Julie Edwards: Hello and welcome everyone.
Julie Edwards: I'm Julie Edwards with Niche Academy, and we will get started here in just a few minutes. But I wanted to give everyone time to come into the room. Please feel free to hop over to the chat and say, Hi, if you would like to let us know where you're from. We do publish the Chat Transcript. And so if you're not comfortable talking in the chat, you don't have to. But you're more than welcome to pop over there and say, Hi! Let us know where you're from.
Julie Edwards: Pennsylvania coming in first today. Hello, hey! New York, hey? Massachusetts! South Carolina tons and tons of people here. This is a huge webinar today. We've had a lot of registrants for this one so
Julie Edwards: so nice to see, so many of you joining us. Wow! Hi! Nebraska! Louisiana! I cannot keep up with this. Hello, everybody! Hello, Canada! I saw some of our Canadian librarians coming in. Hello! Hello.
Julie Edwards: Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan!
Julie Edwards: Hi! Everybody!
Julie Edwards: Welcome! Welcome! Hey? New Jersey, hey? Florida, New Hampshire.
Julie Edwards: hey? South Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado! I'm so we have oh, hey? South Dakota.
Julie Edwards: one of my neighbors. We have over 4,000 people registered for this webinar. So hey, Trinidad and Tobago, I just saw that come through. Welcome. Welcome. It's so nice to see you
Julie Edwards: greetings everybody. I am. Gonna check that in North Dakota, coming in alright. I'm gonna check and see after this webinar and see if we can get all 50 states in here. We've gotten close before I've had one webinar where we had 46 of the 50 States represented. So I'm feeling better. I've got. We got the Dakotas in here now
Julie Edwards: is anybody here from Rhode Island? It's all it's the. It's either the little tiny States, or it's the big rural states.
Julie Edwards: Hello! Hello! From the West Indies. That that sounds awfully nice. I am in Montana, and it is cold and everything is gray. The West Indies sound beautiful to me. Hey, Idaho!
Julie Edwards: Hey, North Carolina!
Julie Edwards: So glad to see all of you so welcome. Keep on coming in. Keep saying, Hi! In the chat, if you would like to, but we are at the top of the hour, so we will go ahead and get started with this webinar. Welcome.
Julie Edwards: welcome to this webinar on canva and design for libraries! I'm Julie Edwards. I'm a librarian and instructional designer with Niche Academy, and I am joining you from Missoula, Montana.
Julie Edwards: Let me take a minute to briefly introduce Niche Academy. I know so many of you know us through our webinar series. But we're so much more than that. We are an easy to use all in one learning platform to help libraries create and deliver effective training and measure success.
Julie Edwards: So our platform is the perfect tool for libraries. If you are looking to increase your E resour usage, move your programming, including your story times online
Julie Edwards: and deliver and track training for staff development. If you're interested in finding out more about what we do chatting with a member of our team or hearing what your colleagues and other libraries have to say, I will drop a link to our website in the chat, and so you can check us out.
Julie Edwards: We are recording this webinar. I will make the recording the slides in the Chat Transcript and the Audio transcript available to everyone who has registered after the presentation. And I will email you all that in a few days it will also all be out on our blog, and I'll drop the link to the blog in the chat box. Also.
Julie Edwards: if you would like, you can turn on closed captioning at the bottom of your screen.
Julie Edwards: If you would like to use that. Let's see. So we have. There are already 850 people in here and climbing. So please continue to chat with each other in the chat with this many librarians in a room. There's so much good information that goes back and forth. But if you have a question for the presenter. Please put that in the question and answer box of zoom. With this many people in the room. Things will
absolutely get lost in the chat for me. So if you put things in the QAI can do my best to moderate that at the end of the webinar.
Julie Edwards: This Webinar series is part of our commitment to solving bigger problems together, providing continuing education in the library space. I'm so happy that you have joined us today, and I will link to our upcoming webinars
Julie Edwards: into the chat. So you have access to that as well. So without further ado. our presenter today is Jennifer Blair. Jennifer is the head of user services, librarian and associate professor at Asouza Pacific University.
Julie Edwards: Her role is dedicated to the user experience, including marketing, the library and teaching. She has extensive experience teaching online courses in design and computer literacy.
Julie Edwards: She holds A, BA in graphic design, and MA. In education with an emphasis in educational multimedia and in master of science, in library and information, studies
Julie Edwards: her experience in academic and public libraries, as well as work, experience in art and design, allow her to employ visionary strategies to enrich progress and enhance advancement for students. I am thrilled to have Jennifer here today, and I will turn the webinar over to her.
Jennifer Blair: I thank you for a great introduction, and thank you so much. I just wanna say that this is by far the largest audience I have ever had, and I am
Jennifer Blair: so appreciative to see all of you. My goal is to help librarians and library staff with the practical end of things that are often not addressed or not budgeted. And so this is already always been a popular webinar of mine. But I would say, by far, this is the greatest number, and so I'm ha! I'm so happy to help so many people.
Jennifer Blair: I'm just a heads up. I'm going to do a shorter lecture, because this is a workshop where it's going to be very interactive. I'm going to show you direct tips and tricks exactly in canva as well as other platforms. And so I want to dedicate time
at least half of the second half of time. So you will see a standard lecture at the beginning. Getting an idea of the standards of design. But the second half I really want to just dive in and show you the practical things that you could use every day. So again, welcome to canva and design for libraries, you're going to be taught how to design for your library learning foundational
Jennifer Blair: principles in design, and that is the lecture part design as an aspect that for professionals I want to. Highlight takes many years of training, takes skill. It takes talent.
