For your website you will need a logo, a favicon (site icon) and some nice high quality copyright-free stock images. If you’re new to webdesign, you may be wondering what’s the easiest and cheapest way to handle this.
The tool I use for this is Canva and it works super simple!
In addition to create a logo and site icon, you can also use Canva to create banners in all sizes.
For example you can think of advertising banners, banners for a Facebook page, a YouTube channel or thumbnails for your YouTube videos.
After this tutorial, you’ll know exactly how to get started with Canva and create all types of beautiful designs and of course I will give you some helpful tips along the way, so let’s get started!
Watch tutorial on YouTube
What is Canva?
Canva is an online graphics tool that you can use.
With this online tool you can easily create all kind of different designs like:
- Logos
- Business cards
- Advertising banners in all different sizes
- Posters
- Favicon
- Banners for Facebook
- Banners for Youtube
- Thumbnails for YouTube video
With Canva it’s also very easy to create cool effects. In this tutorial I have explained how to create a glowing border glow effect for an image. I have also made another tutorial were I explain how to create a text outline color in Canva.
Besides that you can also create a gradient background for your designs very easily.
Or you can remove the background of an image in just a few clicks.
You can also download custom fonts and upload them to Canva.
So with Canva you can easily create visual designs in all formats and a big advantage is that you do not need any graphic or technical knowledge. You can easily create any desired design with a drag-and-drop system and it all works very intuitive.
Canva pricing plans
There is a free version that you can use by simply signing up with your e-mail address.
After your account has been created within one minute you can immediately start designing.
As you can see, with the free version you already have a lot of options and possibilities at your disposal.
In addition to the Free version, there is also the Pro version and the Enterprise version.
I have the Pro version because it gives you many more options such as access to extra stock photos, videos, audio, graphics and templates and you have a lot more storage space to store all your designs online.
The costs for the Canva Pro plan are only € 109,99 per year if you pay for 12 months in one time, and you can also choose to pay per month and then the costs are € 11,99 for each month you use it.
If you can afford this, it is definitely recommended because of the many extra features that make many things a lot easier compared to the free version.
The Enterprise version is, as the name implies, interesting for companies that want to use Canva and with this you have a number of extra useful functions if you want to work with multiple people in a team.
So based on that you can decide which option is the best choice for you.
Create a Canva account
To get started, the first step is to sign up with Canva.
In this case I choose the Pro version and you can try it for free for 30 days. That is certainly recommended because then you can immediately experience all the benefits and if you decide to switch over to the free version afterwards, that is no problem at all.
To sign up, click on Try for free.
Now you will have 3 options to sign up including your Google account, Facebook or with an Email address.
Choose the option that you prefer, in this case I choose Sign up with email.
Then fill in the three fields with Name, Email and Password and then click on the button Get started, it’s free!
After you have completed the steps, you are logged into your account and you can get started.
How to design a logo in Canva
The first step is to click on the purple Create a design button at the top on the right side of the page.
There are a number of different options that you can choose from. The difference between all these options is the size of the design you want to make.
For example, for a logo you can see that the standard size is 500 x 500 by hovering over it with your mouse.
But if you want to make a design with custom dimensions, you can also click on the first option with the plus sign Custom Size.
After clicking on it you can enter the desired dimensions that you have in mind.
Let me show you how to make a logo first. To do this, click on the Logo option.
After the page has loaded you will see a blank canvas on the right side.
On the left side you can immediately view a number of templates and you can select one by clicking on it.
After clicking on a template you will see that it’s now visible on the canvas on the right side.
You can easily customize the template by clicking on an element within the canvas .
If you really want to make a logo really quickly, you can just use a standard template and change the text and colors if necessary and leave everything as it is.
You can simply adjust the text by clicking on it and entering another text. If you want to select a different color, you can do that very simply by choosing a different color in the menu bar.
You can just click on the basic colors that are shown and if you want to use another color you can enter the color code by clicking on the + sign.
To change the font you just have to click on it and you will see that a number of options appear in the bar above it. These are very similar to Word that most people are already quite familiar with.
You can also use the search function to find a relevant logo template based on a search term.
For this tutorial I want to create a logo relevant to luxury watches because I will be using it for a website that is about watches as mentioned in previous tutorials in this course.
A relevant search term could then be, for example, Jewelry logo. Scroll through the results and select a logo that you think fits the website you want to create.
All elements in the template can be edited individually by clicking on them. In this case, I choose to make the background black.
You can also make the elements larger or smaller by selecting them and then adjusting the size by dragging your mouse. In this case I make the text a bit smaller and below that I adjust the text to Watch Brands and I make this text a bit larger.
On the side you can see that the elements do not look nice with the text and that is why I delete them by clicking on them with the right mouse button and then select the Delete option or you can directly click on the delete key on your keyboard.
Of course you can indulge yourself and put in as much time to design everything as you want, but to quickly and easily create a professional logo, I would recommend just using a template and keep it basic.
