UPDATE: If you’re looking to create PowerPoint presentations with Canva, take a look at this recent post.
Have you heard of Canva yet? Canva has been making its rounds through social media and causing quite a stir with its newest Kindle cover and Google+ Header design. Canva is a FREE image design tool for blog posts, social media posts, and more! Canva has many designs that have precise dimensions needed for each social media platform and other awesome designs. Canva actually has a design just for presentations.
Now if you’re a PowerPoint, Keynote or a Slideshare person you’re going to definitely like Canva.
PowerPoint and Keynote templates can get old and if you’re looking to customize your templates for your business or organization Canva may work for you.
It’s so exciting to see so many new designs. I’m a Canva geek, what can I say….
At Canva, when you click on the Presentation design you’ll see the presentation layouts on the left of the live preview of your creation, which has a bundle of fresh looking designs.
Remember when you see the criss-cross pattern on an image they are $1.oo but you don’t have to use that image they provide. You can upload your own and use the design set-up.
When you create your design and get it to the point of awesomeness for a PowerPoint or Keynote template then click on Link & Publish. This is where you can save it as a .png.
When you’re ready to use it in PowerPoint, choose a blank slide and insert your photo (Canva creation). Do a Save As to keep it as a PowerPoint template. It’s that EASY!
Keynote (for Macs)
Keynote is a presentation app just for Macs, just in case you’re a PC user.
When you’re ready to use your design in Keynote, choose a blank slide and click on Media to insert your Canva creation. Click on Save and name it as your template.
Now this is where Canva is super-awesome for presentations. SlideShare is where you can upload your own presentations without the animation and sound. It’s all about the content. Since the animation and sound will not transfer to SlideShare from PowerPoint or Keynote, Canva is an excellent resource to create the entire presentation. I’ve already done a couple of presentations completely in Canva and here are my tips to help you.
First of all, why do you want to have your presentations uploaded to SlideShare?
SlideShare is a leading professional content sharing community and LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. SlideShare and LinkedIn have now joined forces, which makes them an elite alliance that can’t be ignored. As a professional, business, or organization, the presentations you create can now be linked to your LinkedIn profile as a portfolio item. Also SlideShare has 29 million unique monthly visitors. If you want to be heard and display your knowledge then you need to upload your presentations to SlideShare.
In Canva, choose the Presentation design and search out the design layouts to see what will be your best title layout. This is VERY important. The first slide design is all people will see on SlideShare and it has to be visually appealing to get clicked on. You should use an amazing photo and a great title. If you didn’t get a chance to see my post on How to Use Canva Like a Pro, I have some great links to photo sites that are mostly free.
Once you have your title slide awesome looking then you use the toolbar on the right of your live preview of your slide. Here’s how it looks.
I call it my slide tool, not sure if there is an official name for this toolbar but hey this is my Canva creation universe. This toolbar let’s you know what page number you’re on, the option to move your slide up or down, copy the slide, and delete the slide. The copy option will be your best friend. Use it to create your next slide. If you find that you skipped a step in your slide, you can always move it up or down for placement.
Slide Tips:
- Use cool photos as much as possible but make it relevant. Don’t show me a WonderWoman photo and you’re talking about snails. That would be a bummer.
- Don’t stuff your slide. Meaning keep it simple and don’t put a ton of information on one slide.
- Do NOT use transparency on any of your Canva images for SlideShare. I learned that the hard way! During the conversion on SlideShare’s end, it doesn’t understand it and renders funny looking. You know my tip on my How to Use Canva Like a Pro post, use transparency for your web address or logo. Don’t use the tip for SlideShare, it will be shown upside down.
- Always on the last slide, place your web address or any links in the CENTER of the slide. If you place the links anywhere else, they won’t be clickable.
- Once completed, click on Link & Publish to save it as a PDF.
Create an account on SlideShare by using your LinkedIn or Facebook account and start uploading. If your presentation is more than 10 slides take note that it could be a good 30 minutes for upload.
SlideShare is great to get your knowledge out to the world. It’s definitely worth putting content about your business or organization into presentations and sharing it on SlideShare and essentially LinkedIn. Here are a some of my favorite SlideShare people that may be of interest or inspiration to you.
