Canva Features You Might Not Know About with Canvassador Bex Toms

Unlock the secret to standout nonprofit design (without breaking the bank!), as we sit down with the inspiring Bex Toms of Designed to Be Kind. She'll share how Canva's groundbreaking platform is reshaping the design narrative, proving to be a boon, not a bane, for industry professionals and novices alike. 

Canva's innovative tools are not only keeping budgets in check, but are also sparking a creative revolution, enabling anyone to craft visually compelling content with ease. Bex's path to spearheading a mission-driven design firm exemplifies the synergy of passion and purpose, and she's here to show us how that powerful combination can be reflected in your organization's visual storytelling.

This episode is brimming with practical wisdom on organizing and collaborating within Canva, making it a treasure trove for teams of any size. You'll get the scoop on Canva's latest features, from QR codes adding a tech-savvy edge to campaigns, to Canva's AI capabilities, including ChatGPT-powered design wizardry. Plus, we'll reveal the Enhancer app's magic touch that's setting a new standard for image quality. 

This conversation is your ticket to mastering Canva's full suite of features and starting the year on a high note of creativity and efficiency!

Resources & Links

Connect with Bex on LinkedIn and on her website, Designed To Be Kind.

Check out Canva and all of their new tools, plus their free Design School to learn how to design like a pro. Canva for Teams will help you scale your content production.

Applications are closing soon for my Monthly Giving Mastermind program! Ready to build a dedicated community of recurring donors to generate consistent revenue? Let's make it happen together. Learn more and apply here.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. 

Don’t miss DonorPerfect’s Community Conference SPARK on June 4 & 5! It’s for any fundraiser wanting to excel in donor management, program innovation, community engagement, and organizational growth. Register for FREE! RSVP: https://bit.ly/DSSPARK

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:36

in the design industry. I know a lot of designers struggle with canva because they initially they felt like, oh gosh is gonna take all of our jobs. I think it's the opposite. I think it's just empowering everyone To delve into a bit of design and to have fun with it and to create really professional looking designs. And it's so helpful for not just a non-profit world, but for everyone, especially for young startups and people working on their own Can't afford a designer. So it's yeah, it's an amazing, amazing tool, and I mean the fact that they enable nonprofits to use it for free Is just incredible. I mean, what a gift.

Speaker 2: 2:21

Hey, there you're listening to the missions to move is podcast and I'm your host, dana Snyder, digital strategist for nonprofits and founder and co of positive equation. This show highlights the digital strategies organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories behind the feed. Let's transform your mission into a movement. Hello, hello, it is twenty twenty four. I don't know how we got here, but we are here and I'm ready to have an amazing year, and I'll know about you. I hope you're ready to have an amazing year. To and to do that. I always feel like I kind of need to get my ducks in a row and get organized and really understand Am I using the systems and the tools that I have efficiently and properly and, if not, how can I use them better and be more efficient with them? So today's guest is going to help us with that, with one of my favorite Platforms, and that is canva. Shout out if you're like me and you're in canva nearly every day and if it's not every day, it might be all day long if it's one of those tabs that's just constantly pinned to the top of your screen. Yeah, that's exactly what I do all the time. So Bex toms is here to chat with us. She is the brand designer at her company, designed to be kind, and she will explain what this means. She is an empower can bass door, which is amazing.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and talking about my favorite thing in the world canva.

Speaker 2: 4:05

I know, I think I was reading, I think you have this somewhere, but design is the silent ambassador to your brand and that's on your website and I thought that was such a powerful statement. And we connected originally over linkedin because you share these incredible how to video posts on canva all the time. So everyone, if you are not following bex toms, be x t o m s on linkedin, go follow her, watch these videos. She's constantly posting them. They're amazing, these hacks. I wanted to ask you, before we dive into the nitty gritty about canva updates and how organizations can use canva better, what really brought you to this moment in a owning your own company and specifically designing for the nonprofit space.

