Episode 587: Design Quickly and Without Fuss in Canva – How To Organize Your Brand Assets And Uploads With Brenda Cadman

EBT587 – Brenda Cadman

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta  00:37

I have a question for you food bloggers, how much time do you spend each week in Canva trying to find files or images or uploads or graphics? Maybe it’s five minutes. Maybe it’s 15 minutes. Maybe it’s 30 minutes a week. All of that time adds up. Now, if you just took a couple of hours one day and spent time organizing Canva so that you didn’t have to waste those 15 or 30 minutes a week. Think of all the time and money you would save. Brenda Cadman from brendacadman.com is a certified Canva expert, and she shares so much great information about organizing Canva on a really deep level, she talks a lot about the brand kit and how small business owners like us can really make the most of that. She talks through what to organize in Canva. You can organize your uploads. Did you know that you can organize elements that you like, that you use a lot, and you can save and organize templates and so much more. This is such a great episode. It’s going to inspire you to have a Canva organization day I hope. It is episode number 587 sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:54

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Megan Porta  02:51

Brenda Cadman is a Canva Verified Expert from Prince Edward Island, Canada. After spending more than two decades supporting businesses with their website development needs, she now focuses on teaching small business owners how to use Canva more effectively and efficiently. Brenda has taught thousands of business owners through her courses, and in particular, she loves to help business owners tame their hot mess Canva accounts by creating an organizational system that ensures they can spend less time in Canva, and more time doing what they love.

Megan Porta  03:21

Brenda, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Brenda Cadman  03:25

I’m very well. Thanks for having me back.

Megan Porta  03:28

Absolutely. I’m excited to chat more about Canva. I think this is very relevant for food. Food bloggers, we use it all the time, and we don’t know how deep you can go with it, but before we get to that, do you have another fun fact to share with us?

Brenda Cadman  03:43

And anybody who’s heard me on the last episode will remember, I think I struggled to come up with one a little bit last. 

Megan Porta  03:49

You’re not alone.

Brenda Cadman  03:50

I need to build out my list of fun facts about myself, apparently, something people might actually something a lot of people probably would share with me is that my love language is communicating through Schitt’s Creek gifs. I can have an entire conversation without ever using a word.

Megan Porta  04:10

Okay, that show is the best. It’s one of my favorite shows. It’s so funny.

Brenda Cadman  04:15

I like to rewatch it regularly.

Megan Porta  04:16

Oh my gosh. It just makes me laugh. It just makes me feel good. It’s yeah, just a yeah, just a wonderful show. I love knowing that, so I’m gonna start sending you gifts. Absolutely. There are a lot of them too. There’s…

Brenda Cadman  04:32

There’s one for every emotion.

Megan Porta  04:35

Totally agree. All right. Brenda, you are here to talk about Canva. I would love if you just gave people an overview of your business to start. Would you mind doing that for us?

Brenda Cadman  04:45

Sure? I am a Canva verified expert. So the first thing people often ask when I say that is, Oh, is there a certification process we can take? And the answer is, No, it’s not an official certification, but I am one of about 50 or so. What do we have? 55 ish worldwide that are Canva verified experts, and we were chosen by Canva community managers. It’s an invite only kind of program. And I was one of the first 25 when the program was launched. Oh my goodness. When was it? A couple years ago, okay? And then I was a Canva certified creative before that. So essentially, prior to this, I ran a website development business for about 20 years, and now I retired that business, and I now spend pretty much all of my time focused on creating content and education and courses for business owners to learn how to use Canva more effectively and efficiently.

Megan Porta  05:38

I love it. I think it’s such a good avenue to explore because so many people use Canva, right? Like everyone? 

Brenda Cadman  05:43

Oh, yeah.

