We’re a design agency, and we set clients up in Canva all the time. That surprises some people. It shouldn’t. Paying a designer to change the date on this month’s Instagram post is a waste of everyone’s money, and Canva is very good at that kind of job.
Where it goes wrong is when Canva gets used for work it wasn’t built for, or when five people in a business use it with no guardrails and the brand slowly turns into a collection of slightly different fonts.
Where Canva earns its keep
Social media posts from templates. This is Canva’s sweet spot. A designer builds a set of on-brand templates once (quote post, event post, new product, team intro), and you or your staff fill them in each week. You get consistency without paying for every post. Our article on social templates that keep your brand recognisable covers what a good template set includes.
Quick internal documents. Rosters, staff notices, simple one-page price lists, event run sheets. Things that need to look tidy but aren’t the face of the business.
Resizing. Turning one design into a story, a square post and a Facebook cover is fast in Canva, though you’ll usually need to tidy up the result rather than trusting it blindly.
Simple presentations. For a pitch or a talk at the local business chamber, Canva presentations are perfectly good and easy to share as a link.
Short-run, low-stakes print. A sign for the counter, a flyer for the school fete, a voucher. Something where a slightly off colour isn’t the end of the world.
Where it lets you down
Logos. Two problems here. First, a logo built from Canva elements is likely to look like other logos built from the same elements, because thousands of businesses have access to them. Second, Canva’s licence terms restrict using its stock content in a logo or trade mark, which matters if you ever want to register your brand. Read the current licence terms on Canva’s website before you try, and our guide to trade marks for small businesses explains why owning your logo outright matters.
Serious print work. Canva has improved its print exports, and offers print-oriented PDF options including CMYK on some plans. But it still isn’t a professional layout tool. Colour control is limited, you can’t easily check things like ink coverage or overprint, and printers regularly see Canva files that need fixing. For business cards, brochures, signage and anything in large quantities, have a designer prepare the files or at least check them. Our guide to print-ready files lists what printers look for.
Long documents. Reports, catalogues and manuals over a handful of pages get painful. There’s no proper master page system, styles don’t cascade the way they do in layout software, and changing one thing can mean fixing it on every page by hand.
Anything that needs to be different from your competitors. Canva templates are popular because they look good. That’s also the problem: the café down the road may be using the same one. A template is a starting point for internal use, not a brand.
Complex information. Canva’s charts are fine for a simple bar chart. For anything that needs careful infographic design, it’s easy to make something that looks busy and explains nothing.
Keeping Canva on-brand
The difference between a business that uses Canva well and one that doesn’t is almost entirely in the setup. Spend an afternoon on this once.
1. Set up your Brand Kit. Add your logo files (main, stacked and white versions), your exact brand colours as hex codes, and your fonts. If your brand fonts aren’t in Canva, upload them, provided your font licence allows it. Check which Brand Kit features your plan includes, since Canva changes plan features from time to time.
2. Use only the brand fonts and colours. Delete or ignore everything else. The fastest way to an inconsistent brand is everyone picking their favourite font from the dropdown.
3. Build a small set of templates. Five to eight good templates cover most small businesses. More than that and people stop knowing which to use.
4. Lock what shouldn’t move. Canva lets you lock elements in a design, so the logo, frame and layout stay put while the text and photo can change. Use it on every template.
5. Name things clearly. “Instagram, event, square” and “Instagram, quote, story” beat “Copy of Untitled design (4)”.
6. Decide who can edit templates. Everyone can use them. One person changes them.
7. Make a one-page cheat sheet. Which template for what, how to swap the photo, and the three things never to change. Pin it in the team folder.
A quick test for any Canva job
Ask three questions before you start:
- Will this be printed in quantity, on something expensive, or at a large size?
- Is it the first thing a new customer will see of my business?
- Does it need to last more than a year?
If the answer to any of them is yes, it’s probably worth a designer. If all three are no, Canva is likely the right tool, and you’ll save money doing it yourself.
A sensible split
For most small businesses we work with, the arrangement that works looks like this. A designer handles the logo, brand guidelines, website, signage, vehicles, printed stationery and anything long or complex. The designer also builds a Canva template set and Brand Kit. The business then uses Canva for day-to-day social posts, notices and small jobs.
That way you pay for design where it shows, and you’re not waiting on anyone to post about Friday’s specials.
Our graphic design team builds the Brand Kit and template set for that split, and takes on the signage and long documents Canva struggles with, while the logo itself belongs in a proper brand and logo design project. Get in touch with a few of the things you’re making in Canva now, so we can build templates around them.