graphic design Archives - My Team Connects

You have a great eye!

You know great design when you see it, but maybe you’re like me, and you’ve never had the knack for creating really awesome graphic designs. Now all that has changed.

Canva is making pros out of even the most challenged graphics creators with their easy-peasy design software. Now first let me say I don’t get any money or other kickbacks from Canva. I’m just a happy user. I’ve been using Canva for about a year now, as well as Pic Monkey (another super useful graphic design site for making beautiful pictures and adding effects to your photos), but I jumped into the paid version of Canva — Canva for Work — recently because of this one amazing feature: Canva’s Magic Resize Tool.

I make a lot of my own graphics, learning as much as I can from other designers on YouTube and through tutorials created by graphics design software websites (including Adobe). Lately, since ALL the social sites are all about images, I was beginning to think I was in over my head. I thought I’d have to hire someone to create a graphic per day for each of my social sites!

You probably already know this, but you can’t just use one size. Different sites all require different sized images: Twitter’s shared photo is 1024 x 512 at the time of this writing; the sky’s the limit for vertical length on Pinterest, and my other shared image sizes for Facebook and Instagram are square (various pixels suggested). If you try to make the same subject fit all those parameters, suddenly your entire morning’s shot. Totally unacceptable!

So what is the Magic Resize Tool and how do you use it in Canva? Let me explain.

First you make one graphic design for social media. I start with a square design and create my graphic within those parameters, using my preferred fonts and any graphic elements I’ve chosen to brand my shareable graphics. One of the perks of Canva for Work is that you can load up your logos, and other style elements you use regularly right within Canva’s stored images section. As you can see, I use the Essential Oils Fun Fact dot I created for many of my regular designs.

When you’re done creating your original concept, simply save it and then click the “Magic Resize” button under the drop down under “File” in the upper left corner of your screen. A drop down of 41 applications for your original graphic appears. All you have to do is tick off where your applying your graphic design. Simply check the boxes in front of your social media sites where you’ll be sharing, or another application, like a Facebook ad or a Kindle ebook cover.

Suddenly, a bunch of new windows will open in your browser, one for each application you checked. As you move across each tab, you simply make your edits on each design.

The fun part about Magic Resize is that the magical Canva software intuitively rearranges some of your graphic design elements to give you a head start on your edits. A few times, these changes are perfectly fine, and I just save them the way they are. Most times, though, you’ll want to go in and tweak your design a bit, widening a border, enlarging a font to fit the artboard size, etc. You’ll know what to do, and you’ll find that it’s very easy to do. It literally takes seconds to tweak your designs… no more recreating them from scratch every single time.

Here’s an example:

I’m a huge fan! At first Canva takes a little time to figure out, but I assure you, it’s worth the time learning it and the money you invest in a year of Canva for Work. The current price is $12.95 per month, or $119.40 per year (August 2015). However right now you can get Canva for Work for free for 6o days, just to try it out. Click here to visit Canva and learn more.

By the way, If you happen to be a Young Living Member and you would like to use my images of single and blended essential oil bottles with a transparent background — so you don’t have to deal with that white box in the background every time you want to make anew graphic — please contact me and I’ll be happy to send you my files. After all, Sharing is caring!

If I’ve got your attention and your curious about how essential oils can make your work-from-home or freelancer lifestyle even better, let me know and I’ll send you a link to my free ebook, There’s No Wrong Way To Use An Essential Oil.

The only problem is, I’m not a graphic designer.

I like to dabble in it. I like art and design. I own Adobe’s Creative Suite for all the fun stuff I can do with logos, banners, email design, and of course my children’s birthday thank-you’s, but when I need a real design, I hire the heavy hitters.

They’re called professionals.

So why did I agree to this job? Well, simple: a customer who took a chance on me when I was just starting out, asked if we could design a flyer for his golf tournament. Somewhere in that question I mistook a simple request for a vote of confidence.

Out of gratitude and a sense of loyalty, I wanted to over-deliver on a solution. I guess I even wanted the challenge. And of course, I wanted his golf tournament flyer to look amazing. In the end, I suppose I made the project into something “I wanted.” I offered to help…but who was I to think I would do a better job than a graphic designer?

Quite some time ago, I read an interview with Ann Richards, Texas’ illustrious and beloved governor from the early 90’s. (Please forgive my faulty memory if I get this wrong!) She told a story about her children’s aloofness regarding her offers to help them with certain matters. Her response was one of perplexity:

“…but I could fix you.”

Now, is that a mom thing or a governor thing? Because there’s nothing I’d like more than to credit myself with having gubernatorial leadership qualities. In truth, though, I think Gov. Richards was admitting — tongue in cheek — that her helpful leanings might be tinged with control issues.

No one wants to be “fixed.” Sometimes we don’t even want our own problems fixed. We just need a solution — nothing personal about that.

In the end, the flyer turned out lovely. The client liked it. As for all that time I spent learning as I went, I also learned some valuable things. In my eagerness to help I made it personal — a favor returned; can-do enthusiasm vs. true competence; a need to over-deliver on a project just out of reach of my own talents.

And yet, it was not exactly the smartest moment in my small biz history.

A small business is a funny personal thing. We own it. We wear it. It bears our own personal identity. We learn from it. Things about business, people, and ourselves.

But it tips over when you fail to respect your own resources and abilities which your customer deserves and expects from you. A good solution sometimes means turning down business, withholding the urge to “fix” things yourself, and referring the job to someone else.

Lesson learned.