Canva: The 80/20 way to create photos & videos?
As a founder, the 80/20 principle has become my best friend.
In coding. In sales. And definitely in marketing.
Talking about marketing, there are 2 things to learn when it comes to creating marketing material as a founder: photos and, increasingly, videos.
Lately I've been diving into the world of photo and video creation (with the 80/20 rule (aka Pareto's Principle) in mind).
My journey to finding the 80/20 photo & video creator
I've tried a lot of tools. Photoshop. Illustrator. After Effects.
Most of them were pretty good...for professional photo/video editors.
This wasn't me. I'm a founder. I just want something to create something that looks good, fast. I'm willing to accept compromises. 80% less work for something that looks 10-20% worse? I'm in!
After Photoshop, I went to the other side. I dabbled with a bunch of online tools for creating photos/videos (I'll talk more about this later).
Most of these tools were pretty bad/slow/lacked templates/functionality.
However, I found something that's somewhere in the middle and fits in my 80/20 framework: Canva.
Why I like Canva for creating photos
Three reasons: Templates, ease-of-use and made-for-founders-and-marketers.
Templates: Canva has a bunch of them.
I'm writing this post in August (summer). When I searched for summer templates on Canva, it showed me over 44,000 options:
These are not just some random pictures made by a random guy (or gal) online.
These are pictures that actually look good.
Ease of use: Designing of Canva just felt more intuitive to me. Say I have this design:
Wanna edit a part of the picture? Just click on it...and edit. After you click, you'll see the most commonly-used options (like the ability to change the image, adjust some basic filters and so on).
Made for founders and marketers: Most of the templates on Canva are promotional in nature. After using Canva for some time, it became obvious that this is a tool made for you and me.
Why I like Canva for creating video
Several days ago I went on a voyage to discover the best video editing tool for me as a founder/marketer.
I tried almost every popular video editing tool on the planet. One of them was Flixer:
Another one was Kapwig:
I tried a few other popular videos tools and had these issues:
-
They're slow. I didn't have the smoothest experience editing videos. Also, editing in the browser was a pain.
-
Not a lot of templates. Many of the templates were kinda ugly as well.
-
&&A lot of powerful features are paid-only. &&As an indie hacker, free/cheap = good :D
I knew that Canva released a video editor a year ago but wasn't sure how good it is. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.
The reasons I was surprised: FIrst, the timeline.
It's a basic concept for someone who's dabbling in video editing. But it can be quite confusing for a layman.
Canva, in comparison, has a concept of 'pages':
Each part of the video is simply a page you can edit and animate.
The second reason were the templates. They had a lot of free templates.
Also, Most of the Canva's functionality is free.
Canva vs. Adobe vs. others
This image does a pretty good job of summarising Canva's strengths/weaknesses:
Canva is good for making marketing videos: This is something we care about as founders. Often, 50%+ of our job is growth so having something that makes growth easier (by making creating creatives easy) is a good thing.
Canva is good for creating eBooks: This can be great if you're creating B2B PDFs/lead magnets for products with long sales cycles.
&&There are good tutorials about Canva, like this one and this one. After spending a few hours on watching those, you'll be ready to do some powerful stuff with the software.
Canva is NOT good at creating animations: To be frank, I didn't found any 80/20 animation software similar to Canva (if you have any good suggestions, let me know!) It looks like if you wanna become good at animation, you need to pick up After Effects (and then use templates like these to accomplish things faster).
One drawback of using the free version
You can't resize photos/videos without getting the paid version.
Keep this in mind if you want to create ads for Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat, for example. All of these platforms have different size requirements.
Did you find Canva useful as an indie hacker?
canvas is actually such an underrated tool. can do pretty much anything. I use it for infographics and Instagram posts. It's actually a great tool for youtube thumbnails as well.
Hello there! We are professional designers and in my opinion, Canva serves its purpose well for beginners. However, as you begin to make progress within your company or business, it's advisable to consider hiring a dedicated designer. Using the same Canva templates that other companies utilize might prevent your brand from truly standing out.
I understand that financial resources might be limited at the outset. Nonetheless, it's important to be cautious about creating anything on Canva that you intend to print, as there's a significant chance it could turn out pixelated. Printers often require vector formats, which Canva does not provide(the SVG is not fully and SVG).
As your business gains momentum, it's a smart move to reinvest your resources in a professional designer. The impact of a skilled designer can potentially amplify your business growth by tenfold compared to what Canva alone can achieve.
It's an excellent tool for people like me, who constantly dodge professional media editing software.
From my experience (I had Premium out there for a couple of months), however, I often stumbled across some noticeable limitations that prevented me from achieving the end goal, like managing animations or how simply skew images.
Canva has really stepped-up in video editing.
On top of that, Pro account offers much more features which makes it really affordable and easy to use platform.
For photos, check affinity instead of adobe.
Yes, i am using.
Canva offers an efficient 80/20 approach for creating photos and videos, streamlining the design process and maximizing productivity.
Yes, Agree with you, Canva is a good choice for photo and video creation.
Good post!
Those are good points 👍
Sometimes I also get into that "getting done" mode & felt Canva is the best tool for it. I havent edited any videos yet, will check it out
Canva, Figma and Iconify and you have (almost) all you need for your creative needs :)
Thanks for sharing this. I found it very helpful.
Thank you.
welcome
Currently, I utilize Canva for marketing endeavors on my website, logomakerr.ai (https://logomakerr.ai/) —an AI-powered platform crafting logos swiftly. However, your post has enlightened me with fresh concepts I'm eager to adopt. I'm optimistic that these insights will enhance my company's social media presence.
Canva is great, I added a logo from canva to a blog
canva is best
Yes I am using Canva pro version. It's good for video.
i used
Have a look at https://designer.microsoft.com/ Microsoft Canva competitor.
i have try
Thanks a lot/ It was interesting for me
I totally agree with your perspective on Canva. As a fellow founder, I’ve found it to be an indispensable tool for quickly creating engaging visuals for my business. The sheer variety of templates and the intuitive interface make it easy to create professional-looking content without the steep learning curve other software might require. The fact that it’s made with founders and marketers in mind really shines through in its functionality. And while it might not be perfect for creating animations or resizing without the paid version, the benefits far outweigh these minor drawbacks. Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Thank
I've been a fan of Canva for a while now especially that it is free I have used it for Slideshows and also poster creation it is great. I do have a question though what is the 80/20 rule?
fan have a different level, like crazy
hi, im glad and happy to learn somthing new and expiririence new things.
me too
using only Figma as a designer! & started by 1st indiehacking site victrays.com
Yes! I tried Canva's free trial to explore all the offerings.
I use Canva to create gif and videos for marketing!
yes, it's work
can't seen anything
This comment was deleted 6 months ago.