Course Curriculum

Social Media Content Creation: Canva Beginner to Advanced

9sections
98lectures
13h 21mtotal

What you’ll learn

  • Create eye-catching designs for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn that will help you get noticed online

  • Save time and money by designing your own (mobile-friendly) graphics using Canva and other online tools

  • Learn advanced skills like creating moving GIFs, videos and professional eBooks

  • Create beautiful Canva templates that you can share with your audience or sell online

  • Design captivating videos for organic posts or paid video ads

01

Design Wisdom

9 lectures • 1hr 16min

  • Get Started [+ COURSE GUIDE]

    Get started by downloading the course guide, signing up for Canva (pro trial optional), and using keyboard shortcuts and templates to progress from beginner to advanced through practical exercises.

    8:49

  • Making a More Creative You

    Set personal goals for mastering Canva, cultivate a creative, human-centered brand, and connect with your audience through authentic storytelling that stands out from AI-driven content.

    6:45

  • The Psychology of Colours

    Explore the psychology of colors and how brands use color emotions to connect with audiences, from yellow optimism to blue trust. Learn how Canva palettes and fonts reinforce branding.

    6:09

  • Build Your Colour Palette

    Develop a flexible brand color palette that supports recognition and evolution using the eyedropper extension, Canva, and Coolors to create hex colors that are accessible and adaptable.

    12:31

  • Get to Know Licensing

    Explore how licensing governs assets from stock sites, including royalty-free terms, Creative Commons CC0, attribution rules, and non-commercial versus commercial use. Apply licensing checks to avoid copyright issues.

    5:09

  • Find Free Images, Videos & Music

    Discover how to find free images, videos, and music for social media design using Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, YouTube Studio audio library, and Upbeat, with licensing, collections, and organized cloud storage.

    8:17

  • Find Your Fonts

    Explore choosing and pairing fonts in Canva, from serif to sans serif, plus script and handwritten styles, using Google Fonts and font Joy for branding with up to three fonts.

    10:25

  • Do NOT Do This

    Explore Canva design basics: jpeg vs png vs svg, raster vs vector, print vs web, and how contrast, kerning, and hierarchy shape clear calls to action.

    14:01

  • Exercise: Craft Your Brand Kit

    Put what you’ve learned into action by creating a brand kit for a business or imagined brand, including name, 4–5 core values, a coolors palette, 2–3 fonts, and Canva assets.

    4:06
02

Canva 101

11 lectures • 1hr 36min

  • Introduction: Get Started with Canva

    Explore how to navigate Canva, organize your projects, set up your brand, collaborate with others, and find inspiration to streamline design workflows with practical Canva dashboard insights.

    2:00

  • Get to Know Canva Pro & Free

    Learn how Canva Pro supports brand kits, unlimited color palettes, and fonts for consistent branding, while Canva Free restricts to one brand kit and three colors.

    14:24

  • Beginner Canva Hacks

    Explore beginner Canva hacks to brand and customize presentations using templates, styles, color palettes, and fonts; apply palettes across pages and organize assets with folders.

    12:49

  • Master Your Canva Workflow

    Master your Canva workflow with tips to organize uploads, copy pages to a master document, and consolidate up to 350 pages in one design for easy export and sharing.

    6:56

  • Work with Others in Canva

    Explore how Canva teams enable collaboration through design sharing, permissions, and comments, while using template links, brand templates, and scribe to streamline onboarding.

    10:16

  • Get to Know the Mobile App

    Master how the Canva mobile app complements desktop design by enabling quick on-the-go edits, previewing on a phone, and using layers, brand assets, and drawing.

    9:40

  • Schedule Your Posts

    Explore Canva's scheduling tool, link social accounts, and schedule Instagram posts with future dates, while noting its clunky, locked project files and an alternative Metrocall option.

    4:09

  • Kindness & Accessibility in Your Designs

    Design with kindness and accessibility in Canva by using the accessibility tool, alt text, color contrast, typography checks, captions, and inclusive imagery to reflect your audience.

    12:17

  • How to Find Inspiration

    Discover a practical process to generate inspiration for social media content by drawing from Instagram, Pinterest, and other sources, then organize ideas with collections, secret boards, and My Mind.

    11:29

  • Exercise: Set Up Your Brand in Canva

    Organize your brand assets in Canva by building a brand kit with colors, logos, fonts, and images in structured folders, then gather inspiration to design like a producer.

    7:43

  • Canva Interface Update

    Explore Canva's updated dashboard and the AI emphasis. Learn to create a document with multiple pages in different dimensions and use custom sizes and bulk resizing for Pro users.

