vital option for bloggers who share their content across multiple social networks. How does it work? Once you create a design you like, you hit the magic resize button and VOILA – you have all the various image sizes to promote your blog post. You can rely on the preset sizes in Canva for most used social media channels or input your own custom dimensions.
Basically, the Magic Resize option automatically resizes visuals in various dimensions with the push of one button, requiring minimal need for further adjustments. I tested the capabilities of Magic Resize with an image to this post and things worked like a charm. I mentioned minimal need for further modification as it might require a slight adjustment in the position of the elements, but this is really as far as your efforts go to achieve a result that is more than satisfactory.
Folder Organization
For those of you, who like to keep things organized, you will now have the option to coordinate images and assets for your team. Your teammates will never get stuck searching for the right logo again.
The problem with Cyrillic
Ok, guys, you know we love you. And I have to admit it was extremely hard to think of a single downside of Canva. I can’t handle the fact that Canva does not yet support interesting enough Cyrillic fonts. At the moment you can rely on a series of standard Google Fonts and of course much more. And since many of the Canva designs rely in particular on recognizable typography, you should keep that in mind when you choose your Layout.
Conclusion
Canva for Work is perfect for teams of all sizes, whether it’s one person, or a team of hundreds. It provides an internal commenting and collaboration system to improve workflow. It will be available for $9.95 per user/month while Canva’s existing service will continue to remain free. So for about $120 a year Canva for Work seems to be the ideal solution for small to medium-sized companies.
So yet again Canva’s Team has done a great job building out functionality that will continue to add value to their user base. And there’s definitely more opportunity to further integrate the new Canva for Work options into the overall tool. Surely we will expect a lot more new features from Canva that specifically target customers with corporate needs.
Hope that this review has been useful for you, guys and gals, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Canva for Work. Would you use it? Is it something that you find beneficial to you? Let me know in the comments below and feel free to ask any questions.
Don’t forget to head over to Canva for Work and sign up so you know exactly when they launch these ah-mazing features
