Finals are over. The papers are turned in, tests taken, presentations… presented. It’s done. And my week of hellishness is done as well.
Hell week is over – let spring break begin!
This year, I’ll be traveling to Palm Beach with one of my best friends to visit my grandparents. Why did I choose Palm Beach instead of somewhere foreign and exotic (like last year’s trip to Barcelona and Madrid)? A) Because I’m saving up to buy a house and furnish said house. And B) I lost a bet with my grandfather in 2016 so this trip was WAY overdue.
But more on all that later. If you’re new to the blog, every Wednesday (or whenever I can manage to get a post up on a Wednesday) is Blogging Basics Wednesday. This shows you all of the behind-the-scenes of blogging. From the super technical to the super non-technical – from how to create a blog newsletter and the best influencer networks to join to how to balance blogging with a full-time job. Today’s topic? How to make a product collage using Canva.
What I’m Wearing:
Shirt: LOFT / Pants: Ann Taylor / Shoes: similar / Bag: Furla
Earrings: Sugarfix by BaubleBar, c/o / Rings: similar, BaubleBar / Nail Polish: Essie
My friend Brit of Grit Fitness told me about Canva way back in 2015. I was complaining about struggling to learn Photoshop to create gift guides and product collages. She suggested I check out Canva, toting its ease-of-use and more or less foolproof design.
Over the years, I’ve used Canva for countless gift guides, product collages, and other design needs. I frequently make eye-catching pins for Pinterest using Canva… and even a few of my non-blogger friends use Canva. One of my guy friends uses it to help him make the cover page for a monthly e-magazine he manages. Another friend used it to create a furniture plan when she decided to redo a room in her house. It’s kinda genius. And really easy-to-use!
Still wanna know how to make a product collage using Canva? Here we go!
How to Make a Product Collage Using Canva
Creating a Blank Slate for Your Collage
Start by registering for Canva and then click “Create a Design” in the upper lefthand corner. Instead of using any of the pre-made designs, I recommend selecting “Use Custom Dimensions” in the upper righthand corner – that way your collage will be the exact size you want.
When I’m making a product collage for inclusion in a blog post, I typically like it to be a bit roughly the same size as the other photography on my blog. On the other hand, when I’m designing solely for use on Pinterest, I always opt for something a bit longer. Play around with the dimensions to help you figure out what’s best for your brand.
Adding Text – The Basics
Once I have the sizing sorted, I click “Design!” and it opens the design. Along the sidebar, you’ll see “Search”, “Layouts”, “Elements”, “Text”, “Background”, and “Uploads”. Ever since I first started learning how to make a product collage using Canva, I’ve kept my designs simple. As such, I have solely used “Elements”, “Text”, and “Uploads” when creating my collages.
I typically start off by clicking “Text” and then “Add Subheading” and placing some text on the collage. The reason why I like to start by adding text instead of starting with the product uploads is because Canva automatically pulls whatever you type in first as your “Design title”. Aka it saves you about 3 seconds of extra typing and makes it really easy for you to push “save” on your creation (and reference it again in the future). After you save once, Canva will autosave after every change you make to your design… So no worries about losing your work if the internet goes out!
I tend to use the same fonts on Canva as I do on the blog. Occasionally, I’ll use a cursive font for effect, but that’s fairly rare. I like to title my collage somewhere in the middle of the collage, in a font that matches my blog post headings. Then, later, once all of the imagery is imported, I add numbers to each product on the collage an accent font.
The Fun Part: Adding the Products
Finding products for your collage will take the longest time out of this whole process. Adding products to the collage in a visually-appealing order comes in second…
But it’s a very distant second.
Both rewardStyle‘s Link Ninja and ShopStyle‘s LinkIt make it very easy for you to pull product images (and links!) from a site. All you have to do is go to the product you want, click Link Ninja or LinkIt in your browser’s bookmarks bar, and then drag the proffered image to your desktop. Easy peasy.
Yet, even with these tools, in my experience, finding the perfect items for each part of the collage takes a lot longer than you think it will. I typically spend at least an hour searching for items for a product collage… And then another 15-30 minutes designing the collage in Canva.
After I have all of the product images I want to include in the collage on my desktop, I click “Uploads” in the Canva sidebar. And then I just bulk drag and drop them into Canva. To add the products to the collage, click each product one by one in the Uploads panel. Drag it to the desired location on your collage and resize if necessary.
To resize image(s), click on the image(s) and hover over a corner until the double-sided arrow appears. Then click and drag your cursor to resize the image(s). When I’m making a product collage of one type of product (like winter coats), I like for all of the images to be of roughly the same size. However, if my product collage contains a range of items (like last year’s birthday collage), I just focus on creating a visually-appealing collage.
Exporting to the Blog
Now for the last step in learning how to create a product collage in Canva. When the collage is all finished, all of the images are uploaded, resized, and in the desired order. Each image has been numbered (if necessary), and the final bells and whistles have been applied. All one has to do is click “Download” in the upper righthand corner.
I recommend downloading in PNG. PNG is a lossless compression file format. That means that graphics downloaded in PNG format will appear to be of higher quality than the same graphics downloaded in JPEG. But this quality comes with a price. PNG-formatted images will take longer to load on your site and use up more storage space.
I use PNG formatting for all of my product collages. Once I click “Download”, the graphic immediately begins to download to my computer. After that, I can easily upload it into the desired blog post.
Et voila! You’re done!
Do you have any lingering questions? Or anything else you want to learn from my Blogging Basics series? Let me know in the comments below!
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