Happy New 2025! It’s a bright and shiny new year and I am so late in the game in using Canva, but I am challenging myself to finally diving deep into using Canva and discovering exactly what it can, and cannot, do as a full-on graphic design software. It is all I have been hearing about lately and although I have poked around a bit, I have finally bought a Pro subscription and am doing a full audit. I readily admit, I am a hard core Adobe CC designer and am massively biased so Canva feels a bit like going back to Windows Paint plus some ad-hoc plug-ins.
More and more I am seeing mid-teer Saas software like this created to fit the needs of small business owners who almost have the skills to do what they need, or recognize that they have a need but don’t quite have the budget to hire a professional to do it (graphic design, web design, copy writing, marketing help, and more). At first, it can seem like Canva can do it all but once you dig in, it’s clear that Canva has it’s limitations as far as a professional design service. Just because someone can use the free logo maker app, does not necessarily make them a “graphic designer,” even if they claim to be. If you are a small business owner and you need a temporary logo right now and don’t have the budget to hire an designer experienced in branding, it will make an ok temporary solution. But I would not pay someone else to create a logo for you in Canva because as you will see below, Canva does not have the tools necessary to make high quality vector illustrations. Really, Canva is to help non-graphic designers, do graphic designy things.
Similarly, just because someone has used personal social media accounts before, they “are young and know about these things,” and are caught up on the latest memes, does not mean they have the knowledge required to analyze you business’s marketing needs and run your business’s official social media accounts. They can probably hobble something together, but your business will not see the results you are looking for.
So what’s the point? Before you spend time, energy, and possibly money on Canva, here is my ongoing list of some of it’s limitations. I will keep adding to and editing this list as I get to know Canva better and if I’ve made a mistake or features get updated – let me know! I am here to learn just like you are.
Can I Use Canva To Create Marketing Materials to Grow My Small Business?
If you are using Canva to make social media posts, digital assets, graphics for your Etsy store, yes! Absolutely, Canva is perfect for you. But if you need it to do very specific tasks, you may be surprised by some of its limitations.
- Can Canva do soft returns? Yes and No
Google’s AI overview told me yes and currently, Canva’s user guides don’t specifically say, but the real answer is, it depends. Canva can only do a soft return within regular text, using the familiar Shift + Enter. It cannot do a soft return within a bulleted or numbered list which is very disappointing because those are the times I use it the most. That means you cannot add a blank line of space after your line item, and then continue on with your auto numbering below (like I am doing in this list right now.) Canva will add a hard return, untab your text, and then start your numbered list over again at 1.
This also means, when you have one word all by itself on the last line (a.k.a. an “orphan”) you can’t bump a few words down below to join it using a soft return in any type of list in Canva like you can within most text processors. Your options are: change the font, text size, text box width, or edit your copy.
— Example: this is a new line after a soft return. — - Can Canva edit line spacing or paragraph spacing? Sort of.
You can change the line spacing but it affects an entire paragraph equally. You cannot add space before or after a paragraph or listed items which is pretty disappointing considering this is an option in most text editors including Google Docs. For advertising itself as a graphic design software, I would expect Canva to have quite a bit more robust typography controls. If you have a bulleted list, and you want multiple lines of text that belong to one bullet point to remain together with nice spacing above and below, you’re stuck have each line item in it’s own textbox and moving them independently which is a nightmare. - Can Canva edit kerning? No.
Although you can adjust spacing between all of the letters (letter spacing), you cannot adjust the space between specific letters (kerning). This means if you want to make a customized logo with adjusted kerning between two of the letters, you will need different software or you will have to put every single letter in its own text box and move them all individually which is very difficult to do without grabbing the wrong object. It can be done with the aid of the layers panel, but it’s also very hard to make minor, pixel level adjustments in Canva. Professional designers can, and will, see the difference.
”Yeah, but my clients aren’t graphic designers so who cares? They’re never going to know.”