Beth Kanter, Non-Profit Guru-
http://www.slideshare.net/kanter
Fit Small Business –
http://www.slideshare.net/FitSmallBusiness
Damon Nofar, Marketing/Design –
http://www.slideshare.net/damonnofar
Buffer – http://www.slideshare.net/Bufferapp
Using Canva is EASY, fun, and a unique spin on presentations. Give it a try and let me know how you like it or if you didn’t like it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Here’s an example of my last SlideShare completely done with Canva.
Take care,
Lillian De Jesus
Tigerlily 
Thanks for the ping back! I’m actually releasing a blog video later today on the SlideShare tutorial. Great timing! Take care.
Reblogged this on Noodleonit's Weblog.
Great article. Canva rocks! It’s simple to use, quick and filled with useful graphics and text layouts. Check out this tutorial I created to make email headers in Canva and animate them as a GIF in Photoshop: http://hubs.ly/y0tTyS0
Thanks again.
Yay Rachel! A fellow Canva lover, LOVE IT!
Okay I checked out your article on making a GIF from a Canva design… that is awesome. You’ve got the wheels turning in my brain for more awesomeness. 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing,
Lillian
Oh, my, Lily. I know this is an old post but you helped me a lot by explaining this transparency problem on canva to Slideshare. It was driving me crazy. I couldn’t fathom why in the world certain images were reversed. This included things I didn’t even think of as images, such as little ribbon banners with text that canva provides. Thanks!
Hi Eric!
Haha! I know… it was driving me flipping nuts. I finally figured it out after a couple of uploads to SlideShare. Glad that note was good news for you. No, you’re not crazy! LOL 😉
Take care,
Lillian
Canva is a popular platform for presentations and it’s nice to hear you find it so useful. Your tip about the layout and title could prove especially useful.
Hi Christina,
I’m glad this post was useful to you. Although this was an old post, it’s great to see people are able to use these tips, even two years later.
Take care,
Lillian
Hi, Lillan
Is there any way to download the project I made online to PPT format?
Hi Kexin,
You can download your Canva project as a .png and upload it to PPT by inserting them as photos.
Hope this helps!
Lillian
Hi Lilian, is there really no other way other than this method? The image quality onto powerpoint slides isn’t that great as it appears dimmer and a bit more pixelated. Also, not to mention tedious if one has so many slides. Will be very time consuming if one has to keep inserting a jpg/png into a new slide everytime.
Is there a feedback section on canva? i hope they make it easy to use in powerpoint.
Hi Jessica,
Unfortunately, that is the only way. Although I never encountered a bad image from Canva when converted over to PowerPoint. When you insert the image on the slide be sure to only pull the corner tab to resize it to fit the slide. It can be time-consuming. I found that most people who want to use some slides from Canva will use the images that can’t be done in PowerPoint so the not the entire presentation is done in Canva.
I do know Canva is updating many features. Hopefully, this would be one of them. It’s not really a Canva issue but more of a PowerPoint issue.
You don’t necessarily need PowerPoint to do the presentation, it’s just preference. You can do the entire presentation in Canva. It does have a presentation view.
Hope this is helpful.
Thanks,
Lillian
Hi, I am totally agreed with your post.
Canva is very flexible, easy and active with which a business PowerPoint presentation can be created, shared and moreover, we can easily keep the audience engaged.
Thanks for the tips. I am trying to get my Canva preso to display on Powerpoint for my BNI presentation tomorrow. Do I have to save individual JPG file as I cant see “Save As” Ppt option in my Canva login?
Hi Amit,
I hope you were able to figure this out. Sorry I didn’t see this comment until late. You do have to save your Canva presentation as a JPG and individually upload as images to the PPT.
Let me know if you have any questions for future presentations.
Best,
Lillian
Thank you! Canva revolutionised my work. I work as a PR & marketing manager in hospitality and I don’t have a big marketing budget, so Canva is perfect for me. 1$ for a picture is not so much but I can create some nice offers for our clients. It’s a nice alternative for Shutterstock etc. Fonts are beautiful, it is very creative thinking to learn how to mix them. I use it also on my personal blog.
That’s good to hear Canva is working for you!
Thanks for the comment,
Lillian