Megan Porta  05:44

Canva for some reason or another. Okay, so if you haven’t listened to Brenda’s first episode, it’s episode number 530 here on eat blog talk. And in that one, we talk about just kind of an overview of how to get the most out of Canva. We talk about content creation, organizational tips, specifically for food bloggers, it’s so good, go listen to that, and then come back and listen to this, because here we’re going to talk a little bit more deeply about organization, as well as the brand kit and just being efficient. So I guess, to start Brenda, what can we organize in Canva?

Brenda Cadman  06:19

And this is where a lot of people get stuck, because beyond seeing some folders there, a lot of the time, folks just don’t know what to do with them or how to maximize them, and they assume they can organize designs, and that’s about it. I see a lot of I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve gotten quite obsessed with Threads. I don’t really post a lot on there, but I read all the things, and I do see a lot of people in my feed saying things like, you know, for the love Canva, can you please give me a way to organize my uploads? I don’t need another AI feature. I need to be able to organize my uploads to which I swoop in and say, Oh, but you can you just you need to know how to do it differently. You can’t organize it in the uploads folder. You have to create a custom folder system so you can organize. You can put order to your designs. You can organize your images and videos that you’ve uploaded. You can organize the images that you find in Canvas stock library, if you have elements that you really love to use, like icons or patterns or something, and you don’t want to have to keep going back and finding opening designs and copying and pasting them in, you actually, there was a way to create a custom organization system for those. You just need to know how to do it. And then you can also organize your templates, which I think is a massive problem for a lot of folks who fall in love with, you know, not just the templates in Canva’s own template library, but they’ve got a bit of a template graveyard that they’ve built up from all these third party template shops and memberships and programs that they’ve taken and They all get, you know, caught up in with their regular designs, and they can’t find any of them when they actually need them. So all of those components, you can create a custom folder system to organize them. It’s just a matter of sitting down, making a plan and actually prioritizing this to do the thing. Because I think we do tend to fall into a trap of just focusing on what’s in front of us. And one of the problems for me to explain the importance of doing this is that when you’re losing time in Canva, you’re losing a little bit here, a little bit there, you tend to not see the cumulative effect of that, but it’s a lot of wasted time and the administrative tasks like that system tasks like that are not revenue generating tasks, so, and this is what a problem that you could sit down, organize your system, or your Canva account in a very short amount of time, and then it’s done, you just need to maintain it a bit, but then it’s done, and you’re going to save a lot of time that you can actually put into the things that matter. 

Megan Porta  09:02

Yeah, I think we talked about this last time, but all of those minutes that you spend kind of looking, trying to find

Brenda Cadman  09:09

the scrolling and scrolling,

Megan Porta  09:13

clicking around, those add up over time, and we don’t consider that. So take the time to organize, and you’ll be so happy, you’ll save yourself so much time. Can you talk through a few of those things? So you mentioned uploads. It’s not super clear how to do that. Can you talk us through it?

Brenda Cadman  09:32

Sure, and it literally is the same thing that you would do with designs that you’re moving into folders. So you’re going to go into that project section. Don’t don’t bother with the homepage on Canva, because you can’t, you can’t organize there. You can’t move anything into folders or chunk it down into more digestible categories. So first step is to work from that Projects page and create you can create custom folders, and then you can create subfolders. You can nest folders 10 levels deep. So when you create those folders, you’re not just going to create them to categorize your designs, though. Think about the categories of your images, all of those images that are sitting in your uploads folder that just becomes this bottomless pit that you can’t find anything in, and you’re going to re upload the same images over and over because you can’t find them from the half dozen times that you’ve uploaded them previously. So instead, you want to just go you want to create these folders for categories. Maybe you have styled stock folders broken down by content, the theme. Maybe, you know, there’s different types of food, if maybe you have a folder for pizza, or you have a folder for soup…

Megan Porta  10:39

Salads

Brenda Cadman  10:40

Salads, breakfasts, whatever, right? And then you want to go into that uploads folder and select images the same way you would select designs and move them into these category folders, out of the uploads folder altogether. That way, when you actually go to look for them in the future, you can go into the projects area, you can find that images folder, and then you can drill down categorically, the same way you would go looking for something in a filing cabinet. You’re looking for it thematically, topic wise, as opposed to just this great big box full of content that you’re trying to dig through and hope you can find. And I would say image organization is probably where people lose the most time, because we hoard those like crazy, even if we plan on using it one time, or we upload it thinking we might use it in the future, and then we never end up actually using it, and it just makes it that much more difficult to find the images that we actually need. 

