In today’s digital age, graphics play an essential role in capturing the attention of online audiences. Effective graphic design helps present brands in a more visually appealing way, making them memorable and shareable.
With its user-friendly interface, the online graphic design tool Canva has become increasingly popular, even for those without extensive design experience.
One feature that makes Canva stand out is its gradient feature, which allows users to create stunning designs easily.
In this blog post, we will go through a few methods of using the gradient feature in Canva, which you can use to enhance your designs.
Making Gradient Background in Canva
1. To add a gradient to a background, open a blank Canva design or any of your previous designs to which you wish to add a gradient background.
2. Select the page to which you want to add a gradient, then click on the “Background Color” icon from the top toolbar. You see a panel on the left side with multiple color options.
Scroll down till the end of the panel, and you will see “Gradients” as one of the options. Here you have 18 predefined linear gradient options for you to choose from.
3. Select any of the gradients of your choice and click on it to apply it to the selected Canva page.
4. The linear gradients we saw in the above steps are predefined, and you cannot change the colors. If you want to add linear gradients as background, which colors you can change, go to the “Elements” section from the left side editor panel and search for “Gradient” in the search bar. Select “Graphics” to filter the search results.
Here you can see two square gradients: one with two colors option & the other with three color options. Select a gradient of your choice to add it to your Canva page.
5. For this tutorial, we selected tri color square gradient from the “Elements“. Once you add the gradient square, customize the colors from the color options available at the top toolbar.
6. Resize the square gradient to make it look like the Canva page background, and click on the colors icon from the top toolbar and change the colors from the left panel.
Creating Brand color based Gradient in Canva
1. To use brand colors as gradient colors in Canva, select the Canva page first, then click on the “Colors” icon from the top toolbar. In the next step, apply a color from your brand color palette.
2. To add a gradient, click the “Add a new color” option under the “Document colors” option. Now you see a sub-section of colors with an option called “Gradient“. Under gradient, you can click on the “+” button to add multiple brand colors that will be used to create the gradient. As a last step, you can choose one of the given gradient styles for your design.
3. In the video clip below, we have selected three brand colors to use as part of the gradient. Observe the appearance of the gradient as we change the gradient style. You have three linear & two circular gradient styles to choose from.
Note: You can use this method not just to add a brand color gradient, but whenever you want a customizable gradient with multiple colors.
In the first method we saw, you could choose two-colors predefined gradient and tri-color square gradient. You can select more than three colors in this method we just discussed.
So use a method of your choice that best suits your requirement.
Creating a Shape Gradient in Canva
1. To add a gradient to a shape, go to the “Elements” section from the left panel and click the “Lines & Shapes” option. Now scroll down a bit to see the “Shapes” option. Please choose any shape option and click on it to add it to your design. For this tutorial, we have selected a star burst shape.
2. Select the shape you have added and click the “Colors” icon from the top toolbar. From the left side colors panel, scroll till the end to find the gradients option.
3. Select a gradient color of your choice and click on it to apply the gradient to your selected shape.
4. After adding a shape of your choice to the Canva page, you can also use the method we discussed previously in this tutorial to add custom colors gradient to the shape you have selected. As you can see in the below screenshot, we have added a brand colors gradient to the star burst shape.
In conclusion, the gradient feature in Canva is a versatile tool that can help you create professional-looking designs with minimal effort. Its flexibility and ease of use make it an ideal choice for beginners and professionals.
Whether you want to create a subtle gradient effect or a more eye-catching design, you can use this feature to enhance your graphics in many ways.
We hope the methods we shared in this post will inspire you to experiment with different gradient styles and take your Canva designs to the next level.