But the typical library realistically does not or cannot afford to hire their own designer, or even outsource design for library promotions. So you often have to rely on yourself to get the job done.
Jennifer Blair: This is not out of the ordinary, because most libraries tend to have smaller budgets, and they have to think very practically.
Jennifer Blair: So this webinar. As for you, if you love design, if you don't love it, but you need to learn it for your job.
Jennifer Blair: you need to create promotional materials for your library or market, your library, using design tools, and thus the tool of canva. That's the primary tool that we're going to be focusing on today.
Jennifer Blair: So I hope this webinar is very helpful for you. There's so much more that you can learn after this. So I encourage you to look, look at even niche, Academy, or other resources, to extend your knowledge. 1 HI will say, is not nearly enough time to learn to do design, but it is certainly a start. So let's get started.
Jennifer Blair: So I have 2 images here. Very practical again, that's my focus. My focus is always on the practical. So everything, from the obvious to the not so obvious, like signs, flyers, business cards, websites to the not so obvious has a design.
Jennifer Blair: Every design also has a purpose, be it to promote something, or as a function. For example, an Instagram post about an event serves the promise of promoting your library.
Jennifer Blair: whereas a functional design would be something that you use like, say, a pre piece of furniture. The idea in design is training your eye to start looking at things differently.
Jennifer Blair: So your assignment I want to give you after this webinar, is to start observing your everyday objects the next time you go into a store, or you use something. Start noticing the the designs both in, say their logo and their function.
Jennifer Blair: notice its purpose and how it was designed.
Jennifer Blair: Notice if it's functional or a design that is a promotion.
Jennifer Blair: Thinking from a design perspective is going to give you greater appreciation for your everyday objects, and also allow you to recognize common features in designs.
Jennifer Blair: I'm using these 2 beech fixtures or pictures to state the obvious in how bright it is. The cropping, the color. Start noticing what you think is a good versus a bad design, and try to answer to yourself why, you think it's a good design versus a bad design. What makes it good or bad? And why is that important
Jennifer Blair: design is going to come in many forms, including the obvious, like print web multimedia, but also very much related to libraries's user experience design, or UXD.
Jennifer Blair: So when you design you format according to that type, for example.
Jennifer Blair: U Xd is labeled as a newer design type that focuses on the user experience based on how you want them to experience something
Jennifer Blair: when designing for your library like instructions. You're anticipating how your user is going to experience it, making sure they understand the steps necessary to accomplish their goal.
Jennifer Blair: User experience for libraries is primarily used for serving your patron needs. And once based on this knowledge and information.
Jennifer Blair: this is going to be different than, say, the business industry, because when you learn design, it's coming from that perspective. in that it's applied to the consumer, or what they think consumers want in terms of, say, money or profit, whereas libraries are in terms of learning and service. But the same principles are still going to apply.
Jennifer Blair: So the point of design is in its purpose. It is thinking about the message that you want to project to your user or your patron, how you want them to view it, experience it, and the message that you intend.
Jennifer Blair: It is about projecting a message that impacts your user.
Jennifer Blair: As a designer, you are communicating a language to your user that is purposeful in strategy. It blends art with design to create something with a purpose, an objective, or a function
Jennifer Blair: to design means learning a new language. What makes a good from a bad design is how well you communicate that language. You don't necessarily have to be the best designer or the best artist, in order to make good designs.
Jennifer Blair: A good design versus a bad design applies standard design standards with content that projects a strong message, and not one design is going to be the same as the next. But there are going to be
Jennifer Blair: principles and elements in every design that will help you have a consistent flow. So let's take a look at what that is.
Jennifer Blair: As you develop your design skills, you're going to begin to recognize things in design that you didn't before, because your eye is slowly being trained to process things differently, to recognize when things seem out of place versus when things look well designed, and that comes from the elements and principles of design.
Jennifer Blair: The elements in a design are the practical things that you want to consider using in your design, and how they will be used. These are pretty obvious things
Jennifer Blair: but a greater definition may make you rethink it a little bit more, or have it be a little bit more in depth with line lines in a design
Jennifer Blair: are the literal line that you place in a design, or they can also be lines that are created through other shapes and color with color. This is going to determine the overall feel of the design.
Jennifer Blair: determining how many colors you will use, and whether they complement each other are going to project different feelings. For instance, a color combination of red and black is going to create a very different feeling than, say, blue and gray.
Jennifer Blair: blue, and gray, is going to be softer, more melancholy versus say, you want something bright and happier. You're going to stick with the warmer colors like
Jennifer Blair: orange, yellow, green. When it comes to shape, you, incorporate shape into your design.
Jennifer Blair: which then creates secondary shapes from what's called negative space, or the space that is formed surrounding your shapes. So even if you don't actually create like circular shapes or square shapes, rectangular triangular
Jennifer Blair: shapes are still created with images that you use as well as the positive and the negative space relationship with form. This is the depth that is given to a shape or an object, or a 3D. Design
Jennifer Blair: 3D. Design is like a sculpture, or anything in 3D. Form. But most of your design is going to be in standard 2D design. So the form is going to be the illusion of 3D. For example, instead of just a regular triangle with a flat color, you can add dimension to it by making it look like a pyramid.
Jennifer Blair: And you can do that in various ways by trying to add texture, texture, or in how you draw it out, you can make it look 3D. With value. This is going to be the lightness or the darkness applied to a design.
Jennifer Blair: This is an element that you would apply when considering the differences in contrast, not the actual color used. For example. the contrast between black and white
Jennifer Blair: is going to create very high contrast versus if you have a gradation of white to gray to black. That's going to create a smoother contrast.