Megan Porta  11:34

Yeah. Okay, so I found the spot the folder area where you can create new folders for categories when you’re in the upload section, I don’t I can’t figure out how to access folders. 

Brenda Cadman  11:48

Oh, okay, there is no folder. So you are what you’re going to do. This is where people get stuck. They can’t find the ability to create folders in that uploads folder, you can’t so at the top level of projects, we’re going to pretend that uploads folder isn’t there. You’re going to create, add a new folder the same way you would for designs. So for example, let’s call it let’s just call it images right now, just generic images for the purpose of doing a little exercise here. And then if you now look at the images that are appearing on that main projects page, those are the same images that are in your full in your uploads folder, if you want to go into the uploads folder, or if you want to which there is a little folder on your projects page called uploads those are the same images in that folder as you see sitting on the main projects area. So select a few, you can click and drag to select a bunch of them, or you can hover over them and use the check boxes to select a few of them. And then you’re going to see a little folder icon appear in the bottom middle of your page. There’ll be a little folder icon, and there’s gonna be a little trash icon. If you click on that folder icon, you’re gonna have the ability to choose where you want to move those images to, okay? So if you choose to move it to the appropriate to the relevant folder that you’ve now created, is going to take them out of uploads, and it’s going to put them into that folder, okay? And then if you continue to do that, you’re going to get your uploads to inbox zero. And then when you’re working in a design in that left hand object panel, one of the options is projects, and you can drill down and find that custom folder that you created, and you can find your images there.

Megan Porta  13:23

Okay, yep, I see them. That makes sense. And I like how you put it like inbox zero. So if I’m in a design, though, how do I access that brand assets? Okay, so I just created one that was like, brand assets. How do I access that from an actual design? Can I do that? 

Brenda Cadman  13:40

Yeah, that’s that’s where you’re going to use, that left hand object panel. So you’re going to open up your design. And then when you look at the left hand side, when it talks about elements, and, oh, okay, the various features that are available on the left hand side, apps and all of those things. One of them is projects, yes, and that’s your little shortcut. That’s your your window into all of the folders that you’ve created, and that’s where you’re going to be able to actually create some sort of category system so you can put some order to this otherwise completely disorganized chaos bucket of images that you’ll never find again, and actually be able to find them quickly and move on to the next task. Otherwise you you literally will spend hours of your life collectively scrolling that uploads folder, looking for the right image.

Megan Porta  14:32

Okay, so I was thinking I had to go back into the uploads and like, somehow show up there, but it’s actually showing up in projects which is even more organized. Yes, okay, cool. I love this. And then you mentioned that you can also organize. What are they called? Elements? Yeah, elements, yes.

Brenda Cadman  14:50

So if there are styled stock photos that you like to use in Canva, instead, what we’re talking about is going to apply whether or not people are on the new version, the new glow up version. Canva or not, that’s something that’s new since you and I last talked, is this new glow up version of Canva. By the time this episode goes out, I would anticipate 100% of users will have it. But even if they don’t, for some reason, even if that rollout is slowed for some reason, what we’re talking about is going to work on both versions of them. 

Megan Porta  15:16

So you’re saying glow What are you saying? 

