Use Canva for Easy, Eye-Catching (And Free) Infographics
You stare at a Word document full of dense text, nary a headline or bulleted list in sight. You aimlessly play with font sizes and faces and tables and margins, knowing you aren’t really making any progress. Not even clip art can save it. You’re doomed: the document is utterly, completely boring.
We’ve all been there, faced with this seemingly impossible task: to somehow transform pages of text into something people will actually read. (Or better yet, something people will actually WANT to read!)
The next time you find yourself in this unenviable position, I encourage you to check out a free, nifty online tool called Canva.
I discovered this tool while trying to turn the Slaw Reader Survey results (which began as a snooze-inducing “wall of text” of raw data) into something engaging and eye-catching that folks would be excited to read.
Here’s one of the infographics I created to show where Slaw readers live:
Canva has:
- tons of templates and backgrounds that you can customize with your own material (for this particular project, I used some templates almost “as is”, and started other infographics from scratch)
- a vast assortment of icons, images, typefaces, etc.
- a simple interface with helpful built-in rulers and guidelines
- good interactive tutorials to show you the ropes of the service
You can also use Canva for social media graphics, posts, presentation slides, and really any other graphic-based creation you can think of. I encourage you to try it out – not only will you come up with something aesthetically pleasing and useful, I bet you’ll have fun while you’re at it.
Start the discussion!