Jennifer Blair: And one thing I wanna highlight about design? That you won't see in any of this the slides that I learned in design school. They really emphasize this, especially in graphic design.
Jennifer Blair: If your design can stand alone, using black and white only, and this is a good practice, try to design in only black and white, and if it stands on its own. Very well, then, that means that incorporating color is going to make it look even better, because color can be especially. And when you're training yourself in design, can be very distracting, and it can also be something that you can lean on.
Jennifer Blair: So it's always good when you're first learning design to emphasize. I'm just gonna design in black and white that way. I'm not distracted by color that I'm just learning the elements, learning the principles of design, and then only then do you start incorporating color when you start to gain a little bit more confidence.
Jennifer Blair: So when it comes to space, this is created with shapes, with color, with form and lines.
using positive and negative space as well as the background, the foreground and the middle ground.
Jennifer Blair: Positive space is going to be the shape itself, like a triangle or a circle. while the negative space is going to be the background. Behind it, like the white background.
Jennifer Blair: The background is a color applied, or say, it's going to be a faded image. while the foreground is the focal point or the main emphasis.
These can be thought of as layers where the most vital part is going to be placed in front.
Jennifer Blair: What is secondary is placed right behind it, which is the middle ground.
Jennifer Blair: and the background is not as important, but it provides balance to the design. So the background is going to be
Jennifer Blair: not necessary for, say, main information that you want to present.
Jennifer Blair: but it's necessary to cause flow with the design.
Jennifer Blair: Finally, the element of texture is how an object looks or feels. This is easier in 3D. Design for obvious reasons, because you get to touch or you feel it. But a 2D. Design is going to give the illusion of texture, such as fur, wood, bark, or any other element.
Jennifer Blair: so the elements think of them as the practical
Jennifer Blair: part of design, whereas the principal is going to use the elements to bring the principles together. The first one is unity, and this is what brings the design altogether. It's exactly in the name. It's not going to focus on one thing. Rather, it's the bringing together of all things
Jennifer Blair: to help unify your design to make sure it looks like everything in it, belongs together, for example, using complementary colors, complementary shapes that are used throughout the design
Jennifer Blair: with harmony. This is going to work with unity and balance to make one cohesive design, in that it emphasizes a relationship or a connection to all of the parts. To make it whole.
Jennifer Blair: harmony is going to bring balance and unity to a design through both recognition or through recognition of sadeness. For example.
Jennifer Blair: elements are unified through their attributes or their characteristics, and how they complement each other.
Jennifer Blair: For example, you're using similar shapes throughout
Jennifer Blair: with balance. This is how all of the elements blend together in a design in order to create balance or equity where your elements are going to be weighed equally.
Jennifer Blair: This is going to allow your eye to travel throughout the design without feeling like one element dominates over another, or that it overpowers
Jennifer Blair: with rhythm. This includes movement. Rhythm allows the viewer to travel throughout your design by using elements that trigger interest or commonality. For example.
Jennifer Blair: a shape is placed in opposite corners. This forces your eye to look at both areas rather than just. One
Jennifer Blair: contrast is going to be the varying depth that is applied, and the depth is not in how dark or light it is, but it considers what is placed in the design and how it balances out. For example.
Jennifer Blair: 2 dark colors
Jennifer Blair: shouldn't be placed next to each other, because it's going to have a lack of contrast, making it hard to see the value of each color.
Jennifer Blair: You can use 2 dark colors, certainly, but have a color differentiation between each, or a gap or negative space in between with dominance. This refers to the centre of interest or the focal point within each element. For example, the point of a shape.
Jennifer Blair: the direction of a line. Or if you're using images, say the person smiling gradation is a transition or an incremental change in your design. It can be very apparent as in a color going from light to dark, or it can also be very subtle from, say big to small.
Jennifer Blair: with repetition. This is exactly in the name. It's the repeating of shapes, colors, or other elements throughout the design in order to help bring familiarity, recognition.
Jennifer Blair: Thus it helps bring balance, unity, and harmony. So repetition is an important part with emphasis
Jennifer Blair: in any design. There is an element that is the main focal point. For example, say you're promoting an event that starts at 50'clock.
Jennifer Blair: The emphasis is the part that makes the viewer look at that as the most important information it could be made to stand out, such as using a bolder and bigger font.
Jennifer Blair: placing the topic or subject by itself. or in its own shape. in order to help guide the person looking at it, knowing that that particular topic is what is emphasized.
Jennifer Blair: and finally, proportion in scale. When you combine all the shapes, the lines, the colors, all of the elements in a design. You want to consider how big it is, or small, relative to the other elements, in order to find a balance between them to make sure that it makes sense. For example, say your font size is 20 for a title.
Jennifer Blair: The secondary information, like the address of the library is not going to be the same size. It might be size 14.
Jennifer Blair: So those are the elements and principles it does take a while to get used to incorporating or thinking about this, but if you're dedicated to design in your library, then you will eventually train yourself, and I do want to emphasize that it does take a while, so don't expect it to come tomorrow. And sometimes that is part of the frustration is that you wanna get it done right away.
But it is going to be a process like any other subject.
Jennifer Blair: Main part of design is going to be with your topography, with your shapes as well as your images. These are the primary things that you will use in most designs
Jennifer Blair: with typographic design. You might think of the core word of type.
Jennifer Blair: You might think of fonts, font styles, font sizes, etc. But typography is a main part of any design is in that. You are intentionally thinking about the arrangement of type in a way that works with your other elements, to project a message in a way that is cohesive with your other elements.
