I spend time on graphics and animation tools that can be useful to indie authors. Probably too much time.
I ran across Frances Caballo’s Social Media for Just for Writers blog site and she has a great article on adding visuals to your book marketing efforts. In it she discusses the Canva web application for creating graphics.
Canva allows you to quickly create graphics suited to a host of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, and many others. Moreover, the application allows you to design work that will be printed as well.
One of the things that I really like about Canva is that the designs are sized for you automatically as soon as you decide what image type you will create:
I think the wide selection of pre-sized image templates is one of the big advantages of Canva.
After you decide what kind of image you want, you can:
- Use one of their predefined layouts
- Add to your design from their stock of images and graphics
- Add text (size, font, colour, positioning, etc)
- Change background colours
- Upload and use your own images and graphics
- And more!
After you have created your graphic you can save locally as either an image or a high-quality PDF (which can then be printed if you are creating hard copy). Alternatively you can leave the image on the Canva site and embed it your blog from there.
There is virtually no learning curve; you can be creating in five minutes.
Canva will keep a copy of your work so you can return for later edits. Finally, Canva gives you the ability to embed links in your images, though I have not tried that out yet.
Best of all Canva is free to use with a wide selection of free graphics. They also provide other graphics as $1 each, but there is no requirement to use them.
So, if you are a little creative and want to avoid software like Photoshop (nothing wrong with Photoshop, it’s just complex to use), check out Canva.