When letters just don’t fit together quite right, it can make your logo or the paragraphs of your text just feel a bit… off and uncomfortable. Like, make you feel uneasy or as though something is just not quite right although you can’t quite put your finger on it. Professional fonts are quite expensive because designers spend years making every possible combination of letters fit just right when they sit side by side. But Canva doesn’t allow for this level of adjustment within its software. - Can Canva edit word spacing? No.
You cannot adjust space between individual words. I recently saw a logo created by a marketer, who openly admitted that she had no background in design, and who was very proud of her logo which had some very glaring kerning and word spacing issues.
As this marketer explained that she thought her gold logo looked quite striking on a black background, the only thing I could hear was my University professor’s voice in my head proclaiming, “I could drive a Mac truck through the gap in that word spacing!” Sure, it looked okay, but it was clear that the company had not hired a professional designer and this logo had just been printed on 15,000 direct mailers.
If all you need is a quick typeface logo for your Etsy store, Canva will be just fine. If you are attempting to use this for a high end marketing material, you need to be careful about which typeface you choose. - Can Canva make a vector logo? Only in Pro.
Also, the options are extremely limited. Your only option is an .svg file (scalable vector graphic). If you make a logo in Canva, export it as an SVG, not a PNG. An SVG will have a transparent background, but it will also have crisp, sharp edges and can be stretched larger or smaller as needed on the rest of your marketing materials – especially when you want to get business cards printed. Do not send low resolution, pixelated files of your logo out into the world; they look unprofessional and at some point, you will end up paying someone to recreate it correctly.
Just because Canva can export a vector file format, doesn’t mean you can really make vector art. Canva’s strength lies in raster art optimized for web. You can make a simplified silhouette, but there are no anchor points or a vector pencil tool like in Adobe CC or even GIMP to make fine tune adjustments. Some of the apps are getting closer, but I haven’t found one that comes close to Adobe’s Illustrator. - Do I own my designs and logos that I make in Canva? Can I copyright my Canva logo? NO!
This is the biggest misunderstanding about Canva or any template based logo and design creation software. Canva gives you a license to use their artwork. You do not own any designs that you create using their software, including logos, and therefore you do not own the copyright for any logos that you have created – with a template or otherwise – using their software. If you just need a quick logo to print out for some labels, perhaps this is not a problem for you. But if you are planning to upscale your professional business and want to legally own and copyright your business’ branding and identity you need to create a logo, letterhead, website images, and other design assets elsewhere or hire a designer who will then release the copyright upon payment for services.
With the creation of Google Lens and other image search websites, anyone can search for your logo and find other businesses using a logo similar to yours. If you are using a logo that was created from a template or stock art, any search engine or AI tool can find all the other businesses using that same template. If you are trying to make a unique brand that stands out, using a template logo creator can seem convenient at first but will come back to haunt you later when your logo is just another one in the crowd. - Does Canva have a QR code maker? Yes
There are several apps that will make QR codes for you. - How do I add a gradient to my text in Canva?
You will need one of the separate apps for this; there are several, just search in the apps add-ons. The biggest problem is that the apps don’t have the same fonts available as you may have been using in your main Canva design so you won’t always be able to add a gradient to text that matches.
Also, it it not in-line text and behaves more like Word Art in Microsoft Word. The gradient text will be in its own textbox on a new layer on top of your existing design. - Can I import a list? Yes
You can import a CSV list into your designs. I am working with a non-profit on their annual silent auction fundraiser. One volunteer created a spreadsheet with the title, description, and price for each auction item. Another volunteer created a Canva design as the background for the Silent Auction display placards. We output the spreadsheet data as a CSV file and imported it into Canva in order to populate the info into each page of the design and it was a very clever way to utilize a data merge function and eliminate the need to retype or copy/paste all of the writing. - Can Canva make files for print? No!
I’m going to come in hot on this one. If you don’t know anything else about me, know my education was originally in design for print and I worked both in a print plant and as a designer for print media for many years. So…. No! Canva is meant for designing digital media and it does these things very well: social media posts, e-flyers, PDFs, images for blog posts, downloadable content, videos, and now websites… Canva is not meant for printed designs. They are trying to output print-ready files and the options make it look like it’s an option, but your print files will be trash; sorry, not sorry.