Take a look at this flier to the right. The Bauhaus, as an example.
Jennifer Blair: notice the arrangement is non traditional at an angle working with the design elements rather than against it. As a general rule, when it comes to typography, you should not use more than 3 font styles in any one design.
Jennifer Blair: otherwise the design is not going to look unified, or it's going to lack balance. And a font style is not necessarily defined as different font names like times, new Roman aerial Helvetica. Those are really common font names. A style is defined even within a font name such as times. New Roman regular is one font style.
Jennifer Blair: times new, Roman, Italic, and bold, those are each considered one font style.
Jennifer Blair: So when you are struggling with making your design unified, look at your topography, and how many font styles you're using
Jennifer Blair: when it comes to image content, size, and proportion. When you create a design, you want to consider the content of the image to make sure it's relevant its size as well as its proportion
Jennifer Blair: with images. You first want to make sure that they are relevant to your topic, for instance, very obvious. You wouldn't want to place a child in a design that is promoting an event for adults.
Jennifer Blair: Consider quality as well by making sure that it is not too small, not too blurry, not pixelated. You want it high quality. and when you're resizing in a design, especially when you're first learning it. It's very easy to forget, but make sure that when you scale it it is proportionate, or it's not stretched out.
Jennifer Blair: and notice how it works with other parts of your design, as far as scale and size
Jennifer Blair: images make it very easy to overpower the design because of the high visual content. So it's very easy to make the image bigger than it needs to be, but remember that it needs to be unified and create harmony and balance with all of the other elements in your design that way. Your image doesn't have to be the main focus every single time.
Jennifer Blair: and if you are wondering in the question which text. or where the text goes, does the text go up towards the top, towards your head or the bottom?
Jennifer Blair: There is no right answer. It's really a play with your placement of your words. So it depends on the information that you're putting in there, how much information and where it really does create balance. But one thing I did want you to notice is
Jennifer Blair: that there's text next to her head, and there's text at the bottom. Notice what your eye force is forced to do, it's forced to pay attention to both sides
Jennifer Blair: if I put it only text
Jennifer Blair: towards her head, and you only saw that text, and you didn't see the bottom text in the bottom corner.
Jennifer Blair: Your eye would just forget about that bottom corner, so not necessarily related to typographic design, but in all design. You want to have a balance piece, so that your eye travels throughout appreciating your design as a whole.
Jennifer Blair: there is going to be some differences in design with libraries. The difference in design with libraries versus other industries is in your purpose. Our goal as a library is to make sure people have the information they need in order to learn and grow.
Jennifer Blair: Our purpose is to better people through teaching resources and services. Our goal is to make sure you know how to access the information. So this plays into how you project your library, in that you are not selling something, but you are educating.
Jennifer Blair: So the purpose in design is to project that message. the message for any library, whether its public, academic, Special Library School library is to ensure that your patrons are served
Jennifer Blair: as a service. Your library's mission is to provide access to resources and to teach whether it's formally or informally through your programs.
Jennifer Blair: For example, story time is teaching the importance of reading to young children. Reference teaches patrons how to research
Jennifer Blair: our mission as libraries is projected in your design by providing the mission of the program, the service, the resource, and how it benefits you. For example, research and reference help would detail what the service is.
Jennifer Blair: but it also would detail the benefit, such as teaching, critical thinking skills, how to find resources
or a children's programme would detail the what and where.
Jennifer Blair: but what also lists the benefits to the child, such as learning a new skill, learning a new game, teaching about stem or steam
Jennifer Blair: design in a library, also projects advocacy
Jennifer Blair: or support of libraries, and it's important to project because the library does not make a profit. Rather, it's going to cost the university, the business, the school, or the community money in order to be run. So, having support for the library means continual resources, can be provided to your library, which then provides the community.
Jennifer Blair: How you project that in a design is in showing the benefits. For example, a flier is going to promote a children's program. But perhaps you want to put a number of how many children the library has helped this year.
Jennifer Blair: This provides a basis for supporters to understand the library's value. Perhaps, even if you're having a fundraiser. The advocacy comes in with projecting that value. For example, say, you're raising funds to buy a database that helps resume building.
Jennifer Blair: The design could advocate by projecting how this helps people get jobs. So you are relating not just the program and service you are providing. But you are relating it to, how does this benefit your community that you serve
Jennifer Blair: is also beneficial for community outreach and education when you design your approaches not to sell the library to your patron. Every one who has any basic knowledge of a library already knows it gives some sort of value.
Jennifer Blair: sir. Your goal is to educate and reach out to your community on things that people are likely not aware of.
Jennifer Blair: For example, there's a long standing myth
Jennifer Blair: that public libraries only carry old books. So when you design a web page or a social media post, you are going to create a post that dispels that myth, letting your community know that you have new releases
Jennifer Blair: finely designed for libraries is going to be human centred.
Jennifer Blair: This is similar to user experience designing that your approach to everything that you do is centred around what your community needs and anticipating their needs.
Jennifer Blair: So it's retraining your thought process and everything that you plan for constantly questioning. Does this fulfil a need.
Jennifer Blair: Sometimes it can be tempting to design your library to gain popularity or to be on trend. For example.
Jennifer Blair: ebooks are rising in popularity. and they're continuing to be used, and will continue to be used in the long run.
Jennifer Blair: But even if it is a trend, you still have to question if it's going to be utilized by your community. For example, say, you have a lot of computer, illiterate people who are nowhere near being able to use that type of technology.
Jennifer Blair: So if you were to bend to trends, you would not be serving your specific population because a large Prozette population wouldn't end up using it.
Jennifer Blair: So design goes beyond just like graphic design. You are designing holistically for the library to determine what your community needs first. And finally, just one thing I wanted to mention before we get into the workshop portion, you also have to consider color.
Jennifer Blair: This is a reminder. You probably learned it in elementary school, or if you took a class in in high school, in like an art class, or even junior high.
Jennifer Blair: you would learn the color wheel. So this is a reminder of complementary colors, primary colors, secondary colors. But the main thing that I wanted to highlight
Jennifer Blair: is RGB. Color mode versus CMY, or CMYK. Color mode. If you are completely unfamiliar with this
Jennifer Blair: RGB. Color mode is really important when you say our photo editing
Jennifer Blair: or setting up your file, and that you have to know what mode you have to use for the format. So RGB. Stands for the colors of red, green, and blue.
Jennifer Blair: And this is really something that's easy to remember. Remember that RGB is for anything with a screen.
Jennifer Blair: TV computers, anything. Digital
Jennifer Blair: so when you set up your files
Jennifer Blair: for for social media posts, it's always gonna be RGB,
Jennifer Blair: because those are the actual colors that are used in creating that monitor screen
Jennifer Blair: for CMYK. Color mode. This is anything, print anything physical.
Jennifer Blair: because those are the actual colors that are used in the ink colors or the Toner colors when you have to print something out. So if you say, set up your file for RGB. The print.
Jennifer Blair: the printer is still going to print it, but it's converting it to CMYK. And it will alter the colors to something that you don't necessarily like. So when you have to convert it to print mode, you may need to make some color adjustments.
Jennifer Blair: So color theory is not a new theory. But I did want to emphasize this. And I did want to highlight what the complementary colors are for. And finally. this is something that's really important in any design. It's really emphasized in photography.
But I apply it to every design. And this is what's called the rule of thirds.
Jennifer Blair: The rule of thirds divides your image or your design evenly, in 3 rows of 3 of a line or a grid totaling 9 total, even squares.
Jennifer Blair: These lines, divided by thirds, help create balance and flow based on what is placed in these squares. And it's a compositional technique that creates balance in your image.
Jennifer Blair: The idea is to create a well balanced composition that forces your eye to travel throughout the piece and not just focus on one area. So when you're applying the rule of thirds.
Jennifer Blair: you avoid placing the main focus in the direct center of the design.
Jennifer Blair: and place other secondary elements to create visual flow, forcing your eye to look at the whole piece rather than just the centre, because when you're naturally first designing.
Jennifer Blair: your eye naturally wants to go to the center of anything.
Jennifer Blair: be it a photo or a graphic design, a flyer, anything.
Jennifer Blair: What the rule of thirds does is, even if you put it off to the left, off to the right, or towards the bottom towards the top.
Jennifer Blair: That allows your eye to look at everything else in greater appreciation, because you put it. If you put the main focus directly in the centre. Think of like a portrait. You're always right in the centre.
Jennifer Blair: It kind of creates a tunnel vision where on the left and right side. top and bottom. You don't really pay attention to what's there. And that's what we want to avoid, because we want to emphasize really important information in our design, and that's not always going to be directly in the center.
Jennifer Blair: So the lecture portion is over the rest of the time I am going to share my screen, and I have a quick poll to determine whether or not I should show a certain application.
So if Julie could put that up.
Jennifer Blair: I just need to know whether or not a good portion of you have access to Photoshop. Just a simple yes or no question.
Jennifer Blair: And, Jennifer, it looks like the vast majority of people do not have access to photos. Okay, that is what I suspected, which is perfectly fine. I have a great alternative called photopia. It's web based available for free.
So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing the Powerpoint. And now I am going to share.
Jennifer Blair: Just give me one moment
Jennifer Blair: share Firefox or my browser. We're going to get to Canva. I'm going to leave the best for last. But one thing I wanted to show you was related to photo editing. This is very much a part of design, and so I wanted to take a few moments just to share some tips for you.
Jennifer Blair: so that you may not be aware of so if you wanted to follow along, you're more than welcome to, or you can just watch what I've done here is I've gone just to a general Google search.
Jennifer Blair: And I've typed in ocean waves just to get some images up. it doesn't default to images. But if you go to images. shows you all the pictures available, it's gonna be thousands, millions of pictures.
Jennifer Blair: If you use Google images which I would actually discourage, because it's not guaranteed for copyright purposes that you may be able to use the image. I have another source that you can use.
Jennifer Blair: But one thing, if you're having a hard time finding an image, go to tools and under usage rights.
Jennifer Blair: at least click on creative commons, you're going to find a lot less with commercial and other licenses. But if you click on creative commons, it will default to several websites, such as flickr pixels that will allow you to see images that can be used more often for free or low cost.
Jennifer Blair: And it'll say the website that it comes from, and if it is free, you will have to look up if attribution is required. In most cases
Jennifer Blair: they do want you to use attribution which can be annoying when you have to attribute each image that you use in. Say, a flier that's not normal design practice. So the design practice would be using what is stock photography. So say, you need a picture of a kid smiling.
Jennifer Blair: finding free images of that is going to be difficult. Without having to use attribution.
Jennifer Blair: One website that I found that is absolutely amazing is pixabay.com.
Jennifer Blair: So if you have any takeaway from stock photos today, Pixabay is your best bet you can download a certain number for free without creating a login.
Jennifer Blair: But logins, or creating or signing up is free. And so if you sign up, and I'd never get any like spam messages or anything, so it won't fill your inbox. So if you just sign in.