Brenda Cadman  15:18

Glow up. Glow up. So the version this new, updated interface that Canva rolled out at Canva create in May. It is a slightly updated version of the interface in Canva, but the organizational features are pretty much all the same. So there’s a little difference, but it’s very, very minor. Okay, so if you are in a design. I’m going to open one up in front of me right now so I can go through the exact steps here. Now let’s say you’re in the elements area and you have found a photo that you absolutely love. You want to use it regularly. You don’t want to have to go searching for it every time that you need it, and you don’t want to have to open up previous designs and copy and paste it into a new design every time you want to use it. What you can do is, if you hover over that image, if you click on the three dots that come up, that little 3 dots. One of the options you’re going to see in that little information window is something that says, Add to Folder. So if you have created a custom folder system, the same way we talked about creating for images where it’s you know, broken down into categories. You can then add what you’re adding as a little shortcut. Now, you’re not adding the actual image there that you would be able to to keep it it hasn’t been uploaded into your account, but these are little shortcuts to all of those elements, and then you can retrieve them exactly the same way through your projects folder. 

Megan Porta  16:39

Oh, okay, that’s super cool. 

Megan Porta  16:42

So rather than starring it, which some people will do is they’ll start and that all goes into the starred folder, which is fine if you don’t have that many in it, but if you’re starring a ton of content, all of a sudden you’re just substituting a big bucket of images in the starred folder for a big bucket of images in your uploads folder. So again, we want to create some sort of category system so you can actually find what you’re looking for and add to folder. Is definitely the way to do that. So you can do it for photos. You can do it for you know, if you want to do it for icons and elements and things like that, as our icons and illustrations, you can do that as well. Okay? And you can do it with stock videos as well in Canva.

Megan Porta  17:22

And you can also use that three dot method within your uploads too. Correct. Can you send them to a folder? So if you’re in your own upload.

Brenda Cadman  17:31

Yes, yep, you can hover over them individually. That version of going through actually doing it in the uploads folder in projects is if you want to be doing it in big batches. Because if you have a lot of images doing it on an individual basis, click, clicking on the three dots is going to be very time consuming, and you’re going to want tear her out after a very short amount of time. So going through and looking for, you know, these, we tend to upload in chunks. So if you saw that you uploaded 20 images from a particular styled stock website. You could start by selecting all those and moving them into into a folder that is labeled with that stock website as the source, or maybe you uploaded a whole set of images from a site that are all related to baking Christmas cookies. Then you could select all of them at one time and move them as a batch into a folder related to holidays or baking or whatever it is. So doing them in chunks is definitely going to be more time effective, but doing it on an individual basis is absolutely possible as well. Just gotcha to be very frustrating.

Megan Porta  18:33

Yeah, now I hear you, and then templates. You can also save templates that you use often. Do you do that in the same way? 

Brenda Cadman  18:40

Yeah, you definitely do. Now you can’t add them. They are different from elements in that you can’t hover over them and add them to a folder the same way that you can with the elements. But the thing to realize is that templates in Canvas, template library, or templates that you have pulled into your imported into your account by using a template link that somebody shared with you, they’re just designs. They’re no different than designs. Functionally. They’re just different in that somebody else created them and you still need to customize them. So what I typically recommend is creating a Templates folder at the top level of your projects, your project section, and then in there are going to be all these kind of future use templates. You’ve got future use templates, which are the ones that you might use that you have not customized yet, and then you have those are separate from brand templates that you have customized and you use on a regular basis. I’m not talking about those ones right now. We’ll get to those, but these are all the things that you think you might use. Oh, there’s a great design I might use that for an Instagram post. Okay, I don’t need it right now, but I really like that. I feel like there’s use for that. Save it as a design in that folder, in a Templates folder, and you’ll know that that’s where all the templates are collected together, so they’re not all getting, you know, bunched up with all of your actual designs that you’re you’re using in practice.

Sponsor  19:59

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Megan Porta  22:02

Customize the template, open it and then put it in the Templates folder. 

