By Mellanie Wulf.
Canva is a powerful tool for collaboration. It allows designers to set a strong foundation with brand elements and templates, while giving other team members and clients the freedom to easily create their own on-brand graphics. The result? Consistency, creativity and teamwork.
A few small adjustments can make a big difference and deliver something that feels polished, intentional, and on-brand. So, I’ve put together five tips to instantly lift your Canva designs.
Tip 1: Margins and clear space
White space is your best friend. When elements are too close to the edge of the page, the design can feel cramped and unbalanced – even the best content can lose impact.
Canva makes this easy with built-in margin guides. These guides help create comfortable space around your content, making everything easier to read and visually appealing.
💡 Pro insight: Think of margins as a picture frame. The space around your content naturally draws the eye to what matters most.
Tip 2: Word spacing
Text isn’t just words – it’s shapes on a page. Avoid awkward endings, like a single word sitting alone on a line, or a lonely full stop hanging by itself. These “widows” can disrupt the flow and balance of your design.
Adjust line breaks to create balanced blocks of text. Canva makes this simple – add line breaks (Shift + Enter) or resize text boxes to avoid awkward endings and unbalanced text blocks.
💡 Pro insight: Clean, even text blocks guide the reader’s eye, making your design feel considered and polished.
Tip 3: Line spacing
Default settings aren’t always your friend. Canva sets line spacing at 1.4 by default, but that’s often too generous if you want your design to look tight and professional. Adjusting the line spacing will make your text look more refined.
This is especially helpful with ALL CAPS text, which can appear to “float.” Reducing the line spacing slightly brings balance and structure.
💡 Pro insight: Designers instinctively tweak line spacing – it’s a subtle detail that makes a big impact and signals your design wasn’t left on “template mode.”
Tip 4: Keep your branding consistent
Professionalism is built on consistency. When fonts, logos, and layout elements shift from one design to the next, it makes a brand look messy.
In Canva, use the same fonts and font weights for all your headings and body copy. If your logo appears in multiple places, keep it the same size and in the same position each time. Canva’s Brand Kit stores your colours, fonts, and logos – use it to keep everything aligned.
💡 Pro insight: Treat brand elements as “anchors.” When they’re consistent, everything else in your design can adapt without losing your brand’s identity.
Tip 5: Keep it simple
When you have a full toolkit of colours, patterns, and graphic elements, it can be tempting to use them all. But professional designs are defined by restraint; less really is more.
For smaller pieces, like social media posts, try using no more than three colours and one brand element (such as a pattern or graphic). This keeps your design clean and focuses attention where it belongs – on your message.
💡 Pro insight: Simplicity strengthens impact. A focused design feels confident and makes your brand look stronger.
Canva gives you powerful tools at your fingertips. Combine them with a few pro habits – like smart spacing, clear margins, consistent branding, and simplicity – and you’ll be creating designs that look more professional and on-brand.
Mellanie Wulf is the Creative Director at Zadro Agency. Mellanie is a dedicated communications professional with extensive experience in crafting strategic messaging.
She excels at driving brand awareness and engaging audiences across diverse platforms, leveraging her expertise to support organisations in forging meaningful connections. With a background in content development, stakeholder engagement and integrated marketing, Mellanie brings clarity, creativity and impact to every initiative she leads.
Zadro is a strategic brand and communications agency that understands standing out requires more than great products or services. The team crafts and shares compelling stories that engage the audiences who matter most.
Its mission is to create, reinvigorate, and amplify brands, building strategies that integrate communications, campaigns, PR, creative, marketing, and digital to elevate brands to new heights.
Zadro works closely with clients to bring their vision to life, combining deep industry insight, creative execution, and long-term partnerships that deliver shared success.
For more information and to contact the Zadro Team, visit their website HERE
