Every organization needs publication materials for all sorts of reasons. Publications are needed for various reasons. For promotion of events, products, services, product launching, election campaigns, and list is endless. For big companies and organizations, they have both the technical capacity and the budget to do it. Or they have the money to outsource their production of publicity materials to publishing or media companies.
However, for Small to Medium Enterprise organizations (SMEs), NGOs; Civil Society Organizations, Schools and individuals who have limited budget or no budget for publishing at all, it is quite a challenge whenever there is a need for creating publication materials. In some cases, these organizations might not have the technical staff with the technical skills and often have engage other service providers to do it for them. This is exactly where www.canva.com an online publishing company comes in handy. In this post we discuss how www.canva.com can help organizations to create beautiful publication materials with less budget and even for free if they wish.
Registration with www.canva.com
First thing to do is to register with www.canva.com for free. Once you have create your canva.com account and logged in. It provides you will a hug variety of public templates to choose from.
Design Templates.
The templates are nicely categorized under the following categories for easy access and navigation.
- Social media
- Personal
- Business
- Marketing
- Education
- Trending
Features
Features menu has a huge deigns options which includes
- Free Photo Collections
- Icons
- Print Products
- Apps
- Explore
This give the users even greater options .
Learning Section
For users who are new to design and publications, the learning section offers great learning videos so users can easily learn on the go and practice using them within canva.com or for their professional arts and skills development purposes.
Pricing
The coolest about canva.com is that it offers a free subscription for individuals and small teams. For professionals and organizations, pricing is based on the following plans.
- Pro
- Enterprise
- Education
- NGOS (Free but have to register with canva.com first for identification approval)
Creating a Publication on Canva.
Using the templates and features anyone can simply select a design and modify the template that fits his/her purpose. Once the template is done, then they can be downloaded as pdf or image file formats. The completed publications can be used as Printed, shared on social media, website, circulated on email listing and etc.
Distribution Ideas for Small SMEs and Individuals.
Printing
It all depends on the volume of printing of the materials. If the volume is big than it’s good option to create the material on canva.com and then download and use the completed file for bulk printed using a printing company. Costings can vary depending on the pricing provided the printing service providers. If small, then it’s good to invest in a good quality colour printer.
If printing is for other things like banner, T-shirt Prints, and etc. then special printers are required. Also, special accessories might be needed. For example, design a print for mug requires special paper called “Transfer or Decal Paper).
Share Through Social Media Flatforms
Publications can be also completed and shared through social media flatforms like Pin Interest, Facebook. Instagram, Youtube and etc. For SMEs, its good to create a organizational Facebook Page and use that as distribution platform to share the publications.
Websites
If the organization has a website then, those can be shared through the website. Posters, flyers, reports, and etc can be uploaded on the website as downloadable files while others can be published on the site’s in blog posts.
For more information on how to create a website and host it from PNG, this post explains in detail. Create Websites and host from PNG.
Email Lists
If the organization has membership, customer, or subscriber email listing then this is great way to circulate through email addresses.
Artistic/Design Paid Courses and Earn Certificates.
For those who are interested in taking Design/Art related courses, Domestika.org is great online learning flatform to enrol in a design/art related course and get a certificate. The course options are huge with less cost.
Final Note.
Design and arts related courses are not available in many of the tertiary institutions and vocational schools in PNG. So, it’s good to start with canva.com or enrol in Domestika.org. Thanks to the internet and cloud computing services.
