Using Canva to create professional looking documents

Trinh Nguyen
February 14, 2022
|
5 min

Documents should be fun and inviting to read while also providing information for the reader. Especially in game development, most of the documentation you write are for others and not for yourself. Because of this, it is important to know how to setup and create effective documentation that is both informative and fun to read. By doing so, you will be able to convey your design ideas with others better.

What is Canva?

Canva is a platform that allows it users to create presentations, documents, posters, social media content and other visual content. The platform includes multiple templates that are easy to customize to the users wishes.

Why use Canva?

Word and PowerPoint are limited in how you would like to organize your content. I have often seen documentation that was made in Word and truth to be told there is nothing wrong with using Word. But from personal experience, it always seems to be a bit difficult to move text and pictures around. Questions that you could ask yourself are; How do you present your work to others? What is the purpose of the document? Who is going to read this document?

You might realize that the content that you are writing could be seen by others. If this is the case, you would have to take into account how you would like to format your content. Clarity and readers retention would be at the center of this. You want your content to be fun to read through!

Canva makes it easy to customize and format your content the way you like it. With an arsenal of templates & graphical elements you can truly create something that looks professional and is fun to read.

Reasons to use Canva

  • Move text and pictures where ever you want without breaking the design
  • Safe time by choosing one of the many templates that are available
  • Easy share links and work in progress
  • Collaborate in real-time with others

Tips for creating professional looking and visually appealing documents

Here are a few of my tips, that I personally use, for creating documents that look visually appealing, are fun to read and are informative for the reader.

ARRANGMENT

Arrangement or Layout; think about the composition of your page. How would you like to present your content? Are there important things that you would like the reader to read first? Put them on top of the page instead of in the middle or at the end of the page. Would you like to use pictures in between text boxes to indicate the start of a different content?


TYPOGRAPHY

Using the right Typography is important, using the wrong one might make things confusing and difficult to read. Stay away from fancy cursive text in paragraphs.


CONTRAST

Get the readers attention by making important things pop / stand out. As an example; think about the header having a different size and text thickness than the paragraphs. Consider adding a eye catching picture, play with the text color, anything to make it pop!

PICTOGRAPHS

They say pictures tell a thousand words. Use a picture in combination with your text to construct and convey your words to your audience. There are people who have their way with words and will be able to make you imagine all kind of things (example: fantasy book authors), adding a picture with your text would make this experience more vivid and convey your intentions.

REPETITIONS

Take everything and repeat it consistently, consistency is key to not only make sure that it look coherent and professional but also to make sure readers can expect and understand what the content is about. A picture that illustrates and give additional context to the text, the different type of typography, text size and white space to indicate the start of a new topic. Make it predictable and easy to read.

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