Having Fun with Canva Design Challenges
Let your imagination run wild with Canva Pro
I love Canva. I’ve said this so many times that I could hear you guys yelling at me, “Yeah, we know! Get over it!”
Well, I can’t.
Sorry.
I just have a lot of fun with it.
I used Canva mainly as a visual aid and to add color to my blog posts. But starting in late April, I signed up for a public Instagram account to join the weekly Canva design challenge.
Every week Canva will announce the design challenge theme on Instagram and via email. To enter, you just need to create the theme-inspired design on the Canva app. Then, share your design on Instagram or Twitter and tag #canvadesignchallenge.
Winners could win one year of Canva Pro free subscription and a Print Voucher worth US$50!
In fact, I was lucky to be one of the recent winners of the Nature theme! But I’m currently subscribed to Canva Pro, so I’ll use the code for a free subscription next year instead.
Joining the Canva Weekly Challenges is one of the few things I’m glad I got myself into this year.
Besides getting to know some creative Canva enthusiasts whose designs often inspire me, I also discover some cool tricks Canva Pro offers!
Nature Theme
This is the design that got me to win the nature-themed challenge.
Everything I needed to piece this design together is in the Elements tab by searching for the right keywords.
I wanted to create some sort of painting. So I started with a photo of a canvas as the background. Then, I typed the keyword ‘nature’ and browsed for the best one that felt right to be on top of a canvas. Of course, it could be any image you prefer.
After finding the one l liked best, I clicked Edit Image and chose the Snowfall effect by Prisma.
At first, I wanted to leave the edited photo as it is. But I thought it would be cooler if it looked like an unfinished painting. So I used a Brushstroke frame to give that effect.
I was about to download a PNG file of the design, but it felt somehow incomplete… Finally, after a few minutes of staring blankly at my laptop screen, it came to me.
What’s the point of showing an incomplete painting without a painter painting it?
I immediately looked for the perfect photo of a hand holding a paintbrush. My goal was to look for a picture with the cleanest background. That way, the Canva background remover function would work seamlessly.
For the final touch, I wanted the canvas to look a bit ‘beat up’. If that makes sense… So I added some paint splatters I found on the Graphic tab in Elements.
Pride Theme
I made three designs for the Pride theme. And this was the first one:
For this design, I wanted it to have a movie poster feel. However, I didn’t have a clear picture of what the end result would look like. So I started to browse for a photo of the couple first before the background.
Once I found the one I liked, I removed the background and adjusted the brightness to slightly darker.
If you’ve read my previous post on The DIY Diaries about digital drawing, you’d know that I love night views. So I started digging for photos of rainbows in the night sky on Canva. To my surprise, I found one! Took me a while, though.
But I noticed that the rainbow colors in the photo are pretty muted even after a bunch of editing done on Canva. I needed it to be a bit more vibrant in the night sky.
I have a slight red-green color deficiency, so I sought assistance from a normal pair of eyes to confirm my color judgment. And yeah, I was right. Sort of…
So to add more vibrancy, I layered a rainbow graphic over the one on the photo.
After spending a good few minutes browsing for other landscape views to add as part of the background, I found one with silhouettes of hills and a lake.
It was perfect because the dark contour of the hills was prominent enough for Canva Background Remover to work its magic effectively! And as expected, the sky in that photo was removed entirely.
I adjusted the brightness of all the images to make each piece belong in one picture.
Lastly, I added the movie title, though I’m sure you could come up with a better one… But hey, I tried, okay!
I tested out different fonts until I found the one that made me feel like I’d want to watch this non-existing movie.
Travel Theme
I remember watching Upside Down, a movie released in 2012. I found the visuals to be striking when I first watch it. I like the idea of two worlds with opposite gravitational pull.
So this design is inspired by that movie:
Since I had an idea of what it would look like, I tested different photos available on Canva to see which worked best.
Eventually, I picked a photo of a lake as the upside-world to have the illusion of a sky. Besides, it’s a perfect photo for the background remover to work effectively because I only needed the lake and trees from the picture.
I wanted to add some graphics. So like the Pride design you saw in this post, I wanted all pieces to look like they belonged in one picture.
To achieve that, I used the Snowfall effect by Prisma, which I then did for the downside world.
After I was done with the background, I flipped a graphic of a ferry vertically and placed it on the lake with a woman falling down.
But the impact wasn’t enough to show that the woman fell off a boat from an opposite gravitational pull universe.
So I added two women, waving and tossing money off the boat. Still, I wasn’t happy with it yet. The theme was Travel, and yet it didn’t feel like it. So that’s when I added the suitcases, a camera, and a sun hat.
Canva Design Challenge Is So Much Fun
Besides picking up Digital Drawing earlier this year, participating in Canva Design Challenges has to be one of my favorite creative activities.
I can let my imagination run wild with a single prompt. And it’s a great feeling getting inspired by the designs of other Canva enthusiasts. Some of them come up with really cool and outside-of-the-box ideas that I never thought it’s possible to make.
Here are a few of the many designers that make my jaw drop whenever their posts pop up in my Instagram feed:
If you love going crazy with your creativity and imagination, I highly recommend joining Canva’s weekly design challenges. And if you have, share your Instagram handle in the comment section! I’d love to check out your Canva designs.
Also, if you don’t mind seeing random nonsensical fantasies in your Instagram feed, feel free to follow me on Instagram — @cherikho.