After increasing the size of all the elements by selecting all elements and dragging your mouse cursor a little bit, the logo is now displayed like this:
It is also possible to add new elements to the canvas. You can do this by clicking on the Elements option in the left menu. A number of options are already given for relevant Graphics and Lines & Shapes.
To view all options you can click on See All and you can add an element to the canvas by clicking on it.
For example, you can add a circle and you can also easily determine the position of an element by clicking on Position. By clicking Forward or Backward you can set whether the element should be shown in front of or behind the other elements on the canvas.
It all works very simple and if you have not worked with it before, I would advise you to just create an account and play with it for half an hour and then you will understand how it all works.
In this case I remove the circle element and keep the logo basic. All the elements and text have a light color by default and the only thing I do is make everything white so that there is a better contrast with the black background.
On the image below you can see how the logo is displayed once all the adjustments are finished.
What I often do is make two different variants so that you have a logo that is suitable for a light background and a logo that is suitable for a dark background but of course that’s up to you.
To do this, click on the Duplicate Page icon.
Now change the colors of the second template. After you have done that, you can also name both designs by entering a title above the templates. Then also enter a name for this design so that you can easily recognize later in the Canva dashboard.
Especially if you have saved several designs over time, it is useful to categorize your designs properly.
Now you can download the logos by clicking the Download button.
Keep in mind that with the PNG format you can also choose the Transparent Background option, which you don’t have with a JPG format. Therefore, choose the PNG option and then click the purple Download button.
The logos are now downloaded in a Zipfile and the files have the same name as you entered above the design on the canvas.
In the next tutorial I will show you how to upload the logo to your WordPress website, but first we are going to make a favicon which is also known as a site-icon.
How to design a favicon (site-icon) in Canva
You may not have heard of a favicon before. A favicon is the icon that you see at the top of the browser when you visit a website.
For the Canva website it’s the small logo in your browser tab with the C.
The recommended dimensions for a favicon are 512 x 512 pixels.
Often I use the logo design as the basis for the favicon so that it matches in appearance with the logo.
Go back to Canva’s home screen to see the logo design with the name you have entered earlier.
Click on the icon with the three dots and then click on Make a copy.
Change the name to something recognizable like Favicon by clicking on the pencil and then click on the design.
For the favicon we only need 1 design, so this second design template can be removed.
Next we are going to change the dimensions to 512 x 512. You can do this by clicking on Resize and then enter 512 x 512 and click on Resize.
Because favicons are displayed very small, the text would be illegible and just like Canva has done it is therefore better to choose 1 letter. In this case I use the letter L.
Adjust the size of the elements so that it looks nice on the canvas.
After you have done this you can also download the favicon. In this case, I do not choose the transparent background option.
Click on Download to save the design and select JPG because this favicon does not need a transparent background.
Another advantage of JPG over PNG is that the file size is smaller.
For the favicon it doesn’t matter much because it’s a small size anyway, but when it comes to larger images, which we will cover next, that can be an important difference.
In another tutorial I have explained how to upload the Favicon with the Hello Theme for WordPress websites.
How to get HQ stock images
Now we are going to collect some nice high quality stock images for your website. The recommended size for stock images is 1920 x 1080 pixels.
Go back to the start screen of the dashboard and click on Create a design again and now click on Presentation, as you can see the dimensions are already 1920 x 1080 or you can enter this manually by clicking on Custom Size.
It is important to do this because if the dimensions for your images are much larger it will take up unnecessary space on your website and if this is the case with multiple images, the loading time of the website can become much slower.
Now click on the Photos option in the left menu and enter a relevant search term such as watches men which is a category we have created in the previous tutorial for the website we’re going to make.
Choose the images you like and adjust the way they are displayed if necessary by clicking on the image and dragging it with your mouse.
Also try some other search terms such as watches women or a brandname. If I search for Rolex or Breitling, I get different results as you can see.
So always try a few different relevant terms to find the best stock images for your website.
Search for a couple of images and enter a name for each image. Make sure you use relevant search terms on which you want the website to be found in Google as this is beneficial for SEO.
So make sure that you have enough images and of course you can always download more images later if you want to do that.
Now you can download all images in one Zipfile. I always use the JPG option for stock images as this will make the file size of the images smaller than PNG and will contribute to a faster loading time of your website as I mentioned earlier so keep that in mind.
Get started with Canva!
I hope this tutorial has given you a good impression of how easy it is with Canva to create beautiful designs and find very nice stock images.
You can watch the video tutorial on YouTube over here.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. I would appreciate that very much!
Now it’s time for you to get started!
Sign up now and start designing immediately and after 30 minutes or so you will already understand quite well how everything works because it’s very easy to do!
In the next tutorial I will explain how to set up the header and footer with the Astra theme and I will use this as a backup theme.
In another tutorial I will explain how to set up the header and footer with Elementor and this will be the primary theme for the website.
Check out this tutorial to learn how to set up the site icon with the Hello Theme for WordPress.
The logo of couse will be added to the header and footer so check out the next tutorial to see the results!
Make sure to check out my other Canva tutorials listed below: