How to Make a Presentation With Canva

Canva is a free tool that anyone can use for simple designs as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Canva is preloaded with templates that are designed by Canva designers. They also provide free graphics and allow users to upload their own to create specific content. Canva has 12 million images to choose from, but the premium ones you have to pay for.

It is also an alternative to Microsoft Powerpoint.

To make a presentation, first select the presentation option. You can customize the size setting, but the automatic size Canva suggests is the standard size for presentations so it's best to stay with that size.

Step 1: Make the Cover Page

The cover page usually includes a logo or the title of the presentation. Canva has options for titles and you can even choose a standard generic logo from the Canva options under the icon folder. The cover page should give the audience an idea of what the presentation is going to be about.

Step 2: Use Graphics, Graphs, and Numeric Representations

People respond well to graphics in presentations. Canva has options for graphic representations and many options to choose from across all the folders. Here we selected bar graphs to visualize the geographic representations for data related to homeless population in California and the Bay Area and an additional representation using icons of people to show how many are male VS female.

Step 3: Close the Last Page and Save

A good way to close a presentation is to relate back to the opening page with a call to action. In this presentation we highlight the three easy steps to get involved in the local Bay Area community to help the homeless populations. This ties back to the opening cover page that tells the audience what nonprofits work with the homeless.

When you are finished, download to a PDF and save to your downloads folder on your hard drive.