Practical Tips #1: Design

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At Core Insights, we know that attractive presentation is key to proving and improving your social impact.  A high standard of design is still possible, even without a budget.  We love using a website called Canva (there are others around!), as it's free and really simple to use for someone with no knowledge of graphic design.  Here are 5 ways in which we've used it to foster a brand identity, and to freshen up our website, blog, and social media.

Basic Logo Design

If you’re just starting out with a new venture, one of the most important things you’ll need before you launch is a brand identity, and most importantly, a logo.  There are loads of different shapes, elements and fonts that you can utilise on Canva.   Here’s how we came up with some logos for our website.

Social media posts

Ever lined up a great picture to post to social media, that really gets your point across, only to find that it doesn’t fit the right dimensions for a particular format or social network? Canva can help you.  You can choose templates designed specifically to fit Facebook cover photos, Twitter posts, Tumblr graphics and Instagram posts among others.

You can see here how I’ve used Canva to fit my photo into the optimum dimensions for a twitter post,  I’ve also added some great looking text.

Social Impact reports

A social impact report is arguably the most vital piece of information that a charity/CIC will produce in the year; it demonstrates the impact you make, attracts potential funders/donors, and keeps your supporters informed.  It is vital, therefore, that the design of an impact report looks good, and stands out from the crowd.  Not every organisation has the resources to be able to hire a designer to produce their social impact report, but a few pieces of wordart from your old copy of Microsoft word 2001, just won’t cut it.  This is where Canva comes in handy.  Canva makes it easy to produce simple but attractive reports, even if you don’t know a thing about design.  Here's an example of a report we’ve made on canva, and here are some basic principles to stick to.

Create attractive presentations

Canva is a great way to design attractive presentations, for powerpoint or other such applications, without having to resort to the dreaded clipart zone.  There’s an option for creating presentations, which will give you loads of great designs to choose from.

Freshen Up Your Blog

The Blogging world has progressed since it first emerged in the 90s.  The web’s most popular blogs have all been beautifully designed in order to grab the reader’s attention.  This is more important than ever, with recent studies showing that humans have a shorter attention span than a goldfish, due to the effects of smartphones and social media.  Here are some tips from canva on how to design great blog graphics.