Topic: Canva - Desktop or Mobile

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite apps in the entire world: Canva. First, however, let me clarify that I am by no means a designer. I have never taken a design course and I have utmost respect for those individuals who understand all of the Adobe Suite. But what I do love being able to do, is quickly put text over an image for social media or personal use. Never would I recommend using Canva for major design projects, unless your budget is very very limited.

That being said, I wanted to dive into the program, both in it's desktop/online usability and the mobile friendly version.

I first discovered Canva when doing a class project my sophomore year in college. I ended up falling in love with its abilities and began using it for other projects. What I love about Canva is how simple it makes design, for those of us just wanting to keep it simple. On the desktop version, it comes with many different templates to start off with including social media posts, resumes, invitations, you name it. I love that you can also make your designs public and other people on the Canva community can see what you're doing. It also comes with the option to change font, edit the pictures, change colors, and is super easy to learn and use. It also allows you to use grid locks to center your art and text, making it as visually appealing as possible. I have used Canva for over a year now and love it for both office and home purposes.

This summer I began wishing that they made it available for iPhones so that it would be easier to upload images and make quick Instagram posts. In the fall Canva launched their mobile app. I was initially excited to begin playing with it and was among the first of it's users to be notified of the changes. If that doesn't show you how much I use it I don't know what will.

The first thing I noticed was how limited the app was. It's hard to navigate a tiny little screen with only your fingers. My designs never look good on it, and the photo editing capabilities are zilch. It takes a lot of skill to pick the aspect of your design that you want to work with. It's also hard to see what the fonts will look like when designing or even choose the right size.

Some apps could maybe get away with both a desktop and mobile version, take Facebook for instance, but Canva is not one of them. Needless to say, I quickly deleted the app.