A Quick and Easy Way to Create Graphics

If you are into blogging, cool social media posts, or just like the idea of creating images & graphics for things (maybe invitations, posters, album covers, etc.) but you are not that great with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator, then we have a savior for you.

Canva. 

If you are unfamiliar with Canva, for whatever reason, we we will give you a quick and easy tutorial of how to use it.

1. Sign up form account.


2. Choose a design template that you'd like to use. Canva conveniently labels them so you know what size works best for your project. There are more options than in this picture but we can only take screen shots that are so big, you know?









3. Choose your project. For this example, we will choose the "social media" template. There are templates for specific social media platforms, emails, marketing materials such as business cards, posters, flyers, menus, etc. You can also choose templates for documents and presentations, blogging & ebooks, events, advertising tools for both print and web. Yeah, you have a lot of options.









4. Get to creating. From here, you can choose your various options.



a. Layouts that are pre-designed. Some of the layouts are free to use and some cost $1. If you choose a layout, you can manipulate it how you want. You can change font, images, colors, etc.







b. Text. There are several text layouts that you can choose from, again, some are free and some cost $1. If you don't see that you like, you can add in your text that is structure-free. As a Chicago graphic design studio, even we approve of the text options they offer (although, they do offer Lobster and a few other iffy fonts…).










c. Backgrounds. Want a cool background? They have plenty of options, free and $1. Again, you can change the color of the background. Top left corner, you can see the color options (the + is so you can create your own color).












d. Uploads. You can upload your own photos to use in your creations, too! You can connect to Facebook and Google Drive to attach photos as well.








Are you excited to use Canva? We sure hope so! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact Integraphix, a Chicago graphic design agency with over 25 years experience.

10 Common Mistakes Graphic Designers Make

It can be easy to make a mistake as a graphic designer, especially when you are not a very seasoned graphic designer. As a Chicago marketing company with a team of experienced graphic designers, our team put together a list of 10 common mistakes that are made by designers to help you grow as a designer with excellence!

1. Having Multiple Typefaces. Never use more than three fonts per layout; in fact, our team doesn't advocate using more than one or two, just to be safe. If you use a logo in a layout, you can have continuity with the logo by using the typeface from the logo with other copy. 
2. Abusing Emphasis. Use font tricks carefully to create emphasis, don't use too many or it can be counter-productive. 
3. Double Spacing. If you have a habit of hitting the space bar twice after a period, you'd better nix that habit. It can be distracting and is often considered taboo by typesetters. 
4. Using All Caps. Using all caps in a design can look amateurish and be distracting. 
5. Underlining text. Underlining text is only okay when showing there is a link. Underlining text was originally created as a way to show there was special text when bolding wasn't around (with typewriters). 
6.  Not Knowing where commas and periods go with quotes. The comma and the period will  always go inside the quotation marks when using a quote. Other punctuation marks, such as question marks and exclamation points, will go outside the quotation marks unless they are part of the quote.
7. Not Knowing Dashes. There are three types of dashes. You can use the hyphen or minus sign, which is used for breaking apart words and to prevent weird spacing. There's the en dash ' ' ' which is called that because it is often wider than an "n" and should be used to replace "to", such as 9'12 p.m.. Finally, there's the em dash, which is the longer option of the dashes here and is used to split up sentences, much like a semicolon. 
8. Ladders. These are multiple hyphenation that appear on consecutive lines. Do not put more than two consecutive hyphens or it will steal the spotlight in your copy. 
9. Rivers. If you really want to justify your type, be on the look out for big spaces and gaps, which appear vertically in your type, these are called "rivers of white space". You generally see these in newspapers. 
10. Special characters. We are talking about things like the copyright, registered trademark, ™, and ellipses. Use these when using a brand's name or something that has one of these connected with it (except for the ellipses). Use an ellipses when omitting part of a quote. 

Do you want to know more trips that can help your career as a graphic designer? Then email Integraphix, a Chicago graphic design company.