Speaker 1: 4:49

Yeah, thank you. So yeah, it's a long story, but I've had quite a wiggly career, if you like, working through marketing and advertising. I've worked in market research also what is the community fundraiser for cancer charity in the uk? What men and cancer support, which was amazing. So I've worked within the charity sector as well. And then about eight, ten years ago I was working for a start up and we were running online communities for some big media clients and we needed some obviously some design work to be done. And, being a start up, those only three of us so I kind of took on the job of starting the designs and I found, stumbled across canva I think it must have been just as canva started, really about ten years ago and I just completely fell in love with it. It took me back to so many times in my childhood where I was designing different things Never really considered as a child I would become a designer, but it just felt at home to me. So I carried on working there for a number of years. I then trained in adobe, which was amazing, and I just got to a point in my career where I was like I love what I'm doing, I want to align it with my values and put the knowledge and the expertise I have to good use. And that I knew was in the charity sector. It was where I'd work before, it was where I feel at home, and so I've kind of put everything I love all into one package so the designing and the charity sector and that's where I am now. That was the beginning of design, to be kind, and I feel so blessed. I wake up every morning, I get out of bed and I get to do what I love with the people I love working with.

Speaker 2: 6:28

So I'm very lucky I love it, as we have a very parallel track. I really what we wanted to do from the corporate world into creating our own things and specifically working in the nonprofit sector very similar and my husband and I actually were just talking about it last night. He's like if money was no object. What we're having this like overall discussion about, like where we see our lives going right, and I was like I would still work.

Speaker 1: 6:53

Yeah, because I love what I do and I was like maybe I wouldn't charge anything anymore.

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yeah, but I don't want to do it. And he's like, yeah, he's like that too. He's like you're just passionate about. We both work from home, so he can hear me on Neatly just love what you do, which is so true. So I love that. And, speaking about designing into Canva, it can make us all feel like a little bit of a designer, which is all 100%, a hundred.

Speaker 1: 7:19

But I think in a minute you delve into canvie. You're like I'm a pro already the second you go in there because it's so easy to make things look good, isn't it? And I think you know that's why, in the design industry, I know a lot of designers struggle with Canva because they initially they felt like, oh gosh, it's gonna take all of our jobs. I think it's the opposite. I think it's just empowering everyone To delve into a bit of design and to have fun with it and to create really professional looking Designs. And it's so helpful for not just a nonprofit world, but for everyone, especially for young startups and for people working on their own that can't afford a designer. So it's yeah, it's an amazing, amazing tool, and I mean the fact that they Enable nonprofits to use it for free. It's just incredible. I mean, what a gift isn't it.

Speaker 2: 8:09

Yes, if you do not already use Canva pro for free for nonprofits, please just Google search that and you'll be able to find out all the information. You are also an official Canvassador for Canva, which is incredible. What does that mean?

Speaker 1: 8:28

I am. So I don't actually work for Canva, but they have. Basically it's a recognition that I am an empower Canvassada, so I am basically empowering other people to use Canva, to understand Canva and to use it for good Basically. So, yeah, my role is an empower Canvassada and I get to see some of the new things that are coming out. I get a little head start on some of those, which is lovely, but it's just a really a recognition from Canva that we're kind of there's a bunch of us out there that are empowering others to use it.

Speaker 2: 8:59

So, yeah, it's lovely to be part of it. If there's any listeners who would be interested in Becoming one, what process like kick starts that?

Speaker 1: 9:09

so there's different kind of communities that you can be part of online With Canva and like on Facebook. There's a design community on Facebook and People within that community can kind of find you because they can see the work that you're doing and the fact that you're empowering others. There is a way to apply for it, I believe on their website as well. There's other kind of Canvassada roles that you can apply for, so if that is of interest, yeah, you can head over to their website. I'm sure they have all the details on there. So what a great little like resume builder.

Speaker 2: 9:39

Yes, I would definitely be adding that to.

Speaker 1: 9:40

LinkedIn Okay cool.

