ORIENTATION: Course Overview & Materials

I’m so glad you’re here, and have taken the steps to create better online visual design with our Better Online Brand Design course!

In this course, I’ll teach you how to create a Visual Style Guide in Canva to clarify and guide your visual design decisions across online channels. Your Style Guide is an invaluable tool for establishing  systems and standards for design in your company—as well as an indispensable resource you and/or your team can use to quickly and efficiently access all you need to create beautiful on-brand designs.

I am thrilled to be able to share my own process—along with many of my secrets, tools, and templates—for creating this kind of Style Guide, which I’ve established during my years as a designer and web developer. I think you’ll find it useful.

In this course, I’m going to guide you through creating your own Canva Style Guide, helping you to define your brand’s visual personality so that you can make smart design decisions for and about your brand.

We will be using a Canva Style Guide Workbook throughout this course. You’ll customize this workbook as your own Style Guide. Please take a moment now to download and save the template (link below).

1. If you don’t have a Canva account already, please take a moment to set up an account. You can do so for free at this link.
2. ADD THE CANVA STYLE GUIDE WORKBOOK (template) TO YOUR CANVA ACCOUNT NOW!

When you click on this link a file will be added to YOUR Canva account.

Feel free to work in it and play around as we go through the course together. My intention is to teach you all you need to know so that you’ll have a working Style Guide at the end of this course.

Please note that for first-time Canva users (or even for those familiar with it!), Canva can be confusing when it comes to where it ‘puts’ files … so please make sure you know where your Workbook file is stored.

Tip: You can always go to Recent Files to find things there, if you are not sure).

When you finish this course, you’ll have a full brand style guide with font’s colours and elements. Indeed, your Style Guide  will make the lives of your designers, copywriters, video editors (and overall content creators much easier by giving them a solid framework to use as a starting point for their work.

What are you most interested in learning about?

As we start moving and progressing through the course, I’d love you to take some time to consider what kind of transformation you’d most like to achieve as a result of taking this course.

1. Is there a specific aspect of this course that you’re most interested in learning about?
   This might be something you’re looking to improve in your business, or maybe a professional or personal development goal.
2. What is your desired outcome?
   Here’s a more specific exercise that’s aligned with getting clear about your messaging … Please take a few moments to consider the outcomes of taking this course.
   After taking this course, I will be able to___________.