As a test, I ran one of my designs through their automatic file-prep system. In Canva’s defense, the “automatic print bleed issues” is still in beta. However, it only managed to fix the bleeds on 2 out of 17 of my pages. It also failed to notify me that every single one of my pages had a low-resolution image I had inserted as a test. You see, while images may look fine on your screen, their resolution when printed must be much, much higher or they will look pixelated and blurry. I have another blog post about image resolution here. Canva doesn’t make any mention of image resolution whatsoever.
Lastly, everything in Canva is designed in hexcode coloring (a hashtag + 6 digits) which is web-speak for RGB colors (Red, Green, Blue). The first two digits tell your screen how much red to display, the middle two digits determine how much green, and the last two, how much blue. But print machines use physical ink which is CMYK, and can be output in a CMYK pdf, but you cannot specify a CMYK color which is a major red flag for me.
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- But I really, really need to print this out and it only exists on Canva?
- Try out their print on demand features! I haven’t tried it yet, but I would assume they can handle any art file mishaps.
- Are you sending art files to a professional printer? They are going to hate this file so much. Honestly, they will send this to their pre-press team and if they find issues, and they probably will, they will charge you an art fixing fee at an hourly rate to fix your file. If you have low resolution images, there is nothing they can do other than print blurry images, or purchase new stock art and charge you for it. But your best bet will be to export a PDF with these options:
- Download > File Type: PDF (Print)
- Check Crop Marks & Bleeds – YES
- Leave Unchecked: Flatten Image & Include Notes. Do not flatten. A printer will do this on their end if required through their RIP process. Leave un-flattened so the printer can make changes if necessary like adding bleeds or fixing color, trapping, or transparency issues.
- Select Pages: whatever you need but it must be an even amount of pages. Every piece of paper has a back and a front; there are 2 pages if you are printing on both sides. If you send your printer an odd number of pages, they will need to add a blank page somewhere [probably in the very back] to make it work. Remove the guesswork and always send your printer an even number of pages, unless they are specifically printing single sided pages.
- Color Profile: CMYK – Always!
- Are you printing at home?
- Does you image need to bleed? This is when the background color or image continues past the edge of the page. A printer cannot print up to the literal edge of a piece of paper. So, change your design so there is a white margin all around the edge and then use scissors or an exacto knife to cut the white edge of the paper off after it prints (this is what a professional printer does).
Use the same options as above, but you may or may not need to check the crop mark and bleeds box depending on your design and how big it is in relation to the size of paper you are printing on. The good news it, if you are printing at home and you don’t like it, you can make changes on the fly.
If your images are blurry due to low resolution, it means they are stretched too big so find different, larger images or scale down the ones you are currently using until they print better. For a very rough comparison, images on the internet typically look good at 72 pixels per inch, but printed you want a minimum of 200 dots of ink per inch, and even better, 300 dpi.
I am simplifying this quite a bit, but assume an image that looks good on your screen needs to be shrunk in half to one-third that size when printed on paper to still look about the same quality. The same goes for your Canva designs. Any .jps or .png files that you export need to be at the highest quality possible and go for as large a file size as you can if you plan to print it. You can always shrink an image smaller and optimize it for web later, but you cannot stretch it larger.
- Does you image need to bleed? This is when the background color or image continues past the edge of the page. A printer cannot print up to the literal edge of a piece of paper. So, change your design so there is a white margin all around the edge and then use scissors or an exacto knife to cut the white edge of the paper off after it prints (this is what a professional printer does).
- Try out their print on demand features! I haven’t tried it yet, but I would assume they can handle any art file mishaps.
- But I really, really need to print this out and it only exists on Canva?
Canva can be a great tool for digital marketing and I plan to use it much more frequently. Some of the templates are fabulous! But like any tool, it’s important to know it’s limitations and hopefully this helps some other small business owners find out what some of those limits are before investing too much time and energy and then becoming disappointed afterwards. If you have any questions about Canva – let me know!