Brenda Cadman  22:07

That you don’t even need to customize it at this point, we’re just trying to separate it okay? Because otherwise you’re going to have in amongst your Instagram post designs and your blog post images, you’re going to have a wide assortment of things like blue, minimalist spring carousel and things like that, and it means absolutely nothing to you. It meant a whole lot to the designer who wanted to be found on those keywords when they were searched on. But it means absolutely nothing. And what’s going to happen is they’re not going to get used they’re just going to gradually go into the depths of your Canva account to die, and you maybe will come across them again at some point in the future. But if you put all of those templates, the blue minimalist etc templates, into a Templates folder in your project area, you’ve now collected them in one place, and then you can reassess them later to decide, okay, is this something I’m going to actually use? All right? Yes, I like this one. Let’s customize it for my own brand using my brand kit, and then I can, you know, move that contextually into a place that I’m actually going to use it. So maybe once it’s customized, it does go into the social media folder, so it’s right there for you when you want to create a social media post, or you can save it as a brand template. But until you’re ready to use it, you need to keep these things separate so that you can easily reassess them going forward.

Megan Porta  23:33

Okay, that makes sense. Is there anything else that we could organize aside from what we’ve talked about already?

Brenda Cadman  23:40

I think your brand kit is a really important part of getting your brand assets separated and easy to access, and Canva does already have that feature built in. Now. It is not part of the free Canva plan. I would say, hands down, if you’re using Canva for any sort of business initiative, it’s the number one feature, the number one reason that I find anybody with a business does tend to upgrade to Canva. I mean, there’s a whole lot of reasons to and features on pro but you will not be able to have access that brand kit if you don’t have the Pro Plan. And it really is. It’s a game changer in terms of being able to consistently create these on brand graphics for your business, and to be able to save a lot of time because it’s right at your fingertips. So that’s your logo. It’s kind of your logos, your color palette. It’s going to have your brand fonts, it’s going to have your brand graphics. So if you have brand photos that you use regularly, you know that might be headshots or a brand photo shoot. It could even be certain styled stock images that you use consistently as part of your visual brand. But if you have patterns or textures or things like that as well, that can all be stored in that brand kit feature, so that when you are working in a design, you can click on brand in that left hand object panel where the elements are and the text and the projects and all that, you can go to brand, and you’re going to be able to. To get it’s just a little shortcut right there to all of those brand imagery items. And then when you’re choosing to change colors and fonts, those are right in the color and font selection tools as well. So that it’s just all at your fingertips. You don’t need to have a folder for your logos in Canva. You can incorporate all that directly into the brand kit. 

Megan Porta  25:20

Okay, so I didn’t even notice that was there. It is a little button on the left, just brand. You can click on that. How handy. And then I don’t have, like, fonts loaded or anything, but if you did have fonts, photos you want to associate with your brand, graphics, icons, you can put all of that in there as well as, okay, here’s the helpful thing for me, the color palette. This is what I do. Okay, Brenda, you’re gonna just die inside when I tell you this, every single time I create something for eat, blog talk, I open in Photoshop my logo. I go to the Eyedropper tool, I click on the pink, and then I grab I copy and paste the color over. And then I go to the light, like blue, whatever color that is, I do the same. This doesn’t take a ton of time, but think about how much time that is if I do that, say, three times a week, adding all of that up over the year, oh my gosh. 

Brenda Cadman  26:15

And it’s just annoying. It takes you off of if you’re focusing on something you don’t want to have to be opening other things. It is absolutely extra energy and extra mind clutter. So if you instead, if you are, if you have a design open, if you select a shape or an icon or something that can have the color changed, you’ll see in that floating toolbar that comes up if you’re in the glow up version. This is where it gets a little tricky, because some people are still on the old version. Which version are you on? Megan? 

Megan Porta  26:43

I don’t know. 

Brenda Cadman  26:44

Did you go through the click on for you seven times thing in May, where it gave you this big introduction, the fact that you’re not saying yes, I did, that means you’re on the old one still.  Okay, so on the old version, though, if you select a shape, for example, at the top of the the design editor area, there’s still going to be a color option that you can select, and you can change the color of it, okay? And when you go there, if your color palette is set up in the brand, your colors are right there. So you can change in an instant. You do not have to be messing around with choosing color values and copying and pasting color values, you can immediately change it in an instant, and they’re all there, right for you, that is a game changer in terms of the time spent copying and pasting those little six digit alphanumeric codes. And it’s just not something you have to do that will save you. That alone will save you a tremendous amount of time when you go to customize things and create your content. 