Jennifer Blair: then you'll have access to even more images on a daily basis. So let's just do say kids smiling.
Jennifer Blair: And the great thing about Pixabay is, you know, that they get their money from ads up here avoid the top line because it refers to I stock, which is stock photography that you have to pay for
Jennifer Blair: but if you click on anything, for under pixabase. So say you like this one.
Jennifer Blair: They don't require attribution, which is awesome. You don't have to worry about giving credit or anything.
Jennifer Blair: Of course you want to save the record of it, but when you download it gives you low quality all the way to high quality.
Jennifer Blair: I always go for the high quality, because I may end up creating something for print which requires high quality, and then I can downgrade it to web quality later on, if I need to. So always default to the high quality without the login. Or if you wanna avoid creating a login, you can always download the second highest quality without having to worry about logging in. So
Jennifer Blair: best recommendation I have for you is Pixabay for stock photos.
Jennifer Blair: My other recommendation, if you haven't heard of it is Wikimedia Commons and Wikimedia Commons is
for, like historical images, it does give a lot of the images credit of where the original sources, so say you're looking at the Civil War.
Jennifer Blair: obviously might not find too many, but it will have like historic sites and things of that nature. If you just click on one.
Jennifer Blair: You click on more details.
Jennifer Blair: You can download, and it gives you size options in most cases. If there's only one size option, then that's what you're stuck with.
But, as you notice, it does give you where exactly it came from.
Jennifer Blair: So Wikimedia Commons is an amazing resource. You also have Library of Congress, which Wikimedia Commons also picks up most of those, and I found that Wikimedia Commons is very easy to use. So that's another recommendation.
Jennifer Blair: Alright. So done with recommendations. Now for photo editing, since most of you do not have access to Photoshop. Perfectly understandable. Jennifer, I this is I just wanna break in for a quick minute just to note that we only have about 20 min left. Yes, so this is going to be really quick. This is probably the most similar to Photoshop.
Jennifer Blair: So this is web-based. You can have the same types of settings. The main thing that I wanted to show you. Let me just open a random image. Here.
Jennifer Blair: go to my desktop.
Jennifer Blair: open a pretty wave image
Jennifer Blair: the main thing that you want to know, which I certainly encourage you to mess around with filters and creating cool looking things on the images. But when it comes to photopia it's one of the few free photo editing tools
Jennifer Blair: that allow you to switch to RGB. And CMYK. Color mode.
Jennifer Blair: So when whatever format you're using, remember, RGB, is everything for screens. Cmy K is for printed materials.
Jennifer Blair: So when you need to switch, just go to image mode and RGB. Is what it defaults to most of the time when you download images.
Jennifer Blair: and then CMYK. For print a lot of the times, you may not notice a big difference. But when it comes to brighter colors.
Jennifer Blair: then those brighter colors are going to downgrade or become more subtle. So that's one thing I wanted to show you with photopia. And now let's head over to Canva.
Jennifer Blair: So for canva it has. It's free, and you can apply for the pro account because you do have limitations in the free account for access to
Jennifer Blair: templates and things of that nature. If you apply as a nonprofit or as an educator, more than likely. If you're a public library, you will fall under the nonprofit. You can try to apply through canva, just do a little bit of research and try to get a pro account for free.
Jennifer Blair: But when you open canva, this is what it looks like. Easiest big button. Create a design. It has all these template sizes for you. I'm going to do an Instagram Square, and
Jennifer Blair: when I do my social media posts I always do the same for Facebook and Instagram as the square, because it works for both. So when you do open it in canva, it automatically opens to a new tab.
Jennifer Blair: and then what I wanted to. Highlight is that it has many templates available. It defaults to templates here, so the and also keeps up with the most recent. So say, like, Hello! Fall! It's very easy to use the template, so that's what I would encourage with you first, and so to apply a template. All you have to do is you can use the search and say, This is the one that you want. All you have to do is click on it.
Jennifer Blair: and it will apply. So I would encourage you to use the templates and the beginning, and then over time start to create designs that are from scratch.
Jennifer Blair: When you click on it. Say, this is a graphic. So say, well, I like the arrangement of the text, but I don't necessarily want to use that graphic. You can take it out by just deleting it. So say you like this text. Remember, I'm going to apply the rule of thirds
in that.
Jennifer Blair: I don't necessarily want it right in the middle.
Jennifer Blair: The information that I want, and right in the middle, or I want to avoid right in the middle is so that my eye travels throughout the design.
Jennifer Blair: So if I go to the elements, so say if I go to elements, as many elements say, I want to do like a square. I often use this very.
Jennifer Blair: very common to use this. What canva does is it picks up the colors that are naturally in the design? See how it applied the brown.
Jennifer Blair: Let me click away and move this out of here, so say, instead of in the center. All I have to do is click on it, and if I hold my shift key down I can click on both, and I can rearrange it any which way I want.
Jennifer Blair: So say I want it in the bottom left corner.
Jennifer Blair: but I want it. Say in a square here.
Jennifer Blair: going to cover that. and then well, wait a minute. It's brown. How do I get it to pop up?
Jennifer Blair: Notice the tools towards the top here. If you click on the more button it has even more. If you go to position.
Jennifer Blair: I'm going to send it to the back.
Jennifer Blair: and yes, the font is very much the same color, so it will pop up here.
Jennifer Blair: Notice when it comes to fonts.
Jennifer Blair: You have your text color up here. I'm going to just change it to white here. So it's pretty easy to use. It's actually easier to use in a lot of areas than word. So I'd encourage you to use canva for everything design.