    4:45
03

Canva for Social Media Graphics

18 lectures • 2hr 18min

  • Introduction: Canva for Social Media Graphics

    Learn to create effective social media graphics in Canva with cross-device templates and quick workflows. Master manual feature finding, keyboard shortcuts, and downloading finished designs for easy reuse.

    4:10

  • Inspo for Inspirational Quote Graphics

    Learn to design inspirational quote graphics in Canva by focusing on a few fonts, colors, and images to create distinct vibes, with brand examples and momentum as a design aid.

    4:00

  • Inspirational Quote Graphics

    design stunning instagram portrait quote graphics in canva by starting from scratch or templates, selecting fonts and backgrounds, aligning text, testing on mobile, and exporting for cross-platform posting.

    12:11

  • Easy Tweet (X Post) Graphics

    Create visually appealing twitter/x post graphics from screenshots in Canva, using brand colors, shadows, texture, and optional cross-platform promotion, with credited authors.

    10:27

  • Set Up Your Facebook Cover Design

    Design mobile-optimized facebook covers in Canva using a 1200 by 674 canvas, placing key text in the white safe area for cross-device readability with templates.

    4:26

  • Create Your Facebook Cover

    Create a Facebook cover in Canva by selecting cohesive Unsplash images, aligning with consistent spacing, adjusting color and contrast, adding accessible text shadows, and exporting as a png.

    8:33

  • Optimise Your Facebook Cover

    Create a Canva cover for Facebook, adjust placement, transparency, and font size for desktop and mobile, then test on phone for clarity and contrast.

    3:40

  • Repurpose Your Design

    Repurpose your Canva designs for different platforms by resizing or copying layers, preserving key visuals while optimizing for mobile, using templates, layers, and alignment to avoid obstructing elements.

    8:22

  • Gather Your Brand Assets

    Design with an existing brand to practice, research competitors, and create a moodboard in Canva. Gather logos, colors, and fonts using Brand Fetch and relevance AI.

    4:53

  • YouTube Channel Banner

    Design a Canva YouTube channel banner using correct banner dimensions and templates, with safe desktop, tablet, and mobile areas, plus color and font choices and a clear call to action.

    12:32

  • Clickable YouTube Thumbnails

    Learn to design natural looking YouTube thumbnails in Canva, test variations with A/B methods to optimize click-through rate, and create consistent, readable, text-angled thumbnails with minimal text.

    14:16

  • Free Background Remover Options

    Explore free background remover options like Remove.bg and Pixlr editor, compare them to Canva Pro’s tools, and learn to export transparent PNGs with soft edges and gradient masks.

    6:01

  • LinkedIn Profile Banner

    Start from scratch in Canva, set the LinkedIn banner to 1584 by 396, and snap images into place with frames. Enhance with background removal and transparency for desktop and mobile.

    10:01

  • Set Up Your Carousels

    Learn how to design Canva carousels with either separate slides or a cohesive, overlapping flow, by creating six 1080 by 1350 panels with no-gap guides for precise alignment.

    6:26

  • Create Captivating Carousels

    14:12

  • Post Your Carousel on Instagram

    Learn to create Instagram carousels in Canva by checking accessibility and color contrast, splitting an image into six columns, then uploading and ordering the six images for a flawless post.

    3:53

  • Post Your Carousel on LinkedIn

    Export your Canva carousel as a PDF and upload it as a LinkedIn document for multi-page posts. Align pages in order and optimize for mobile and desktop readability.

    3:59

  • Exercise: Fix My Mistakes

    6:23
04

Canva for Social Media Videos

18 lectures • 2hr 42min

  • Introduction: Canva for Social Media Videos

    3:10

  • Animate Your Carousel

    Learn to animate your Instagram carousel by adding free jitter videos to Canva, align elements for a cohesive design, and export 1080x1350 mp4s with video mockups.

    10:32

  • Powerful Pinterest Pins

    14:54

  • Intriguing Instagram Stories

    11:18

  • Share Your Instagram Stories

    7:01

  • Make Yourself into a GIF

    12:05

  • GIFs & Memes

    9:59

  • Easy Tweet Reels

    3:32

  • Quick Quote Reels

    Convert static Canva graphics into engaging reels for Instagram by resizing, applying fonts and gradients, and animating text with element timing and layering for feminine and masculine themes.

    13:21

  • Post Your Reels

    Post your reels with awareness of cover photos, cropping, and profile visibility to maximize readability. Use templates to keep text visible in both reels and profile feeds.

    7:50

  • Layering Images & Videos

    Learn to layer static images over video and text in Canva, using background remover, magic expand, and transparency to create dynamic, platform-ready posts.

    8:55

  • Professional Animated Posts

    Create engaging animated posts in Canva by mastering the match and move transition, building textured backgrounds, framing speakers, and exporting as GIFs or MP4s for Facebook and LinkedIn.

