A pleasant little surprise in my emails this morning, the notification that this would be my eighth anniversary with Canva along with a video of the year’s stats. Gees, how time flies! Between my free account and senior level tech expertise, I’ve struggled with even the basics, looking for how to videos. Still, a learning curve but fun.
Prior to discovering Canva, I used my old Photoshop program for some designs and sought out appropriate pictures, cartoons, or graphics on the internet, carefully citing attribution where appropriate. Many times, I’d get a basic pic and finish it in PS. Good old Photoshop 7. (Yeah, old.)
But, as you know, Shutterstock, Getty Images, Flicker.com, Pixabay, and Google Images all have limitations as I wrote about in my July 2016 post. I just couldn’t find a go-to site that I could use quickly, easily, and on a regular basis—again—for free (yeah, we’re on Social Security). I don’t remember how I discovered Canva.com.
Oops! Perhaps the stats are skewed though. I can’t imagine I was in the top 25% of social media designers. (Nice thought though.) And they obviously didn’t count the number of designs I reused, again and again (but saving with a new title or colors), updating with new book covers and verbiage as I’m quite sure I designed more than 37. “Most used color”—green(what??)—and 42 different fonts? Are they still talking about my account?
Canva is now playing with AI graphics, offering a limited number of freebies in their Dream Lab (I’m about to run out of “credits”) or Magic Media.
Have you tried these?
Now where is my happy anniversary from WordPress? I’ve never heard a peep from them and passed my ten year mark several years ago.
©2025 V Williams
Rosepoint Publishing 