Jennifer Blair: So say I wanted fall. Hello, fall! Say, I wanted Hello.
Jennifer Blair: but I'm going to just a lot of the times. What I'll do is when I'm using the templates in Canva. I will just use it for the arrangement and the cool fonts, and then I'll just update it. So say, story time.
Jennifer Blair: And when you think of design, you want to think of dimension, and I know we're running short. I'll give it just a few more minutes in showing how you can show the rule of thirds. So when it comes to the rule of thirds, remember, try not to center everything and say, now, I want to apply an image.
Jennifer Blair: I can go to photos. They even have their own stock photography. So say, I'll put in kids.
Jennifer Blair: Anything with a crown is with the pro account, which means it is not for free so say I like this one. Or say, Look, there's kids reading.
Jennifer Blair: The idea behind a design is to create dimension.
Jennifer Blair: So it's a 2D design. So it's going to actually be the illusion right here. You see the carpet that creates some texture. But say, I wanted to create some more dimension. So say I'm going to kind of place it here.
Jennifer Blair: and a great way of placing dimension is by creating an element behind it. So I'm going to use the square again.
Jennifer Blair: This is a thing that I commonly do.
Jennifer Blair: Don't worry. I will fix all the problems that you may notice.
Jennifer Blair: Send this to the front.
Jennifer Blair: So just by adding that one little layer of dimension, it adds more dimension. So here, like, Well, wait a minute. This is a little bit too big when it comes to the font style. You want to create balance in the relationship to the fonts, having good balance between big and small as well as font styles that you choose. This is really big, so I will put say, it's at 200. That was the template. I'll put 100.
Jennifer Blair: That's a little bit too small. So maybe in between 1 50,
Jennifer Blair: and I can reduce this.
Jennifer Blair: and then maybe I can even bring it down. And I'm just holding the shift key down when I do that.
Jennifer Blair: and then say, Well, I'm still not liking that. Maybe you start to play around the idea with design is you just play around with the placement of everything like, well, I'm really not liking that. So let's put this in the bottom corner
Jennifer Blair: and see the relationship in how it flows. Well, what if I wanted this at the top?
Jennifer Blair: So the cohesiveness is with the shapes, the square shapes.
Jennifer Blair: But to create a little bit more contrast. I'm going to change that color of that shape to brown.
Jennifer Blair: or it was brown. You have all the colors of the rainbow available to you. So fall colors, I'm thinking, maybe orange just click in randomly. I like that color.
Jennifer Blair: So do that.
Jennifer Blair: And I realize story time should be at the bottom.
Jennifer Blair: be grammatically correct.
Jennifer Blair: There you go. And now you're considering. Okay, I have all my visuals in there. How do I want to place the other information like the time and everything.
Jennifer Blair: So if you go to Canva again, go to the left, and you go to text. These are default. Add a heading, add a subheading. I'll just add a heading defaults to black.
Jennifer Blair: and I'll just say Tuesdays
Jennifer Blair: at
Jennifer Blair: 11 A. M.
Jennifer Blair: And I just double click in the text box. I'll reduce that size fit within.
Jennifer Blair: Want to look at the font style that was used. It's called glacial indifference. So if I just click on this type in. on the drop down. It does keep a record, like word does of the last common one to use.
Jennifer Blair: So it applied that font style. I want it to be brown, so I'll do brown here.
Jennifer Blair: I know I'm clicking a lot, but it's really a the point of this is to play around with it as much as you can.
Jennifer Blair: So say, well, I kind of like the lineup of here.
Jennifer Blair: So as you can see the basic information I've put in. Now I can put in the secondary information, such as
Jennifer Blair: your slogan, or say your Anaheim public library. So library out in my area. It's not my library, but just thinking of a name.
Jennifer Blair: But the secondary information here doesn't need to be centered, so I can go to the placement here.
Jennifer Blair: There you go.
Jennifer Blair: and then I'll reduce the size in relation to what's the most important information.
Jennifer Blair: And then in this bottom left corner, you're like, what about that huge gap? Do I have to put information there? Not necessarily. So it really.
Jennifer Blair: you have to allow for negative space, and you have to allow the eye flow. So I put something in the top left corner. I put something in the bottom right. What that does with your eye is. It forces it to travel throughout the piece, which is the primary point of this workshop, is learning the elements and principles to be able to recognize what creates good flow in your design.
Jennifer Blair: So that's just a few minutes of what I could show you one. Another thing I wanted to show you was how you share it. So if you go to share, that's how you download
Jennifer Blair: your file and you can connect your social media to this. But I actually would not recommend it. I would actually recommend using a social media scheduler. And the one that I use is called buffer, which is free, and if you click on download instead, you'll download it as an image.
and then, if you use buffer, which is a web-based platform you will be able to schedule your social media post by uploading those images. So if you go to download, it'll give you several different options. The default is Png.
Jennifer Blair: You can also download a Jpeg. If you have movement. Yes, a canvoy does allow video and things of that nature. It's not recognizing it right now, but if it did, it would give you an MP. 4 or a gift option.
and then once you click on download, you can then go to your social media scheduler.
Jennifer Blair: So the social media schedule, as I mentioned, is buffer that I use. There's also several others out there some of em limit. How many you can do at once. Buffer allows you to schedule 10 ahead of time, but you can schedule them as ahead as you want as a draft. So this is the one that I use which I recommend.
Jennifer Blair: It's really easy.
Jennifer Blair: this add out of the way.
I have an Instagram and a Facebook channel.
Jennifer Blair: And this is how easy it is. See, I have it scheduled up until this Friday. I have a little meme there. I work at academics. So focus is very much on studying. So all you need to do is click on the plus sign.