    13:31

  • Audio Posts (with Cool Captions)

    Create branded captions in Canva for audio posts by converting audio to a video and applying dynamic captions. Note Canva's timing limitations and that this works best for short videos.

    9:26

  • Using Frames for Videos

    Design an ad or organic gym video in Canva using frames for videos and stacked letter frames to spell power. Crop, align, desaturate, and export variations for a polished post.

    8:35

  • How Are Videos Ads Different?

    Learn how paid video ads differ across Facebook and Instagram, with vertical Reels and Stories, square in-feed ads, and adaptable length and licensing considerations.

    4:56

  • Captivating Video Ads

    Learn how to design captivating video ads in Canva from scratch, using square layouts, mixed photos and video, and animated search-bar text to promote daycares across placements.

    13:46

  • Resize Your Video Ads

    7:54

  • Exercise: Create a Social Media Video

    Create a social media video with Canva, using formats like Instagram story, GIF post, tweet-style reel, or quote reel; practice layering images and videos before advancing to more advanced techniques.

    1:16
05

Canva for Business

19 lectures • 2hr 34min

  • Introduction: Canva for Business

    Explore Canva for business beyond social media, creating ebooks, business cards, websites, interactive quizzes, and mockups for email capture and selling on Etsy and Creative Market.

    1:28

  • Set Up Your eBook Design

    Learn to design an e-book in Canva inspired by Creative Market designs, build mood boards, choose colors and fonts, and set a4 dimensions, margins, and guides for polished multi-page layouts.

    9:05

  • Design Amazing eBooks

    Design amazing ebooks in Canva by arranging arch frames, color schemes, and background images, while adding hyperlinks, internal page links, and printable templates for a polished, fillable final product.

    12:04

  • Clickable & Fillable PDFs

    Discover how to create clickable and fillable PDFs using a free tool, adding text fields, checkboxes, signatures, and images, with alignment guides and hyperlinks for browser or download use.

    3:18

  • Compress Images and PDFs

    Learn to compress PDFs and images for emails, storage, and websites using Smallpdf and Tinypng, reducing file sizes without noticeable quality loss while preserving essential detail.

    5:57

  • Animate Your eBook

    Animate your ebook by turning pages in hazeen, recording a flipbook as video, cropping to create a gif, and importing it into canva with matched background colors for social stories.

    7:13

  • Business Cards That Impress

    Explore crafting impressive business cards with Canva and Pinterest inspiration, and learn printing options, dimensions, bleed, and QR codes with redirect links to keep designs future-proof.

    12:16

  • Print Your Business Card

    Learn to print with Canva for print business cards with front and back design on premium matte paper, order 100 cards, check bleed and edges, and download the pdf.

    6:20

  • Make Professional Posters

    Create poster designs for dance auditions using Font Frame and Transform, mastering image cutouts, background removal, and layered text to produce print-ready posters with gradient backgrounds and optional reflections.

    12:59

  • Create Captivating Mockups

    Navigate Canva's mockup library with 8000 options for cards, ebooks, and packaging. Learn to adjust images with fill, save, or use directly in designs, and explore reflections and video mockups.

    8:30

  • Video Mockups

    Explore creating video mockups in Canva, picking scenes and posters, adjusting video fit, blending backgrounds with a color picker, and embedding animated text for social media ads and websites.

    7:28

  • Animate Your Email Signature

    Animate your email signature by layering a photo cutout with animated elements or a video background, then export as a GIF or create text animation.

    7:22

  • Set Up Your Email Signature

    Create and customize an email signature with HubSpot’s free generator, including links and images, then add it to Gmail by settings, paste, and set as default for messages and replies.

    4:45

  • Brand Your Desktop Background

    Learn to design a branded Canva desktop background in 1920x1080, organize into four categories, apply brand colors, and use sticky notes and reminders to stay productive.

    6:39

  • Powerful Presentations

    Create compelling Canva presentations using templates and AI, customize brand colors and fonts, import data for dynamic charts, and enhance with animations, videos, and QR codes for sharing.

    18:37

  • Polls & Quizzes

    Explore polls and quizzes in Canva, noting quizzes have a submit button and right or wrong answers, while polls capture opinions; link via a QR code to collect real-time responses.

    5:46

  • Design a Website in Canva

    Design a Canva website using desktop templates with margins and rulers, rename pages for navigation, embed Typeform and Calendly, and optimize mobile stacking through grouping.

    18:44

  • Make a Link in Bio

    Create a mobile-first link-in-bio page in Canva, customize links to your sites or channels, publish it as a website, and share a custom domain for Instagram bios.