Megan Porta  27:45

Yeah, that is huge. I will be doing that after our call. And then there’s a section in the brand kit called brand voice. Is that, like the AI thing incorporated in?

Brenda Cadman  27:56

Yes, I don’t use that personally for myself, because I don’t use Magic Write? In Canva, which is part of their magic studio. It is their it’s the Canva chat GPT, essentially. But if you do put in a brand voice in your brand kit, you can use that to inform the content in the copy that is being pulled out of magic, right? Okay, when you’re creating copy, yeah, why don’t you use magic, right? Because I have, just for my own use, got really comfortable using Chat, GPT, and that for me, the format I don’t tend to create. I’m not creating content my own design flow is I’m not creating content simultaneously while laying it out. I will do all of my brainstorming and my writing and all that directly in a in a separate phase, and then I’m pulling all that into my notion account. I’m writing stuff there for me. It doesn’t work for other people. They definitely find that that works for them. And I think that’s a really important, important part of using any tool or how you organize your content, is that there isn’t a one size fits all solution. We’re all wired very differently, and I think a key part of organization is figure out what works for you. I’m here to give best practices and recommendations and suggestions all day long. But if what I’m recommending is just full of friction and doesn’t work for somebody, and there’s another way that works better consistently for them, I’m always going to advocate for doing what works for them. So if somebody loves using magic write. It feels really easy to write content at the same time they’re designing it. Do that. I’m not here to say, don’t do that because it doesn’t work for me. Yeah, it’s just my own personal preference, and I think you have to lean into what works.

Megan Porta  28:22

I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t like a flaw with, you know, the 

Brenda Cadman  29:40

No, no, no

Megan Porta  29:41

Feature or something.

Brenda Cadman  29:42

No, no, okay, it’s, it’s a personal preference.

Megan Porta  29:46

Yeah, absolutely. I totally get that. I love Chat GPT as well. And I kind of my go to, you know thing when I want to help writing something. So I get it.

Brenda Cadman  29:55

Yeah, it’s great for brainstorming. 

Megan Porta  29:56

I know it is. I have just gotten so used to it, like I’ll come out. With, like, my email subject lines every week. Now, I’m like, Okay, here’s my email. Give me 10 catchy options for subject lines. I’ve just rely on it for certain things now, throughout the week. 

Brenda Cadman  30:09

Oh, I find, like, generating scenarios and examples when you’re you just can’t be arsed. Here’s the context, here’s what I want to explain. Please give me five examples of this, and then at least it gives you a little catalyst to get moving forward.

Megan Porta  30:23

What else do we need to know about Canva? If somebody is going to dig in and just commit to deeper level of organization, what else can they do to be more efficient? 

