Exploring Canva’s New Features: A Game-Changer for Artists and Creative Business Owners
Canva has long been a favourite tool of ours, especially for artists and creative entrepreneurs looking to create stunning visuals that are simple to work with and brand. With its user-friendly interface and a vast library of templates, Canva has made design accessible to just about everyone. Recently, Canva introduced a whole suite of new features that are set to revolutionize the way we create social media posts, marketing materials and more. These new features leverage the power of AI, making the design process faster and more intuitive but still giving you all the control. And while that can be a little bit scary, if we’re responsible and use those tools to make our work easier without losing authenticity and honesty, they’re incredible helpful! Let’s dive into some of these really cool updates and see how they can benefit artists selling art online.
Canva, AI and Authenticity
Before we get into it though, I want to just say that I’m sure there are many people that take advantage of AI and use it to create and sell content that either isn’t real, or is so distorted and edited that it’s no longer a reflection of reality. That is NOT what we’re promoting here. We know that AI can create images and text that aren’t generated by a human being and we firmly believe that as artists it’s our responsibility to share what is real and what is hand made. That we will never deviate from. What we do think is helpful are certain editing tools and (Canva has gotten really good at giving them to us!) that make sharing work easier and most consistent and presenting that work in various formats or templates to suit your particular business need.
Magic Studio: A Creativity Hub
One of the most talked-about new features in Canva is this little thing called Magic Studio. This AI-powered tool allows us to generate really beautiful designs with just a few clicks and instructions. Whether you’re creating a social media post, a mockup for your artwork or a card or informational package for a market or retailers, Magic Design makes things very intuitive and easy to work quickly and it provides you with really professional-looking designs. Then you can go in and edit and customize them to suit your aesthetic and brand.
Canva’s Magic Studio is a comprehensive workspace that brings you a variety of editing tools. In Magic Studio, you can access Magic Design, Magic Write, Magic Media, Magic Eraser, and Magic Edit, all in one place. This integrated environment makes it easier than ever to create, edit, and refine your designs.
So for artists, this means more time to focus on the creative aspects of their work rather than getting bogged down in the technical details or creating different templates that we’re required to produce.
Magic Write: Crafting Compelling Content
I’m sure you can relate to this. You’ve got a beautiful image but you can’t think of a single thing to say about it… Or, more likely what you write is a little flat or boring. Sometimes we struggle to describe our artwork
Creating engaging content is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. Canva’s Magic Write feature is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps you just get some text on the page when you’re stuck. Whether you need catchy headlines, persuasive product descriptions, or engaging social media captions, Magic Write can generate text that resonates with your audience as you can tell it how you want it to sound or who it’s for.
I really like this tool because sometimes, we’re just stuck. Writing doesn’t come easy to all of us, and between painting, branding, web design, content creation and so much more, sometimes we’re a bit burnt out and need a little inspiration in the writing department. If you have some text and click on it, magic write will appear and you can use it to improve, adjust or change the tone of what you’ve already written. It’s also really great for creating Pinterest Pins and changing out text quickly to create fresh pins.
Magic Media: Enhancing Visual Appeal
Visual content is king in today’s digital age, and Canva’s Magic Media is a feature that helps you really elevate your graphics. This tool leverages AI to enhance your photos and videos, making them more vibrant and appealing. Whether you need to adjust the brightness, contrast, or saturation, Magic Media can do it all with a single click quite intuitively even. We used to do all of this in Photoshop but Canva’s editing tools are just as great.
For artists, this means being able to showcase their work in the best possible light, if our photography skills just aren’t quite enough which is common. Sometimes we photograph our art and it needs a bit of contrast, brightness, straightening or sharpness. This is a great feature that helps you do that quickly. Just be cautious of alterations that aren’t authentic or honest. As artists who sell online to clients that don’t see the artwork in person first, we have a responsibility to share and sell artwork that is true to it’s physical form. Don’t get carried away with all the really snazzy features that deviate your graphics from their natural form.
Canva’s Magic Eraser and Magic Edit: Perfecting Your Designs
Two other noteworthy features in Canva’s new suite are Magic Eraser and Magic Edit. Really easy to use and help make tiny but precise adjustments to your designs with ease. Magic Eraser enables you to remove unwanted elements from your images, while Magic Edit allows you to tweak and modify specific parts of your design without affecting the rest.
These features are incredibly useful for artists who need to refine their work or make last-minute changes. Small business owners can use these tools to perfect their marketing materials, ensuring that every detail aligns with their brand’s image.
Here’s a few examples of how it can help get your artwork from studio to online shop quicker!
New Canva Features for Artists
Brand Kits: Maintaining Consistency
Consistency is key when it comes to branding, and Canva’s Brand Kits feature helps you maintain a cohesive look across all your marketing materials. With Brand Kits, you can store your brand’s colors, fonts, logos, and other visual elements in one place. This ensures that every design you create is aligned with your brand’s identity. It’s a great tool! One other thing you can set up is your brand voice, which will help keep anything you write or adjust in Magic Write on point.
New Canva Features for Artists – Using AI And Truthfulness
All great things, right?
With the number of platforms we need to be present and active on in order to run a business online, it can be incredibly useful to leverage programs like Canva that offer ways to produce things quicker and easier.
But, I want to end this post by discussing responsibility and accuracy because as artists that sell online, we almost always sell to someone who hasn’t seen our work in person. Because of this, we have an obligation to stay as authentic and true to reality as possible. Enhancements are great when they produce an image that is true to it’s natural form, because we’ve all taken photos that actually make something look worse and so it’s natural to want to do little touch ups. I also think as digital world changes and AI alters our perception of the real world, we need to continue to encourage and embrace imperfections. As artists, some of the most incredible moments that happen when creating are often also what AI might deem as worthy to remove, because it’s an outlier or not following the regular form of everything else. So be on the lookout for those things and celebrate them because if you think about it, it’s one of the things that distinguish our work from AI. I think if we’re not careful, we’re at risk of losing those rarities.
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ABOUT THIS POST
This post is written by Donata Delano – A Professional Artist, Graphic Designer and Architect based in Canada and Mexico. She specializing in visual communication and web design, creating branding solutions and websites that are thoughtful, unique and aesthetically pleasing.
