How to Use the Canva Mobile App For Your Graphics

How To Use The Canva Mobile App For Your Business Visuals?

Canva has proven to be a graphic design powerhouse and a staple for visual design professionals and casuals alike.

With its constantly evolving and improving graphic design tools and interface, there are plenty of reasons to use Canva.

A big one is the fact that because it’s cloud-based, it’s available cross-platform.

This means that you can keep and edit your designs on any laptop or mobile device so long as the same account is logged in.

Its availability on mobile devices is great for people on the go who want to make visuals for:

• social media posts,
• Stories (e.g. Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, YouTube Stories),
• Reels (e.g. Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels),

…or any other digital marketing graphics for their business.

That’s why in this post, we’re going to walk you through how to use the Canva mobile app.

Whether or not you’re familiar with Canva’s browser version, the mobile app for smartphones is pretty straightforward and easy to use.

You have the same design tools, preset templates, stock images, videos, audio, and elements…

…with the difference mainly being the interface adjusted to be optimized for mobile portrait view. 

The Canva app is available for both android and apple devices.

Once downloaded, be sure you’re logging in with your existing account to access your designs on that account.

Now let’s discuss how to use the Canva mobile app for your business graphics.

How To Use The Canva Mobile App For Your Graphics

If you just need to simply edit an existing graphic you’ve made before, you can access them through your mobile app here on your Recent designs row. 

But let’s say you want to design a new square Instagram post.

If you want to start with a photo from your camera roll, you can tap on the camera icon.

If you want to start with a pre-designed template, you can type in Instagram on the search bar at the very top of the Canva mobile app.

Select the Instagram post and then you can pick one of the available preset templates. 

If you want to start with a blank slate, you can tap on the plus button on the bottom right corner of your screen and select Instagram post.

It’ll open a blank canvas for you, but you’ll still have a retractable drawer that will automatically hide when you have your canvas selected.

If you want to have it back on your screen, just tap on the plus button on the bottom left corner of your phone.

If you want to add design elements like illustrations, text, stock photos, videos, and audio…

…as well as upload your own, they’re also in this retractable drawer with the tabs at the bottom of the screen. 

If we drag this drawer down and set it back to hidden, your editing tools will now be what’s at the bottom of your screen.

This is for when you want to change background or elements’ colors, edit text or font type, format, spacing, add effects, animation, and other editing options.

Speaking of background, here’s a tutorial on how to remove image background using Canva that you can read next.

If you want to change an element’s placement in your design, simply tap it and drag it to where you want it to go.

If you want to change its arrangement, scroll through your edit options at your footer tools, select position, and select forward or backward.

We want it to go behind our text so we’re going to tap on “backward”.

If you want to resize an object, tap it and drag on its corners and it’ll evenly scale your object like so. 

Now if you want to add another separate design to the same project file…

…simply tap on this blank space and it’ll hide all of the tools at the bottom of your screen.

And in its place, you’ll have a number at the bottom right of your phone showing you how many pages are in your current design file.

It currently says 1 since we just have this one page at the moment.

To add a new blank page, tap on it and select the plus button inside the square.

Once the Canva mobile app created a new page, you can double-tap the new page to edit it…

…or your first page to select which one to continue designing on.

To go back to your editing tools, simply click on your canvas and they’ll pop right back up at the bottom of the screen.

If you want to replace your main image, simply select it and tap replace on your tools and you can select either a stock photo or video.

Or you can also tap on the Images tab to upload something from your phone’s photos.

To save your graphic, tap on the download button at the top right of your screen and select download.

Right now it’s a still graphic so you can download it as a jpg or png file.

But if you want to make it animated, you can select one of Canva’s preset animations that you like best for your graphic.

Optionally, you can also add audio and save it as an mp4 file.

Advantages Of Using The Mobile App

Of course, using the browser version with a full screen and a separate keyboard and mouse for controls has its strong pros.

But there are also some significant advantages to using the Canva mobile app for your designs.

1. Better view of the graphic or video

For instance, if you’re making social media graphics like regular posts, ads, Reels, and Stories…

…you’re viewing and making your design in the same screen dimension that it will most likely be viewed in once uploaded.

After all, a whopping 80% of the internet’s population uses their mobile phones for browsing social media.

This means you don’t have to second guess if your text is big enough or if the colors you’re using will look just as good when viewed from a phone.

That’s because you’re already viewing your design on an actual phone screen.

2. Access to more features

You’ll also have access to features you can use exclusively on the mobile app version.

Examples are replacing an image on a design with something you want to take a photo of on the spot.

Or using the color eyedrop tool, which is yet to be available on all browsers but is available for all mobile devices via the app.

3. Convenience of portability

Since it’s a mobile app, you can use it on the go just like any other app on your phone.

Now that you know how to navigate through Canva mobile app version, what design are you planning to make first?

But if you want to outsource your graphics creation, check out our graphic design services today!

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