Speaker 2: 9:42

So I want to dive into Canva tips because there are so many good ones. So, listener, what we're going to do is best is gonna help us dive through some categories. So we're gonna talk about just so you know what's coming Canva for teams. We're gonna talk about how to get your Canva organized, which, holy moly, mine is a Disaster of a mess. I'm very excited for that one. We're gonna talk about brand consistency and she's gonna dive into some of those really helpful new features which we'll go through in a bit of a lightning round. So let's go ahead and kick off with Canva for teams and, specifically, how do we even get organized within our team using Canva?

Speaker 1: 10:24

Yes. So this is something that I think a lot of people understand that you can obviously have a team of people working within Canva and, like we were mentioning, non-profits get that for free, which is incredible for up to 50 people. So you could have 50 people working within your team in Canva. But what you can actually do is kind of drill down a little bit further and create groups within that team. So imagine it to be a bit like departments. So you could have a fundraising group, you could have a marketing group, and what that means is that when you have a design or you have a folder and you want to share it with Specific people, you can just share it with that specific group, rather than having to write out every single name and going through that process. And it also means that, as being part of the team, I don't have to see everybody's designs. I mean, you know, especially in the larger nonprofits, there's obviously gonna be a lot of designs going here, there and everywhere. So if you're part of a single group, I could just see those single group designs. So they're just the designs that are relevant to me. So it kind of cuts out a lot of the noise and just again gets things organized and helps create the groups within the team. I hope that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 11:34

Yeah, I know that's also really powerful, I think, for when people ask for things like where is this host, where is this graphic that I need for emails? You may be like you have access to it within this group in Canva. I love that. Does that mean people can collaborate and edit those assets too?

Speaker 1: 11:51

Yeah, so, being part of the team, you can decide on how you want people to collaborate on the Designs within that team. So it could be that you just want people to come in and view them and maybe that you want them to come in and edit on them, or you edit them, or you just want people to come in and comment, so you can specify how you want people to interact with those designs which again is an amazing feature and you can interact on them at the same time. So it could be that I have a design and I share it with you, and we get on a call and we're both working on that design at the same time, which is just incredible.

Speaker 2: 12:25

Awesome. I actually did this recently with a client of mine where we were creating content and had them go in and they were updating the fonts or like moving something around. However, the other thing I like about this is, let's say you are sharing it with somebody, that you do not want them To change anything, or they get scared by moving and clicking around the mouse. They are gonna edit something. So what you're saying is you can have controls where they could just be a viewer and therefore they're not going to, whether they're clicking or on all over the place. They're not going to edit the graphic.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Yeah, exactly, you can decide how much control you want to give on that. So, yeah, that's a really key. And also, you can actually lock parts of your design as well. So if there are parts of the design that you're like I don't want anyone to mess with that, you can actually click on that and lock that part of the design. And that's another really good way of stopping people from messing up your design and moving things, so you don't want them to move, love it.

Speaker 2: 13:20

Okay, very cool, very helpful for teams. Speaking of like teams, teams need to get organized. So what are some of your top tips for, like mine is a disaster hotspodge of everything that I've like ever created in one place. What are your tips for people like me?

Speaker 1: 13:41

Firstly, I'd say you're not alone, because I think most of us especially for me like when I began working in Canva 10 years ago, the idea of getting organized in there didn't even cross my mind. I just wanted to go in and create, and I think that's where a lot of people are now. They've got this historical library of designs within Canva and then now yes, now realizing actually I can organize these. But it looks like such a mountain to climb, but actually it's super easy to do. You can create folders, subfolders, exactly as you would with your file explorer within Windows. You can do that within Canva and file your designs to those folders. And one of the other things which is a top tip which I don't think a lot of people realize you can do within those folders you can save various documents to that folder, so you could save videos or you could save PDFs or photos, and when you save them to a folder, it then makes it super easy to access later on. So when you then go into the design space and you're actively working on a design, if you want to find that photo that's hidden within a folder somewhere, it's really easy to then navigate to that folder rather than rolling through all the uploads that you have from like years of photos have been uploaded. Yeah, it's a really easy way to find them.