Brenda Cadman  30:33

I think, don’t overlook brand templates. So we talked about these future use templates, which are just essentially designs from other people that you might use it at some point, but when you actually do want to customize it and reuse something over and over, for example, I’ll use myself as an example. I have these presentations, these Canva presentations, that I give fairly often, and it’s the same core presentation for the most part, but there are modifications that I’ll make based on the audience. So maybe the examples are changing, or maybe there’s a slide in that kind of standard presentation that is not applicable in a certain situation, and I can pull that out. I have created these, this kind of core brand template. It’s saved as a brand template, which means that when I click on that in Canva, it generates a copy of it, and then I can use that as a starting point. I can then open it up, delete what I don’t need, and I’m good to go, because that brand template has every possible slide in there that I would need. I have done this as well in the past, when I ran the website development agency, we did these WordPress health checkup and WordPress inspection reports. So it was the same report, but the details would change. So I would create, I use that as a brand template. I’d click on it to create a copy doing so would make sure that I had all the elements, all the components in it that I needed. I could then just go in and customize the exact the results for that given client. But what it made sure I wasn’t doing is if I had been copying a previous client’s report and then going into making the changes, that’s when you forget to change a name here, or you forget to update one key little bit of information, and it’s incredibly embarrassing, because you’ve now given the wrong information and you don’t have attention to detail. So it gives you a way of using that template, so everything is there that needs to be, and you can customize it for your needs, but you’re not recreating the same thing over and over. So thinking about, what are the things that I’m doing over and over? Like, maybe you have a set carousel, sort of design that you want to use regularly, but you just want to update the details in it, say, publish it as a brand template, as opposed to just saving it as a design. And I’ll explain how to do that, and then you’ve got that as a starting point, and it ensures that you don’t accidentally overwrite previous designs. Because, I mean, everybody has thought they had copied it and they were working on a copy only to realize that they have now modified the original one that they didn’t want to and suddenly you’re hitting, you know, Command Z, trying to undo it, get back to the beginning and then start over again. So this ensures you’re not going to overwrite it. It gives you a it makes sure you’re not going to accidentally pull in content that shouldn’t be there from a previous version. And it’s going to make sure that you save a lot of time as well. And you just you can save them as a brand template by when you click on the share button. So if you have a design open that you’re working on, where you would go to download it. If you click on that share button, instead of downloading it, you’re going to look for an option that says brand template. Sometimes it’s going to appear right on that main share window. Sometimes you have to click on the three dots and go to more, but if you save it as a brand template, it’s going to change it so that the next time you click on it, it prompts you to make a copy of it. You can still edit the original if you want, but it’s not going to do that automatically. It’s going to make a copy of it so that you don’t, you know, for all those reasons I just talked about.

Megan Porta  33:59

Okay, so I just you have to publish as a brand template, correct? And then it goes into whatever folder. 

Brenda Cadman  34:06

Yeah, you can choose whatever folder you want it to be in, okay? And then there’s going to be, the next time you click on brand in your in your account, you’re going to see all your brand templates there as well, but it’s going to still be saved in a folder as well. You can choose where you actually want to save it to.

Megan Porta  34:21

Oh, that’s so cool. And then when you see it on your homepage, it actually has a little like brand template. So, you know, okay, this is really cool. That is a game changer. And then I was going to ask you about, okay, is there anything else we need to know about brand templates first before I ask my next question?

Brenda Cadman  34:36

I mean, I think those are kind of the key mechanics of it. There’s always stuff. You know, the questions around well, where should I store it? Should I store it in a Templates folder? Should I store it where in the category? And I mean, that’s that’s a bigger conversation, but the mechanics of it really are, figure out what you’re creating over and over that you might like to have a faster way of doing it. And unless. Save it as a template, so you can just shave some of that time off the next time, right?

Megan Porta  35:04

It makes total sense. Within the brand area, there’s brand controls. What are those? 

Brenda Cadman  35:12

So brand controls, if you have a team that you want to be able to exercise a little bit of control over what they’re able to do, you can, you can make sure that they, you know, they have access to these brand templates that you’ve created, but they can’t suddenly go changing your brand colors to something that they think are prettier, because it’s going to allow you to. It’s basically restricting access to certain brand components so that you can ensure everything has that brand consistency. Because if they do start changing the fonts that are being used, or they start changing the colors that are being used, suddenly, if you had a suite of brand templates and designs that looked really, really consistent for your for your company, that could completely blow that to bits. And we want to make sure that we can control what they have access to. Typical small business owner is not going to need this because they’re not going to have a team. Going to have a team, or even if they do have a team, you know, there may be not a lot of people who are accessing this, but it’s just an extra, extra layer of permissions.

Megan Porta  36:11

Yeah, wow. There’s so much you could do. I could probably spend a whole day just going through because I have, like, I have different businesses, but then within each business, you know, there’s the branding, the team photos, the Instagram story, designs that, I mean, I could go on and on, so I could really get so organized within probably one day and just streamline my entire business.

