How to Make your Message Visual: With Free Tools

I am a visual leaner and I find that it is easier and more efficient for me to get a message across. When another teacher might show their students a bullet points I like to show an infographic or poster.

This blog post will focus on some of the tools that I like to use to create these visual presentations.

One tool to unite them all!!!

Canva is a free for teachers online graphic design powerhouse. It not only has amazing elements to build your own projects but also thousands and thousands of great templates to get you almost to a finished design with very little work.

In the time of Covid19 I have been busily making posters to remind staff and students how to stay safe and I think that having them around the school really makes it less stressful and easy for everyone to remember how to keep everyone safe.

How to Make Awesome Visuals in Canva!’

First advice I can give is to use a template. Canva has hundreds if not thousands of premade designs that you can copy and modify to suit your needs.

Once you have picked a template you can use the amazing tools that Canva provides to you. The elements tab provides great images you can easily drag and drop into your design and also replace images that are already there.

The text tab offers you the choice to either choose your own heading, subheading or body text or to choose some stylish designs already made up for you!

What if you need more?

Not to worry. If you want to find more images to use in your Canva creations there are tons of sites offering you free images (some ask you to give credit) to use. What is key is that you use a png image that has a transparent background.

This is an example of a png with a transparent background.

Where to find great PNG images quickly and easily;

Flaticon is my go to for quick and stylish icons. They might be simple images but I think that you can make a big impact with them because you can find packs of icons that share the same design and help to pull your aesthetic together. _{Note: if you download you must give credit to their amazing artists.}

The Noun Project is a great site that is free (with some limitations) but you can pretty much find anything that you can name. From Avacodos to Zebras