10 Canva Tips for Creating Stunning Social Media Graphics

Do you feel like your graphic design game is lacking polish? Knowing the latest Canva tips, tricks, and tools can put you far ahead when it comes to making your digital content look professional. Continue reading for ten easy and approachable Canva hacks to bring your designs to the next level.

Hack 1: Brand Kits

On Canva, you can create what is called a brand kit, which is basically a set of different colors and fonts that you can easily pull from to work together. Of course, you might want to make a brand kit for your brand with your logos and color palette. However, that is not all you can do. You can actually add on and have multiple “brand” kits as different sets. You might make ones for different feels or aesthetics, for example. So you might create some that are themed. You can go in under “brands” on Canva and create a new brand kit. You can input colors individually by hex code, or if you have a logo you plan to use, you can upload that image and Canva will pull the colors from there. You can then put whatever fonts, photos, or graphics you want. 

When you are working on a design you can click where it says “brand” and then you can select the brand kit you want. Canva will automatically pull the colors from the kit into your design. If you don’t like the placement of the colors you can either click shuffle until you are happy, or if shuffle isn’t finding a satisfactory color placement, you can go into the color editor and you can individually work with the colors in your kit.

Hack 2: Background Remover

The next Canva hack is a game-changer if you’re looking to create clean, polished, and on-trend graphics: the Background Remover tool. This built-in effect lets you instantly remove the background of any photo - no Photoshop skills required! It’s perfect for making your subjects pop, creating product mockups, designing profile graphics, or layering elements in your design.

To use it, start by selecting a photo in your design. In the top toolbar, click "Edit Photo" and then choose "Background Remover" from the left-hand panel. Canva will automatically erase the background, leaving you with a crisp cutout. You can further refine the edges if needed using the Erase or Restore brushes.

💡 Pro tip: combine it with Canva’s shadows or glow effects to add depth and drama

Hack 3: Frames

Let’s talk about one of Canva’s most underrated design tools: Frames. If you’ve ever struggled to find a specific element (say, an abstract shape with a particular texture or a photo cropped in a creative way) frames might just be your secret weapon.

Frames allow you to crop any image or video into a custom shape. You’ll find them under the Elements tab - just type “frames” into the search bar or scroll until you see the Frames section. There are tons of options, from basic shapes like circles and rectangles to funky blobs, torn paper outlines, laptop screens, and even letters.

Here’s how to use them:

1. Choose a frame shape that fits your creative vision, maybe a torn paper edge or an organic blob.

2. Drag the frame onto your canvas and size it however you like.

3. Then, drag and drop an image directly into the frame and it will automatically crop to fit the shape.

4. You can double-click to reposition or zoom the image inside the frame until it looks just right.

Let’s say you want to use a linen texture in a torn paper shape, just find a “paper” frame you like, drop in your linen texture image (from Canva’s photo library or an upload from places like Unsplash or Create a Fabric), and boom: you’ve got a custom textured element that looks like it was made just for your design.

This hack is perfect when you can’t find a premade element that fits your vibe. With frames, you get total creative control and endless possibilities for layering, cropping, and adding depth to your visuals.

Hack 4: Resize Designs

If you're creating content for a full campaign (say, a social media post, an email header, a flyer, and a presentation slide) you don’t have to start from scratch every single time. That’s where Canva’s Resize tool comes in. It’s designed to help you work smarter, not harder, by turning one design into many without redoing your layout.

Here’s how it works: Once you've built your core design (like a graphic with your branding, headline, and visuals), click “Resize” in the top left toolbar. From there, you can select multiple formats and instantly generate perfectly sized versions tailored for each platform or use case.

Popular Resize Dimensions and Their Use Cases:

• Instagram Feed Post (1080 x 1350 px, 4:5): Ideal for vertical scrolling and maximum real estate in the feed - great for educational posts, announcements, and brand storytelling.

• Facebook Event Cover (1920 x 1005 px): Gives your event a professional look with space for your logo, event title, and key info that won’t get cropped.

• Printer Flyer (8.5 x 11 in, US Letter): Perfect for physical promotions - use at local events, community boards, pop-up shops, or as handouts.

• Presentation Slide (1920 x 1080 px, 16:9): Crisp, widescreen format that works beautifully for client presentations, webinars, workshops, or internal meetings.

• Pinterest Pin (1000 x 1500 px, 2:3): Tall and scroll-stopping - ideal for step-by-step content, blog teasers, or mood boards.

• LinkedIn Post (1200 x 1350 px): Professional and clean, this size supports high engagement for thought leadership and brand positioning.

• Instagram Story (1080 x 1920 px): Full-screen format for quick updates, behind-the-scenes content, promotions, or countdowns.

Using Resize not only saves you time - it also ensures brand consistency. Your fonts, colors, logos, and layout stay intact, even as you adapt your message to different channels. That means less fiddling, more posting, and a seamless experience for your audience no matter where they see your content.

Hack 5: Gradients 

You can use gradients in various different ways. If you're not familiar, a gradient is when you use multiple different colors that look like they're slowly shifting from one color and dissolving into the next few colors across a page or element. 

