Canva Template Customization – What a Designer Can Do for You

Canva has become a go-to tool for many non-designers who wish to try their hands at marketing and branding designs. With the inbuilt templates and a vast library of design elements, anyone can try their hands at creating designs like logos, websites, social media designs, and more. But if you ever find Canva template customization to be overwhelming, you can always leave it to the pros. In this blog, we’ll tell you how to use Canva templates and how a designer might be able to simplify things for you here. 

Why Use Canva Templates 

With most designs, Canva does let you start from a blank canvas and create your design. But working with templates makes things so much simpler. Here are some reasons why: 

  • Starting from a blank canvas might feel like a tough choice for a non-designer. With a Canva template, you have a direction for your project. 
  • There are specific dimensions recommended for each type of marketing and branding design. Keeping track of all of them can seem tedious. By choosing a template, you start working on a canvas in the recommended dimension. Canva has templates in different categories like Facebook post, Instagram post, Instagram Story, and so on. 
  • When you start working on a design project, you might either have too many ideas or too few. Scrolling through the templates on Canva helps you find inspiration. You will also be able to identify the visual styles that you think will suit your brand the most. 

Besides these benefits, there is the added advantage that Canva templates save you time. And help you design or even make changes to your design even if you do not have expertise in design tools like Adobe Illustrator. 

Having spoken about the benefits of using Canva templates, let’s now discuss some common challenges that you might face while customizing them. And how designers can help overcome these. 

7 Canva Template Customization Challenges and How Designers Can Help 

1. Understanding of design principles 

Most templates on Canva are aesthetically appealing. There is a sense of balance in the design, and proper contrasts that let each design element play its part. But customization itself is about changing these elements to add your preferred fonts, colors, and graphics. When you tweak these templates are you sure that the basic design principles like balance, hierarchy, contrast, and more will be retained? 

For this, you should have a clear understanding of basic design principles. And you should also know how to use them in your designs without sacrificing the core purpose of the design. While experimenting with Canva templates to create your own designs sounds good, you cannot compromise on design principles. Because without them, your final design might end up looking unprofessional. On the other hand, the fear of adhering to these principles might end up confusing you on what to change and what to leave as is. 

In the end, if you really wish to alter the template enough to give it your personal touch, it seems a bit overwhelming. 

This is where a design team like Kimp can take over. If you have some modifications in mind, you can let your team know them. The team will then incorporate these changes and provide recommendations to ensure that the overall aesthetics and the message in the design are intact. 

2. Choosing colors and fonts feels like a challenge 

Colors and fonts are two very important elements in any design. And if you do not already know this, you should understand that each color has its mood. Also, the interpretation of different colors varies from one culture to another. Therefore, to create designs that resonate with your target audience, you should be clear about two things:

  • Color psychology – so you know how to trigger all the right emotions with your designs. Because you need something visually memorable. 
  • Color associations around the world – because you do not want customers misreading the signals in your design. 

It is easy to customize the colors of design elements as well as the text in the design. But you might feel the pressure when it comes to understanding what colors look good together. Or what colors pop out from the background. Or even when you have to figure out whether you want the colors to pop out or blend in. 

A similar confusion can occur when you try to come up with the right fonts for your design. Because font combinations can be tricky after all. Moreover, some fonts look good on a small scale but when you scale them up in your actual design, they might look very different. The legibility aspect of the font also varies based on the scale. 

A design team like Kimp understands font psychology and the power of font combinations. This helps them set the right mood for your design. With this, they will be able to create designs that resonate with your brand personality. 

3. Aligning with brand identity 

You have all the ideas and the campaign objectives in place. But then when you sit down to execute your design, keeping the visual aspect and the interpretation of the design aligned with your brand might seem a little challenging. 

To tackle this on Canva you need to have your brand kit ready. With the Pro account, Canva lets you save your brand color palettes and font libraries too. This way you will not have to search for your brand elements every time. 

But then, you also need to know about the color trends that people are talking about, font styles that work on social media and those that work on print designs, and a whole lot of other details. If keeping your design on-brand while focusing on these nuances feels tough, a design team can help you.

