The Canva template library is VAST

I love the Canva library. It’s full of magical tools, for literally any category of graphic design asset you need. Whether you’re looking for brochures, or menus, or just some social media templates, there’s going to be designs that fall into the needs of your brand, even if they need a few tweaks.

And in fact, if you’re NOT tweaking the templates you choose to use for your business, then unless they’ve been provided specifically for you by a designer, then you’re not making your content unique to your brand before posting and sharing it. We can all agree that’s not the vibe, right? We want UNIQUE content for your brand, that’s targeted to your clients. And while you can totally find things that will work as-is in the library… we don’t want to use things that just “work,” right?

Selecting the RIGHT templates for your brand is a process

When you’re looking for templates in the Canva library, I recommend looking for things that work well as a starting point, but that you can modify slightly (or more than slightly!) to make them fit your brand’s aesthetic perfectly. Not only does that ensure your content will be more consistent, it also means, because you’ve made changes, the actual posts you create from the templates you choose will be uniquely yours. There’s nothing worse than scrolling through Instagram and seeing professionals in a specific industry just posting the exact same templates with their own text input.

It’s a sure-fire way to stick yourself right in the middle of the crowd – unnoticed, blending in with everyone else. And that’s the opposite of what we want your branded content to do for you! So when you’re working with templates, think “starting place,” not “final post”. And to do that, there are a few things I recommend doing, that will not only make your process simpler, they’ll help you land at more consistent content, every time!

Think about TONE

The first thing to think about when you’re curating a set of templates starting with the Canva library, is the tone. This one is pretty straightforward to distill into a search term or two, that way you can weed down what’s in the library to the tone you want to create for your brand. So when you’re searching for templates, think about what you need to communicate from an emotional perspective.

This is something that, if you’ve worked with a branding designer or strategist for your standard brand components, you should know off the top of your head already! So use some of those search terms that align with the tone you want to create on your feeds, that will attract your ideal clients. Do you need to keep things minimal? Inject a little chaos? Are your intended clients witchy? Make yourself a little list of aesthetics that align with your brand tenets, and then get searching!

Consider setting yourself a Brand Board

If you haven’t already worked with a brand designer, and you’re going totally DIY with the whole kit and kaboodle (which is totally fine, by the way, no judgment here!) – then you might want to consider making yourself a brand board. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but determining some colour palette details and getting a mood board pulled together can really jumpstart this process!

I always recommend that you peek at the brand board your designer created for you, if you have one, because it can help keep you grounded in the overall “vibe”. It’s so, so tempting to go off script, because you really like a font that isn’t in your brand suite, or because you want to add colours to your feed. But making sure everything harmoniously lines up with your brand board is a HUGE step to consistency, and it can help you quell those temptations when they do show up!

Select a group of templates in one document

Practically speaking, it can be really difficult to organize a set of templates into something you can use more than once, simply because in an ideal world, you want a big document with all of them, not single templates you’ve “starred” in the library. Because that’s chaotic.

So I have a pretty specific recommended process for getting your templates pulled together to edit! As a bonus, it also helps with making sure you can bring them all in line with your branding standards, before you actually use them. So it’s a win-win!

What I recommend you do, might feel a little wonky, because it sounds out of order. But I promise it’s the best way to organize your template content!

Step one, is actually not searching the library. It’s starting a new document, in the dimensions you need! So if you’re working with posts for Instagram, start an Instagram post ratio document, preferably using one of the presets in Canva. Then, when you’re in that document, you’re going to do your searching in the Canva sidebar! Go to the “designs” tab, and use those keywords we talked about. So that’s where you’d put “minimal” or “witchy” or any other terms that will help you get to templates that work.

Then pick a BUNCH that you like, and that will fit the content you want to post, and pop them into the document on separate pages! Even if it’s carousels with multiple slides, put them ALL in one document. This is going to help a TON with the consistency side of things, which comes next.

Adjust all of the fonts and colours for consistency

Once you have the templates you want to start with, it’s time to look at them all together, and make your changes! Shift the fonts to ones that line up with your brand – as closely as possible, if your fonts aren’t available in Canva. Make sure you’ve changed the size of things like the @handle element, so that you can copy and paste it through to the other slides, making sure the location, size, and font matches.

Then of course, you’ll also want to change your colours! Get in there with your brand colours and go bonkers. Or don’t go bonkers, if you’re going for a more minimal vibe! It’s entirely up to you, and your brand. But having them all in the same place will help you make sure that what you’re changing feels cohesive. You can even use the design grid view to get a 40,000 foot view of what you’ve created!

Want to get a set of templates that are already designed for YOUR business?

Hopefully these steps feel like they’ve helped you get grounded in the process for curating templates from the Canva library to use for your business. But if you want to start things off even easier… there are tools for that too! Designers like me make template suites available for sale on all kinds of platforms, (I’ve got mine available here on my site, as well as on Etsy, and Creative Market!) that will give you that starting point you’re looking for. You might even be able to use those templates out of the box, because sometimes they’re done on a single-sale basis! Or… they might match what you need so perfectly that changing them doesn’t even make sense.

Then there is of course, hiring someone like me to make templates just for you, that you can use for your business into the future. And if that’s something you’re looking for, whether you have brand standards already or not, just reach out. I’d love to talk to you about making your processes easier, and making posting consistent content a breeze!