Brenda Cadman  36:36

And it’s just a matter of prioritizing that, because I like to think about. There’s that I can’t remember who it’s from, forgive me for, for not crediting the appropriate person. But there’s that urgency, importance matrix, where that is quadrant, you know what I’m talking

Megan Porta  36:55

Quadrant, I don’t know is that what it is. I probably said it wrong. 

Brenda Cadman  36:58

We tend to really we tend to focus a lot of time on the stuff that’s urgent. And there’s this quadrant of stuff that’s really important, but not urgent, and I kind of feel like that organizing your Canva account falls into that particular category. It probably could help with the urgency of a lot of other tasks if you had the system dealt with, because it’s not going if you need to get something out really quickly, you’re going to be set up for success already, and you’re going to be able to achieve a lot of things that might, you know otherwise take you hours to do, and could be done very, very quickly if you were set up to be able to find what you need really quickly, so You can get in, do the thing, and get out. And I recognize that organizing your Canva account is probably not at the top of most people’s priorities, but you’re absolutely right. If you sit down, if you have the guidance on how to organize it, what to organize, and then you most importantly, carve the time out to just sit down and do it. It for a lot of people, it can be done in a day, or at least, you can get a lot of headway. I mean, if you have four years worth of images to sort through, I’m not, I’m not going to lie and say that’s something you’re going to be able to tackle in a single afternoon, but you’ll, you’ll get a really good head start, enough that you can set up a system. You might even be able to have someone come in and finish it for you. So I do think it’s worth prioritizing, find the time, get it done, because it is going to make everything else so much easier. And time is money. I know that sometimes doesn’t feel like there’s a tangible cost to disorganization, but it is literally costing you money and lost opportunity costs by not tackling this and doing this.

Megan Porta  38:39

Oh, that is so true, such a good point. So for me, something that would work is just, we all have those days when we don’t feel like on or maybe we don’t have any calls, we just want to sit on the couch and work today. This is the perfect project to do that. So if you ever have those days where you’re like, I know I need to do something, but I don’t want to think a lot. This is probably a great thing to pull out.

Brenda Cadman  39:04

Yeah, it’s, I call it, I forget where it was came from. It’s from a productivity system I heard about years ago, and it’s one of those filling the stapler tasks where it doesn’t take a lot of kind of mental bandwidth or power, but it is very productive. It’s something that needs to be done. So just maybe when you’re feeling more on top of it, figure out what categories you need, but then just selecting and moving and getting the items into the folders, that’s great for doing when you’re binging whatever series you want to watch on Prime or whatever.o. 

Megan Porta  39:37

For one of those days, yeah, is there anything you want to mention before we start saying goodbye, Brenda? 

Brenda Cadman  39:42

No, I think it’s just put organization on the list of things to do. It’s something that a lot of people just don’t even realize is something you can do in Canva, because it’s not as obvious as the magic Studio features or the, you know, all of the options, the very visual otions that are available to you, but these tools are there. It’s just a matter of understanding how to put them into action, and I think it’s going to really change how you use Canva for the better.

Megan Porta  40:09

I love it. Thank you so much for joining us. Today, we will put together a show notes page for you. Brenda, if you want to go look at those, head to eatblogtalk.com/brendacadman2.Why don’t you tell everyone where they can find you, Brenda?

Brenda Cadman  40:23

Brendacadman.com is probably the best place to find me. We also have a Facebook group over at how to use canva.com that’ll just forward you to the Facebook group and you’ll find all the things, all the freebies, all the courses, etc, living on my website.

Megan Porta  40:38

Awesome. Well, thank you for being here, and thank you so much for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  40:46

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of eat blog talk. If you are craving accountability, focus and connection at a low monthly cost, join the Eat Blog Talk accountability group at eatblogtalk.com/focus I will see you next time you.