Jennifer Blair: and then you upload the image
Jennifer Blair: through, drag and drop, and then you add your caption. Here it defaults to noon for me, or if noon has passed, it'll go to the next hour, but you can schedule it again as as far ahead as you want
Jennifer Blair: discard there. and I realize we are short on time. So I am going to open it up for questions so hopefully I can help show you some other things that I may have missed.
Jennifer Blair: So question time.
Julie Edwards: Thank you, Jennifer, and thank you all. There's been a lot of great tips and information going back and forth in the chat. We have a lot of people asking for a follow-up webinar focusing specifically on designing canva. So I have
Julie Edwards: definitely made a note for that, and we'll keep you all posted on that. Check out our blog for that information. Yes, there have been a lot of questions that have come in 100.
Julie Edwards: One thing that has come up over and over again is creating flyers in canvas. So is it the same process as creating a social media post like you showed us.
Jennifer Blair: Yes, so let me go to Canva and go to flyer, and notice has 8 and a half by 11 is the default
Jennifer Blair: so very much the same process you will notice here it has the blank canvas, and you have templates that are available. It defaults to templates. So say, you're gonna focus on your Christmas programming. Say, this is a good one. So you're gonna have a craft day, same thing. If you use a template, you just click on it and it applies.
Jennifer Blair: And then if you want to create from scratch.
Jennifer Blair: say, get rid of some of these, just click on it and delete
Jennifer Blair: and say you wanted some other images. Whatever you want to delete, you can delete whatever you want to add, you can add the major difference with flyers is in how you share or download. You're going to download the same.
Jennifer Blair: But I would say to download it as a Pdf. For print that way, it will print properly, and then it also has this print button.
Jennifer Blair: Now, if you have a digital version, then download 2 copies. One is a Jpeg. Or Png, and then have your print file as your Pdf. That'll make your life a whole lot easier because printers love printing from Pdfs a lot better than say Jpeg or Png. It's a lot better with formatting.
Julie Edwards: Thank you.
Jennifer Blair: Several people have asked if they can add their own photos to canva or the photos that they download from the sha sites that you showed us earlier. Yes, absolutely. So. Say, let's go to Pixabay, and you go to download this boy picture, or I have that picture of that wave. So here
Jennifer Blair: you can also add multiple pages. So I'll just add another page here, so I can show you. If you go to uploads you can click on upload files
Jennifer Blair: and say, I go to download. I find that beach image open. It will download.
Jennifer Blair: See that little wave on the left as soon as that fills up. Then it's done, and then you just click on it.
Jennifer Blair: and then you can resize, make it bigger, make it smaller. Always go towards the corner so that it's proportionate, and then you can move it around. However, you want.
Jennifer Blair: You also can crop cropping is very easy in canva. Notice these lines here, the straight lines
Jennifer Blair: that allows your cropping.
Jennifer Blair: So
Jennifer Blair: yeah, it's pretty easy to upload and manipulate. You do have editing options for photo editing in canva, but it is pretty limited.
Jennifer Blair: If, unless you're on the pro account, I would recommend using photo pia for full-fledged photo editing like color adjustments and things like that, or adding filters, making it look really cool and then uploading it as an image. But you do have some options in here.
Jennifer Blair: It's like color adjustments.
Jennifer Blair: Say, you want it to be brighter, it'll be brighter. Contrast. So very basic things are available for photo editing.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. And I do just want to remind everyone. Cause I've gotten a couple of questions. Yes, the recording will be shared in a few days, and the Chat Transcript will absolutely be shared. I know there's so much great information in there. So yes, all of that will be on the blog, and you will get an email from me when that's ready. Probably Thursday or Friday this week, maybe Monday. But I'm pretty sure Thursday or Friday.
Julie Edwards: So, Jennifer, some people have been asking about the attribution. So if you use this photo, do you have to put the attribution somewhere on
Julie Edwards: the design.
Jennifer Blair: So when it comes to design, the rules are a little bit different in libraries we love to attribute because of copyright infringement. But if you use anything from Pixa Bay?
Jennifer Blair: It does not require attribution, so no, I don't have to.
Jennifer Blair: When it comes to anything used in canva like their photos. Right here you go to the bottom.
Jennifer Blair: Say, this kid image, I'm not going to give attribution because they give it to you to freely use.
Jennifer Blair: So it really depends on what you use for your photos like, if you go to Flickr or pixels sometimes it'll say attribution, sometimes it won't. So say this user. If I wanted to give attribution.
Jennifer Blair: you'll have to find the information on that page.
Jennifer Blair: Say, this is an individual person like a photographer that uploaded available for free, so it won't be like a full fit, fledged citation. But you wouldn't want to give like a little mark of this name. Our region available at Pixabay something to that effect, whatever information you have.
But you don't have to. If you use Pixabay or Canva
Julie Edwards: great. Thank you so much. So we are right at the top of the hour. You're getting a lot of thank yous. We still have so many more questions that we're not going to get to. But I have heard you all about wanting to do a follow up webinar deep diving into canva and so I will see about scheduling something like that. It will be on our blog if we do. Thank you, Jennifer. So much for all of this great information this afternoon.
Jennifer Blair: All right. Thank you very much.
Julie Edwards: and thank you all for joining us. I hope to see you at our next webinar. We have one coming up on November fifteenth about marketing for libraries, particularly public libraries. So if you're interested in that, you can check that out niche academy.com slash, blog, and hope to see you all at the next webinar. Until then have a great afternoon. Everyone bye.