Canva is a great tool for creating for digital assets. It can equally be used to look equally stunning on paper, but there are a few tricks of the trade which will make all the difference to doing justice to your creativity. 

Step 1

Click on the purple plus ‘Create’ option and select print products. If you are using a free account, it is important you select the right size now. Changing the size after this point would require the Pro account.

Step 2

Click ‘File’ and then go to settings and make sure the bleed settings are selected. The page will now have an additional black line on the artwork. This is ‘the trim line’ – this isn’t printed, just represents where the guillotine operator will be bringing down the cutting blade. The white area outside of that is ‘bleed’ – if you want images to go right to the edge, you need to make sure it goes past this black line.

You can either use one of Canva’s templates or design your own artwork.

Step 3

When you have finished your design, go to ‘File’ and select download. On the drop down for file type, you will need to select ‘PDF Print’ and make sure ‘Crop marks and bleed’ and also ‘Flatten PDF’ are selected. If you have a Pro account, it will give you the option to change the colour profile to ‘CMYK’, which is required for printing. If you have a free account, it will only give you the option for RGB. We can make the conversion at our end but please be aware, some of the brighter, more vibrant colours may shift a little when switched to CMYK for print. If in doubt, please request a printed proof. 

We hope you find this helpful. For other information on artwork setup please take a look at our Artwork Guidelines page.