One of the programs that I recommend to every single church I work with is Canva. It’s an amazing free program to help you design graphics, posters, and documents for your website and social media. You can even design print graphics and t-shirts.
After seeing countless churches still using clipart and struggling with Microsoft Publisher, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have great looking graphics. Everyone is overwhelmed with posts on social media about every conceivable topic. If we have the most important message in the world, then we need to do everything we can to help share that message.
Canva is a free drag and drop editor that lets you start with great looking templates. You can just search for what you want to create, choose a template, and then customize and edit your design. They even have mobile and tablet apps that help you design and create. At our church, this is what our ministry leaders use to create graphics for social media.
You can easily customize colors, fonts, background images, shapes, and designs. Once you have your design ready, it’s simple to export to a jpg, png, or pdf. It really is that simple. On their free plan, you do have to pay a small fee if you choose a pro-level picture or graphic. The paid images are clearly marked so that shouldn’t be a huge issue.
And finally, there is a paid Canva Pro plan for $9.95 a month. The paid plan gives you …
- access to all the pro-level additional photos and graphics
- the ability to resize any design
- additional fonts
- the ability to upload your branding for a team (this is great to standardize your church logos, fonts, and colors)
- a social media scheduler
- a tool to remove backgrounds
And finally, here’s the good news. If you are a church or non-profit with a 501c3, you can apply and receive the Canva Pro features for free. Check out the Canva for Nonprofits site for all the details. Our church has used this for several years and we love it.
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