There are so many Canva for Work features that people either don’t have set up properly, or don’t even know they exist! Taking a few minutes to get your account set up the right way can cut down on design time and help you design faster and maximize productivity!

I’m all about efficiency.

I’m not the most organized person, my house isn’t spotless and I occasionally show up a few minutes late. I do have two kids under three and that will remain my excuse for the foreseeable future.

But the truth is time management isn’t my strong suit.

That being said, working “smarter, not harder” has always been my thing.

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I have no good excuse why it took me so long to set up my Canva for Work account, but once I did, I never went back. I kicked myself for not doing it sooner. It really does help me save a ton of time designing and helps the process go smoother and more efficiently.

Speaking of… make sure to check out our post on Canva Shortcuts to Help You Design Faster.

Canva for Work Features You Don’t Want to Miss:

Color Palettes

Use section to select your brand colors. Canva actually allows you to upload a ton of colors so upload your brand colors, then upload complimentary colors and frequently used colors as well.

Need help picking colors? Click here to access our Color Guide located in our design library, color overload is a real thing!

Fonts

Here is where you can select the fonts you use the most for your brand.

Canva allows you to select which fonts you want for specific sizes. I didn’t pay much attention to that. I use the script font for accent words (I never write full sentences in script– too hard to read!) So I chose that one as the largest.

I only have two brand fonts (I generally recommend not having more than 3 brand fonts) Since I only have two, I decided to upload a bold version and a regular version. I generally use the bold version for headings and the regular version for paragraph font, so that works out well.

If you’re looking for great places to find free fonts, check out Font Bundles or Creative Market Freebies! You may even want to check out our tutorial on designing with fonts for more ideas.

Logos

This is where you will want to upload your logo. Pretty obvious, right?

But there are variations of your logo that you will also want to include:

• Your alternate logo (for example: my logo is very long, but I have an alternate logo that is a square shape and sometimes that just fits better in the design)
• Your black watermark- your logo in all black
• Your white watermark- your logo in all white

I like to have both black and white watermarks for social media images mainly. The reason is simply that sometimes the image I use is very light and I need the black watermark. Sometimes it’s a dark image that needs the white watermark.

I don’t usually include a full-color version of my logo on social media images but it really depends on the stock photo. If it’s something with a lot of white space, I might consider it. But most of the time there’s a lot of color going on in the image itself and the logo becomes hard to read when left in full color.

Uploaded Fonts

You get 25. As you can see, I have used my 25! I have 25 because I do a lot of client work in Canva (like when I design custom templates). Going back to what I stated above– I generally only recommend having 2-3 brand fonts.

Use the other spots to give yourself some variability with those brand fonts. Canva does not allow you to bold, italicize, underline, etc your uploaded fonts. So try to find those variations and upload them as separate fonts. For example, I have Poppins Medium and Poppins Light as separate fonts to use together.

Templates

There’s a little spot for all your templates to hang out. This can be useful when they are all in one spot, but I’m personally a fan of creating folders. I’ll show you both options so you can see what works best for you.

First, click on templates (Shown below)

You’ll notice some mediocre Canva templates already uploaded. You can remove these if you want. Then, go to your canva templates and locate the public switch in the right corner. (Shown below)

Clicking the Public switch will turn the public option on and pop open this drop down that you see in the image above. Click the public option back off and turn the “publish as template” option on. You’ll now notice this template included in the Template tab of your brand section.

My personal favorite way to organize your templates for quick access is by making a folder on your main menu (shown below)

Follow these steps:

1. Click Add Templates
2. Name your folder, for example, “social media templates”
3. Then click and drag your copy of the templates into the appropriate folder

This way, you can always easily find every template you need to use. This is especially helpful if you have a large number of templates, like the Complete Blogger Template Toolkit.

If you are looking to try out some free templates, fill out the form at the bottom of this post for access to our design library. Inside the design library, you’ll find tons of free Canva templates to play with! (Bonus, you’ll save a ton of time designing!)

It’s the little things when it comes to designing in Canva

It’s the little things that make a huge difference. Setting up your Canva for Work account to better maximize your time is important! By setting up your account right, your logo, colors, and fonts will only be a click away. Stop wasting time scrolling, searching, and looking up hex codes.

And seriously, check out those templates– they are a huge time saver and will help you bring your designs to the next level of awesomeness!

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