And when you choose a design subscription like Kimp, your dedicated design team will help you with nearly all kinds of marketing and branding designs. You can give your team your brand guidelines and they will customize your favorite Canva templates to your liking. Or you can work with the team to create your brand guidelines which can then be used in all your future design projects too. That’s one way to simplify the process of creating brand-relevant designs. 

4. Establishing consistency for better branding 

Have you seen how some big brands make you recall them simply by looking at some color combinations or some font styles? Like the signature Coca-Cola script font or Starbucks green and so on. 

These brands were able to position themselves in a strong place in a competitive market only through consistent branding. If you observe their ads and branding designs over the years the brands subtly plug in their brand colors, taglines, and other brand elements in every design that connects with customers. To mimic this you need to maintain visual consistency in your designs. 

While working on Canva, it is easy to get distracted from the core idea given the endless options available. Creating one design all by yourself is quite simple. But then when you have to constantly come up with designs for your social media campaigns, offline events, print ads, and more, how do you make sure that these designs look related? 

Of course, the idea might be different in each of them. One might be talking about a product launch. And another might be talking about the opening of a new store. But still, they all should bear some resemblance that shows that these are all ads from the same brand. And when customers see your brand in many places, they remember your brand better. 

Creating consistency is easy in Canva but keeping track of your designs and also keeping them optimized for the channel where you will use them is not that simple for a non-designer. A design team, on the other hand, can help you identify a visual style that suits your brand. And then the team can also customize your favorite Canva templates in a way that all your designs follow a relatable style. 

5. Creating unique designs 

Every single Canva Pro user has access to the templates and design elements that you see on your screen. So, if your brand belongs to a crowded market, then there is a good chance of your close competitor having used the same templates or the same colors that you chose for your design. The key is to tweak the templates to make them unique. 

Canva not just has a vast library of design elements but also supports a variety of editing options. You might have seen the basic touches like changing fonts and colors but editing goes beyond this. You can adjust the transparency of elements, add multiple elements in one frame to create a more unique version of the design, and do so much more. 

When you work with a design team like Kimp, the team’s experience in working with Canva and various other design tools comes as an advantage. This helps the designers instantly come up with ideas on the number of ways in which the presented template can be tweaked to give it a whole new look. 

6. Adding stock elements for a personal touch 

With most templates, you can change everything about the design including the illustrations or photos that the template uses. But what if you do not find a suitable replacement for it? You can look for a suitable option from online stock images and premium stock libraries. 

But yes, there is the added cost of premium stock content. Every Kimp subscription comes with 50 premium stock photos every month. The team will find relevant stock elements to use for your design so that you do not have to spend separately for stock image subscriptions or spend time finding the right ones. 

What’s more? If you are not happy with any of the stock images, your dedicated team can create illustrations that capture the idea and then use them in your Canva templates. That’s one sure-shot way to create unique content on Canva. 

7. Find time to do it all 

Overcoming all the above challenges and creating designs that make an impact does take time. And you also need a lot of planning. Brainstorming for the design ideas, understanding design concepts, and exploring Canva to be sure that you make the most of all the features can be time-consuming. 

While you have to plan your social media calendar and take care of the rest of your marketing activities, you do not want Canva template customization to put added pressure on you. Leave it to the Kimp team and focus on your business. Let the team take care of the time-consuming bits for you while you think about growing your business and finding new ways to engage your audience. 

Kimp Subscriptions – the Effortless Way to Tackle Canva Template Customization 

With Kimp subscriptions, you have the convenience to choose between custom graphics and Canva template customization. If you want to come up with something unique, especially for your branding designs like logos and business cards, the team can create everything from scratch so you know that there is no other design like yours. Since you get the source files for all your designs, you can always edit them in the future. Or if you want the team to make revisions, you get unlimited revisions too! 

On the other hand, if you have been working on Canva for some time now and you need a design team that can take over and help you with future designs on Canva itself, the Kimp team can do that too. Your designs will all be in Canva. So, you have an easy way to track changes, leave comments on particular elements you wish to change, and make the most of collaboration options on Canva. Since your designs are there in your account, you can also make changes from your side. 
All this flexibility comes at a flat monthly rate. Want to give it a try? Sign up for a free trial today.