Ask any designer, and they'll say that learning design is not the same as learning to use Photoshop. But, in order to create graphics for the web or print, becoming familiar with the dominant design software can be a hurdle.
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Sometimes you don't want to become a full-fledged designer — you simply want to create party invitations for a friend's bachelorette party. And if you work in social media marketing, you know concise copywriting is only one piece of your job — you also need attention-grabbing images for Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.
A site called Canva, launched in August, is a bit of a shortcut for anyone who needs good imagery but doesn't want to tackle Photoshop. The application lives in a browser and is free to use, so you don't need to download anything or worry about compatibility with your computer. It isn't meant to be a pro's tool; but if you're looking to make an image to augment a blog post, it can be done in about two seconds.
Ever since Facebook launched cover photos, I've been frustrated with mine. First, I can never remember what the dimensions are supposed to be (they're 851 by 315 pixels, for the record). But ultimately, I do a lot of resizing photos, uploading them to Facebook, looking at my profile with the image in place and then deciding it's not quite right. Then my news feed shows my five new cover photos in the past hour (pro tip: you can hide cover photo changes from your news feed — but not new profile pictures).
Canva allows you to create a design of any size, and offers templates for some of the more common tasks such as creating a presentation (which can be exported to PowerPoint), developing a square design great for social media posts, coming up with a business card you'll want to get printed and, of course, designing the perfect Facebook cover photo.

The site offers a number of templates, which come with visual components and photo placeholders. If you're signed in with Facebook, Canva will pull all your photos from Facebook to use in designs — or you can just drag and drop photos from your desktop. When you drop a photo into a design, you can easily resize it while preserving the original proportions. For the visual components, such as borders or backgrounds, you can easily resize or change the color, even to a specific hex value.
For my Facebook cover photo, I wanted to feature some of my favorite photos I've taken from my first year living in New York. I chose a fairly minimalist layout that allowed me to put in three photos. I downloaded them from Flickr (where I upload any photos I take on my phone) and dropped them into Canva.

I actually exported my first design and uploaded it to Facebook, but once I saw the resulting layout with my profile picture overlapping the photo on the left, I decided I wanted the images in a different order. So I switched them, and then exported again. The most tedious part of the process was pulling the photos I wanted from Flickr — once I had them in Canva, I put the whole design together in under a minute. When you export, the site downloads an image that you can then upload to Facebook.
I imagine creating graphics with the visual components (instead of your own photos) could take longer. If you are creating something for a business and don't plan to use your personal photos, you can search the photo and graphic library inside Canva. This is the only part of the app that isn't free; if you use a premium image, you will pay $1 for it — but only when you export. The upside is that you know any graphic you create in Canva with the images you find there will be fair-use, so you don't need to worry about legality.
Image: Flickr, University of Salford