Speaker 2: 15:03

Yes, this is a huge difference. So I would say one of the biggest changes that I did was I have a folder just with logos. I have a folder of just my brand shoot that I did recently, so I'm starting back. It's not just like it used to be everything into the uploads. And they're like oh my gosh, like where is that? I also need to get better about. I take a lot of screenshots of this and I should have a screenshots folder just so I can access that easily. But, listen, just for you to like. I'm brainstorming as Bex is sharing these. So if this is like aligning with you. You can start to think about, like how can I create specific folders that are going to make it easier for me when I'm looking to pull something into a design or to a video or to a document?

Speaker 1: 15:49

Definitely, and that's the thing I think it is the key in saving time. Like you know, you may think, oh, it's going to take me a little while to organize myself, but actually in the long run you will save yourself so much time.

Speaker 2: 16:01

So it's worth putting in the effort now, which is why we're talking about, at the beginning of the year, carve some time out. Put a block in your calendar. Literally that says organize Canva, Definitely Do it.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Do it, I'm going to do it.

Speaker 2: 16:14

Anything else on the organization that would make things easier?

Speaker 1: 16:17

Yes, the other thing is, within the folders you can pin designs to the top of that folder. So imagine it a bit like your Instagram feed, where you can pin certain social media posts to the top of your feed. You can do the same thing in Canva with your folders. So say, you have a folder that's full of photos or full of different designs and there's a specific design that you want to come in. You want to get to it straight away. You can pin that design to the top of the folder and it will be there every time when you go into that folder. So that's a really nice, quick shortcut to get to the design.

Speaker 2: 16:53

Awesome. I love it. I did not know that that even existed. This is why we have Bex on the podcast. Let's turn to next category brand consistency. I think this is really important. I know the campus has been working on a lot of updates within brand consistency. What are your thoughts on a good place to get started with this?

Speaker 1: 17:15

Yeah, brand consistency to me, is everything Working within branding. I get really protective over this, and this is the key to effective branding Ensuring that you can make it as easy as possible for everyone within your organization to access really consistent branding as key to the success of your design. Making it really easy is everything. The first thing on that well, something that's really new to Canva actually is adding your brand voice, and that's within the brand kit. For anyone that's not aware, the brand kit is where you can store your logos and your graphics. It really is the Swiss Army knife for branding. Once you have that setting, canva is so useful and makes everything so much easier. Within that now you can add your brand voice, which is a bit like, imagine, your brand guidelines, and where you have, you will have a section for your tone of voice which really brings everything across from your organization in terms of your values and how you want to be perceived. For me, it would be I want my brand voice to be kind, I want it to be friendly, I want it to be confident. You can add that into Canva now, into your brand kit at brand voice. Then, when you go into a design and you can use something called Magic Right now within Canva, it's a new AI feature. It will access your brand voice and ensure whatever it writes for you is written with your brand voice, which is just incredible. Obviously, you need to go through and you need to read it and change it, but it's using you and your values and exactly how you want to be perceived, to be able to write that text for you.

Speaker 2: 18:56

I say this is huge. I say this is one of the biggest things I would recommend doing at the start of the year. Go into your brand kit, upload your fonts. If they are not Canva fonts, you can upload other fonts if they're not within. Canva. Upload your colors Normally, I think their hex numbers upload your colors, upload your logos, any key graphics that you utilize all the time. Then now you can add this brand voice. I think that will help you so much and not every single time having to go find that color off of your website and pull it in. Just make it. Save that constant task that you normally do. Save so much time in building that. That's awesome. I like to try and create templates that I can just copy and reuse. Is there anything similar to that with brand consistency? Yes, 100%.

Speaker 1: 19:47

When you create a design within Canva say it's a design for a poster or something like that that actually you want the rest of the team, you want everyone within your organization to be able to update, you can set that as a brand template. Where you go to share, there's an option to set that as a brand template. What that means is that then everyone within your team can then access that brand template. When they click on it, it will create a copy of that design. Rather than editing that direct design, they will edit a copy of it. That brand template is always there. It's always there for people to use. Again, you can set brand templates for posters, social media posts, all sorts of things across your organization to ensure that your designing is consistent across the board. That's so important, especially within charities, particularly where you have volunteers coming and going, maybe accessing some of these designs and manipulating posters and things like that. It just ensures everyone's working with the same brand design in mind, and keeping everything super consistent is so helpful.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Yes, oh my gosh. You are literally making me want to go into my Canva right now and do a whole bunch of changes. It means we've done so bad. I highly recommend doing this or finding a VA or somebody on your team of virtual assistant that can go through and organize this for you. If you don't have the time I know time is tight but maybe at the beginning of the year this is something that you can carve out which is just going to help yourself all year long and other team members, Definitely you will feel it's a bit like housekeeping when it's the job in front of you just feels like I really don't want to do it, but when it's done you're going to feel so good. Yes, so nice and clean. Oh, it's so needed, awesome. Okay, let's dive into our last section, which is I'm really excited for, which is new features. So we go ahead and just like lightning round for us I think there's five here with us, these five?

Speaker 1: 21:48

hot tips. So these hot tips are so. The first one is an accessibility check again, which I don't think most people recognize is in Canva, but, for, say, you were doing a social media post or something like that, you can literally go in and check the accessibility of that design and it will look at things like the color contrast, the typography, to make sure that your design is accessible for everyone. It will give you a prompt on how to make sure that it is so. If there are areas that it isn't, it will say make that text bigger. And, yeah, amazing for all organizations, particularly for nonprofits, make sure your designs are always accessible for everybody. The second one is QR codes. So we all, like in most nonprofits now you're adding QR codes to posters and banners, everywhere. Exactly Everyone's got a QR code for everything and it's really easy. So you all you need to go is to go to the app menu within Canva, search QR codes and it will come up with a little screen where you enter the URL for the web page that you want it to go to hit submit and it will pop the QR code on your design. Really quick and easy. No idea that existed. It's so easy, so easy. The next one is well, this encompasses a whole host of features, but they're all new within Canva. All the AI features are in there. I would definitely recommend, if you haven't checked them out, go in and have a little look, because there's some really magic features that have been added, including magic write, which we mentioned earlier, which will kind of write blog posts and all sorts of things captions for you. There's magic expand. There's magic switch. Magic switch is a particularly good one because that will. It could take a social media post and then you could go to magic switch and ask it to make that into a blog post and it will take your social media posts and all of a sudden, within five seconds, you'll have a fully written blog post, which you can then make sure is in your brand voice as well. So that's an amazing one.

Speaker 2: 23:46

Look at that. Look, I see what you're doing there.

Speaker 1: 23:50

There's magic eraser. There's also, which is brand new, is Canva GPT. That's only been out in the last few days and that it's actually with chat GPT, so you need to access it through chat GPT and you need to be a subscriber to chat GPT in order to do that, but that's brand new. So that's a new function that you can have a little play with in there.

Speaker 2: 24:12

What does that allow you to do?

Speaker 1: 24:14

So you can go in there and you can ask it. You could say I want you to create a design based on. I want you to create a presentation, I want it to be 10 sides long and I want it to be based on this and write out a full script of what you want it to be based on and it will work on that and create that for you.

Speaker 2: 24:35

It's another level of design, that's awesome Looking through all the AI features in Canva. I think again.

Speaker 1: 24:45

look it out sometime on your calendar, definitely definitely, and it's only going to be more and more and more. I mean, everyone knows how fast AI is moving, particularly in the design sector. It's moving so fast. So, yeah, always keep an eye on that, because Canva, you're always at the front of this and that's the amazing thing. Keep up to date with Canva. You're going to keep up to date with a lot of AI. So, yes, keep a little eye on that. The next one is Lottie files, which some people may not know. What Lottie files?

Speaker 2: 25:14

are.

Speaker 1: 25:14

They're kind of yeah, they're small illustrated animations so they're really fun to add to social media posts or to your website to landing pages. They can really bring it to life. The amazing thing with Lottie files is that you can customize them to your brand colors. So, whereas all the other kind of moving stickers within Canva they are what they are, they are the colors that they are, the Lottie files you can go in, select one and then add your brand colors to it so it really reflects your branding and it can really add a little bit of spice to your designs.