    2:07

  • Exercise: Canva for Business

    Design a fake product mock-up in Canva for business using pro and free templates, four color variations, and cut-out mockups to craft a dynamic reel.

    3:44
06

Working with AI

10 lectures • 1hr 6min

  • Introduction: Working with AI

    Explore how to work with AI as a creative partner in Canva, using pro tools and accessible substitutes to create images, videos, illustrations, apparel, and products.

    1:46

  • Magic Design & Studio

    Explore Canva's magic design and magic studio to generate templates and customize visuals with your brand. Use AI edits, background removal, and text placement for first-time home buyer topics.

    8:33

  • Effective Prompt Engineering

    Master prompt engineering to guide AI to create beautiful images, using Canva's Dreamlab with Leonardo AI, reverse engineering prompts, and ChatGPT to refine style and brand voice.

    6:45

  • The Power of Magic Write

    Explore Canva's magic write to generate content with prompts, tailor brand voice and tone, and fix spelling or shorten text.

    5:46

  • AI for Image Creation

    Explore Canva's AI image tools like Magic Media, compare with Dream Lab and Leonardo AI, adjust prompts, styles, and dimensions, and consider licensing for generated images.

    9:49

  • AI for Illustrations

    Explore AI illustration techniques using Ideogram and Recraft to create cohesive, text-aware graphics and apparel mockups in Canva, while managing prompts, color palettes, and export options.

    11:16

  • AI for Videos

    Explore ai for videos in canva using magic media and magic design to generate short clips from prompts, add text, music, and transitions.

    7:41

  • Bulk Create with AI

    Learn to bulk create Canva pins and social media graphics with AI by generating 30 designs from a data list, using frames, connecting data, and readability-focused layouts.

    8:11

  • Exercise: Get Friendly with AI

    Practice using AI tools to simplify creative workflows and unlock potential in content creation. Leverage Canva Pro features or resources to generate images, videos, and illustrations and refine prompts.

    1:59

  • Canva AI Update

    Discover the Canva AI update, where the dream lab integration moves to the Canva AI dashboard, boosting image and video generation with pro credits and limited carousel support.

    4:38
07

Advanced Content Creation Techniques

11 lectures • 1hr 44min

  • Introduction: Advanced Content Creation Techniques

    Explore advanced Canva content creation techniques, including expert-level animations, as you move from beginner to advanced. Practice at your own pace and revisit later, unlocking Canva’s powerful features.

    2:24

  • Powerful Product Animations - Apparel

    Learn to build apparel product animations in Canva with match and move transitions, zooms, and text highlights on floating images for a looping reel with beat-synced music.

    9:38

  • Powerful Product Animations - Skincare

    Design a skincare product wheel animation by arranging four mockups in a circle, applying center alignment, colored backgrounds, drop shadows, and a match and move transition with 2.5 second duration.

    10:51

  • Infographic Style Animations

    Learn to animate Canva infographics for video content, using Instagram reel format, with simple timing, on enter and on exit effects, and precise use of layers and element timing.

    11:56

  • Quick Intro to Advanced Canva Editing

    Master advanced Canva editing and animations by transforming a brand’s existing assets into a compelling video reel, and practice kindly to grow freelance opportunities.

    4:07

  • Advanced Product Ads

    Create compelling Instagram reels for product ads using Canva, leveraging color coordination, text and shadow effects, match and move transitions, layered visuals, and timing with music.

    27:12

  • Working with Video Background Remover

    Learn to use Canva's video background remover to cut out subjects, stack layers, and add dynamic captions and animations for compelling reels. Optimize with filters, brightness, and subtle music.

    9:51

  • Looping Smoke Effect

    Discover how to craft a looping smoke effect in Canva for LinkedIn posts by trimming a video, speeding it, turning it into a transparent GIF, and overlaying native-looking text.

    9:55

  • Handy Canva Apps - Images

    Explore niche Canva image tools like gradient generator for branded color palettes and image blender for sophisticated blends and overlays, plus perspective tweaks for mockups.

    4:50

  • Handy Canva Apps - Text

    Explore handy Canva apps for text and design, including Magic Morph, type lettering, Font Studio, and type extrude, to apply your brand colors and eye-catching effects.

    5:58

  • Sell Your Canva Designs

    Discover how to sell Canva designs legally by using free elements or Unsplash, avoid pro templates and trademarks, create templates with links, present with mockups, and explore print-on-demand options.

    7:45
08

Assignment

  • Create an Instagram Graphic

    Activity
09

Thank You

2 lectures • 3min

  • Thank You!

    Celebrate completing the Canva beginner to advanced course and apply your social media content creation skills with confidence. You don't have to be a graphic designer to create beautiful content.

    2:11

  • BONUS LECTURE!

    0:46