Our Dirty Little Secret

Let me start by saying that no one—not even Canva—is paying me to write this review. I just feel that if I have discovered something that I think is as helpful to your creative process as it was to mine that I should share it, which is why I am doing this.

It is my daily goal to get as much stuff done as quickly as possible, but have it be as beautiful as possible. –After all, time flies; I’m getting grayer by the minute; and I need to make my mark as strongly and as quickly as possible. –Therefore, when I find tools that help me do that—and are free—I feel that I must shout from the rooftop about them. That’s that place from which my Canva.com review flows.

Want to know how we get so much done? Check out our planning method.

Let me assure you that I am a former Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop user. The problem is that, although I spent a mint on what I thought would be top-notch, professional tools, I found the learning curve too fucking steep. –Again, I don’t have the time to futz with things like I used to and, further, my patience is shot. –I know I’m old, because I still fawn over GeoDraw—a tool that allowed me to design curved text and combine interesting fonts (that I used to design our vinyl record labels back in 1992). When that $10 software program was discontinued, I will admit that I was lost. For the past twenty-something years, I have been using a variety of graphic design platforms and had settled on Adobe PhotoShop Elements as my software of choice (that provided that ease-of-use, while still allowing me to do advance functions like adding filters and saving in a variety of file formats). All that changed when—on a whim—I discovered Canva.com.