Speaker 2: 25:48

Oh, it's just so cool, so I had to Google search, of course, while you're talking, because I've never seen this before. These are really neat. I highly recommend. Okay, lottie files is L-O-T-T-I-E. Yes, this is very cool. I'm just scrolling through the page, but if you literally just Google search Lottie files, campbell, you'll see a whole explanation on it.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Yeah, they can add a lot of personality to your designs and just a bit of fun, but to be able to customize them now within Canva is game changing. So that is really, really helpful. The last one is a new app that's been added within Canva again within the app section of Canva and it's called Enhancer. Now, this is a game changer, particularly for designers, in that, say, you've been to a fundraising event and everyone's been snapping photos on their phone and you're like that photo is perfect, we want that on our banner for next year. Then your designer will come back to you and say, no, the quality is rubbish. I'm sorry we can't expand it to a banner. We have that all the time as designers. Enhancer will enhance the resolution of that image. So now, when you have an image that isn't quite right for a lot of designs, we can actually enhance that image now using this app. So that is a game changer for images.

Speaker 2: 27:06

That is amazing. This is interesting. My husband was showing me so he uses a lot of the Adobe AI features. Is this similar to an Adobe where you can take an image and, essentially, you tell it what size you want it to be and it creates yeah, but it expands it literally. So he had an example. I think he pulled a wedding photo and it was a group of people standing in front of a building. Instead of it being cut off on the sides, he said the dimensions he wanted it to be, it created what the rest of the building would look like.

Speaker 1: 27:40

It's insane. It's similar AI, it's a similar AI function. I mean, yeah, it is absolutely insane how AI is working. I remember only probably six months ago, delving into Dali and having a little go with these different functions and really not getting great results at all and thinking, oh gosh, it's way off. And here we are six months later and some of these functions that are coming out are insane. And yeah, in the next six months we'll be so much further ahead. So it's exciting. I think it's really exciting to watch it and I think you've got to embrace it and use it, haven't you?

Speaker 2: 28:18

Yes, I think that's brilliant, I agree. And to play around with some of these features back, this is incredible. I mean, what would your recommendation be? Things are always going to be changing and shifting. To stay on top of it.

Speaker 1: 28:30

That's Well. I mean, canva is such a good gauge with AI because it's following, if not on the front of a lot of the trends and they're doing such amazing work all of the time. So I would definitely make sure you're signed up to any newsletters with Canva. When you go into Canva, you'll often see at the top bar they'll release different announcements, so always have a little look at that. There's also the design school within Canva, so there's a lot of functions within Canva that can keep you up to date and, obviously, follow along with people that are creating tips. I'm not just saying myself. There's a lot of other people out there as well, but there are a lot of people that are releasing tips to show you how to use these new functions and new features. So, yeah, just keep yourself aware of these things, because it is moving so fast. You don't want to fall behind and a lot of these things are going to save you so much time, so much energy and, potentially, money, so it really is imperative to stay at the forefront of it really.

Speaker 2: 29:27

Yes, and you do a beautiful job at keeping this. I mean, I like to watch your content all the time. Where do you prefer that people go to connect with you to see these updates that you share?

Speaker 1: 29:37

I love connecting on LinkedIn. Linkedin is my place at the moment, so I'm Bex Toms on LinkedIn, so come there. And, yeah, I mean on my website designedtobekindcouk, you'll find other social media links for me, but LinkedIn is probably where I hang out the most. So, yeah, come and have a chat with me over there and you can look at all of my updates and little videos that I do.

Speaker 2: 30:01

Perfect. I love it. Bex, thank you so much. This was such a great conversation to kind of kick us off in the year, and I am very excited to hear what everybody thinks about this episode. Please reach out to Bex, share with me, share online. I think these are great tips for so many organizations. If you think this episode would be helpful for somebody else, please share it on Instagram stories, on LinkedIn. Leave a review below. I love to hear from you. I read every single one. I promise that it makes my heart so happy. Bex, thank you so much for being here and have a great start to 2024.

Speaker 1: 30:33

Thank you for having me, thank you.

Speaker 2: 30:36

Can you tell I love talking all things digital To make this show better. I'd be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you.