Canva

Hi everyone,

Has anyone had any issues with PDF files created by Canva? I've been asked by my sales team on if they should encourage to or discourage their customers from using Canva. I've had limited experience with Canva and my gut feeling is to discourage. Your thoughts?

Best regards and thank you,
pd

Hit and miss. We've had good luck recently in being able to send pre-setup canva templates to customers and get correctly sized files out of them.

You really have to explain to them how to turn on their bleed settings and rulers and how to download things correctly. We solved this by creating an instruction page as page 1 of our canva templates that is locked and we drew a red arrow into the "bleed" area and then put a note on the instruction page that says "if you cannot see the tip of this red arrow your bleed is not turned on" along with instructions on how to turn them on.

If they're just going to use Canva's random file sizes then it's annoying. Canva's default margin settings are not customizable and default to a stupid random size (like .50in). You can now draw in your own margin guides to make up the lack so that's still working for us. The ones who are using our canva templates (that match sizes they can order on our website) are reducing our time getting accurate files out of them by 50% so we're proceeding with it cautiously.

Canva is way less of a hassle in terms of user error than Publisher, Word, Powerpoint, or Pages files. We get loads of Canva PDFs for posters and postcards. They are seldom problematic outside of end-user error with incorrect sheet sizes and poor or no bleed setup. The common issue that we run into is Canva has a lot of their own fonts, so edit requests can be troublesome.

Perhaps only an issue this side of the pond, the main problem we've encountered is non-ISO216 default template sizes, lack of bleed, lack of understanding of the difference between bleed and margin, etc.
If it stops people designing posters etc in Powerpoint or Publisher, that's got to be a good thing!
From what I've seen, a non-designer can put together a good looking document, however that makes it seem more cruel to deflate them over aspect ratio, image resolution and bleed, when they're so proud of their work!

SoggyWinter said:

Canva is way less of a hassle in terms of user error than Publisher, Word, Powerpoint, or Pages files. We get loads of Canva PDFs for posters and postcards. They are seldom problematic outside of end-user error with incorrect sheet sizes and poor or no bleed setup. The common issue that we run into is Canva has a lot of their own fonts, so edit requests can be troublesome.

Click to expand...

Definitely encourage as this is the case for us as well. Multi page booklets and tri-folds are where the issues start to appear though. 90% of the time if you ask them for bleed and give them pointers on which buttons to click you'll get the right file back and be able to execute the job as needed.

No one should be discouraging Canva. It'll likely get better over time (it already has), and new entrants to the web design world will make better tools to gain market share. It's a definite big win for the industry.

Ynot_UK said:

Perhaps only an issue this side of the pond, the main problem we've encountered is non-ISO216 default template sizes, lack of bleed, lack of understanding of the difference between bleed and margin, etc.
If it stops people designing posters etc in Powerpoint or Publisher, that's got to be a good thing!
From what I've seen, a non-designer can put together a good looking document, however that makes it seem more cruel to deflate them over aspect ratio, image resolution and bleed, when they're so proud of their work!

Click to expand...

100% true.

Have had issues with transparencies when going through our RIP, never ever when PDF's are created through Adobe etc,
So now we have to proof these jobs from Imposed previews.

I have fewer issues with Canva pdf’s than I do with pdf’s created from other programs (user errors). I have a couple screen shots that I send customers to let them know how to share the pdf and to turn on rulers to see bleeds. Canva "flatten" actually converts vector art and text to an image and this has fixed a few of the transparency issue that I get. I do have a couple designers using Adobe products that like to use spot colors and cmyk images together and this almost always creates transparency issues for me. I have one customer that uses Canva for their annual report and I must say that I was surprised when I first found out that they used Canva for the entire 16 page booklet. It was a very nice design, done by someone that was not a graphic designer.

I have a few customers that always want posters and banners yesterday and they don’t want to do anything, so I use Canva to create them. I change the meta data so they don’t know how it was created. What I charge for the layouts pays for the annual subscription and leaves a nice profit.

The downside to Canva is that they’re bringing more print products into their own print process and allowing customers to order right from their site. So beware, you could be sending your printing to someone else if you're not careful.

TJPrinter said:

The downside to Canva is that they’re bringing more print products into their own print process and allowing customers to order right from their site. So beware, you could be sending your printing to someone else if you're not careful.

Click to expand...

Very much true.

tngcas said:

We solved this by creating an instruction page as page 1 of our canva templates that is locked and we drew a red arrow into the "bleed" area and then put a note on the instruction page that says "if you cannot see the tip of this red arrow your bleed is not turned on" along with instructions on how to turn them on.

Click to expand...

@tngcas - would love to review your instruction page - is that on your Inspire Print website or is it some PDF you share with customers ?

michaelejahn said:

would love to review your instruction page - is that on your Inspire Print website or is it some PDF you share with customers ?

Click to expand...

Here is a link to the 4.25in x 5.5in Canva Template - It's not the prettiest thing in the world but it gets the job done.

tngcas said:

Here is a link to the 4.25in x 5.5in Canva Template - It's not the prettiest thing in the world but it gets the job done.

Click to expand...

Thanks !I agree that is dang fugly, but explains it perfectly !

tngcas said:

Here is a link to the 4.25in x 5.5in Canva Template - It's not the prettiest thing in the world but it gets the job done.

Click to expand...

Thank you for posting. This is very helpful (and I just learned some more about Canva!).

pd