The first thing you could do with gradients is use it as a background. To do this, you were going to want to start with one background color. The next step is to go add another color under document colors. When you do this the color picker will appear. On the right of the picker, choose the gradient option. You can change your colors to any colors that you want and canva will automatically create the gradient. 

You can also add gradients to a shape. The first thing you're going to want to do, is of course, take a shape. You can start by going to the elements tab and then from there the shape section. Canva gives you a lot of basic and fun shapes to work with. Pick a shape to work with and pick a color to begin with on that shape. To change it to a gradient go up to the color picker again and choose to add a new color. Once again, switch over to the gradient option and go through the same process of picking colors to your liking.

The last fun thing that you can do with gradients is with text. To use this trick, first go to apps and type in “gradient text”. Choosing this app is going to allow you to input your desired text into your design. You can choose your desired font and alignment on the page as well as line height. You can then choose your ingredient colors on the slider and change the colors one by one to the colors you want. You can always add more colors by clicking on empty space on the color slider. Once your color choices are sorted, you can then change the direction the colors are going by clicking on the circles on the text itself and dragging them around. Once you were happy, you can click “add to design”.

Hack 6: Brand Fetch 

The next hack will be using an app called Brand Fetch. Let's say you want to use a certain company's logo for a design you are creating. You search in the elements for the Instagram logo, for example. You see some that are close to what you were looking for but not exactly. What you're going to want to do is go to apps and type brand fetch. Once you are in brand fetch you are going to search for the brand you are looking for, so in this case Instagram. This app is pulling up actual Instagram logos as well as related colors and their hex codes. Some brands even have images in this app. If you want to use one of the logos that comes up, you can easily click one to add it to your design. Many brands like Shopify and Etsy can be found on Brown fetch. 

Hack 7: Disappearing Text

Another great Canva hack is to use transparency to create a disappearing text effect. The way to do this is to select your background color and then add in the text that you want, adjusting it to the right font and size that you desire for your design. Next, select your text and choose your text color to be a color that is similar to your background color but a bit later. The next step is to continuously duplicate your text and place it where you want your text to be going and as far as you want to go. Then, go one by one through each text and make it a little more transparent than the next. To do this, you're going to have your text selected go up to the transparency box at the top toolbar and use the slider to move it left making it progressively more transparent. 

After you have your text in place you can then layer any other elements for your design that you would like on top of the text. This tool can be used for different shapes and elements but using it for text creates a different kind of feel in posts. 

Hack 8: Quick Color Application

The next trick is a quick color application hack. Let's say you are working with a design that has a few different colors and you want to change them. Going one by one could get tedious so you use the tax to save yourself some time and frustration. 

What you were going to want to do is find a photo or image that includes the colors that you already like. If you don't have one you could always search for an element. Let's say you want retro colors, you can go over to photos and search four and find images that are retro. You can click to add it to the top of your existing design, and if you already have a different photo you can upload it and drag it on top of the design. With that new image on top, right click and select apply colors to the page. This will automatically take the colors from that new image and apply it to your current design. You can continue right clicking and selecting that button over and over to shuffle through the different color options until you find one that you are happy with. 

Another easy way to find a color scheme you like for this hack is to go to Pinterest and simply search “color palettes”. An endless amount of color combinations will be at your disposal. 

This is a quick and easy way to figure out what colors to use as opposed to manually trying to change each color separately.

Hack 9: Tidy Up

The next tool to focus on is incredibly convenient and handy. The tool called "Tidy Up," and it one that as a graphic perfectionist - I use allll the time. 

There are a lot of instances where you may be working on a design in Canva that you have different elements or text that need to be lined up precisely and neatly. It is incredibly difficult to manually get it done or just flat out tedious and time consuming. 

Whatever elements you want to have lined up, you can simply click and drag to select all of them together. When you do this a little menu bar pops up. In that menu click on the three dots and under where it says space evenly there's an option that says tidy up. Clicking that will automatically bring all of your elements into a perfectly spaced alignment without having to manually try to fiddle with everything and line it up. 

Hack 10: Stroke Effect

The last Canva hack is creating what is called a stroke effect. If you have worked in Photoshop or other graphic design programs, you may be familiar with this technique. Canva doesn't currently have an official equivalent to photoshop stroke effect, but there is a way to achieve the same results. 

You will need to start with your desired text written out and change it to your preferred color. Then, go up to the effects and select the outline. You can also choose the color of the outline of your text. Then use the thickness slider and slide it all the way to the right making the outline so thick that the outline of the letters starts to blend in with the rest of the outline, creating a full stroke effect around the text. 

You can also go up to the space thing option up top and use the letter spacing tool to play with the rest of how your design will look. You can even add a curve by going back to text effects and selecting the curve feature and using the slider to make the curve to your liking.

Conclusion: 

Just because you are making designs yourself on Canva does not mean they have to look less than professional. Start with these basic tips and tricks to help level up your designs when using Canva. Professional graphics are within your reach, so start creating! 🎨🖌️