CSL 026 – How to Create Stunning Graphics for Your Church with Canva

Isabelle Faletti (00:00):

Hello, hello and welcome to ChurchSpring Live, episode 026. My name is Isabelle and joining me today is a new face, Jen Hockema, customer happiness specialist.

Jen Hockema (00:13):

Hi.

Isabelle Faletti (00:14):

We are excited to have you, Jen. Jen and I are friends, we work every single day together. You guys are in for a real treat to have Jen on the show today. I see Pastor Lynn, you are already introducing yourself, Larry, this is awesome. If you’re just now tuning in, go ahead, introduce yourself, add your church name and location in the comments below so that we can say a special hello. While we are waiting for others to jump into the live event, I want to introduce and welcome a few new members that we have to the ChurchSpring family. Welcome Faith Deliverance Church of God from Dayton, Ohio. We have Newsome Community Church from Washington D.C. and Trinity United Methodist from Warsaw, Indiana.

Jen Hockema (01:09):

Shout out to Linda! Linda– welcome. Sometime we will connect. We’ve been trying to connect for her welcome call and that hasn’t happened yet. Hey Linda!

Isabelle Faletti (01:21):

For everybody who maybe you’re a newer member with ChurchSpring in the past couple of months, you have probably received a welcome call from this lady here, Jen. She’s the voice behind the phone call welcoming you to ChurchSpring.

Jen Hockema (01:37):

Or the attempt at a welcome call.

Isabelle Faletti (01:39):

Right. She will find you, she will keep calling you back. If you’re new to ChurchSpring and you kind of stumbled on this livestream video, our mission at ChurchSpring is simple. We help churches build intuitive, affordable and frustration free websites. Welcome to ChurchSpring, welcome to ChurchSpring Live, we want to equip the church in technology and websites and communication. That’s why this ChurchSpring Live exists, so we can be an encouragement to you. I see people are already introducing themselves, that’s awesome. Don’t be shy in this livestream, this is a conversation that we’re having that we want to have with you. Thank you for engaging, go ahead and ask questions throughout the livestream, we will answer questions throughout and at the end. Don’t feel like you have to be taking a ton of notes. I’m a note taker, you can still take a couple of notes if that just helps you retain information but we will, of course, always have the replay available at ChurchSpring.com/CSL026. I’ll pop that up on the screen here. We’ll also add show notes to that replay. I love seeing some familiar faces and also some new faces to this. Welcome Dale from… Oh yes, Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church from Georgia. We work with you. I love seeing customers pop up on Facebook live that we work with every day. It’s so fun.

Jen Hockema (03:21):

It is neat.

Isabelle Faletti (03:22):

Pastor Storm, awesome. Welcome. We have Roy, welcome. Tom, always good to see a familiar face.

Jen Hockema (03:32):

Hi Tom.

Isabelle Faletti (03:34):

Yes. We have Michael, this is great, Larry again welcome. “Jen-

Jen Hockema (03:42):

Awe -Thanks Larry.

Isabelle Faletti (03:43):

… has gone the third and fourth mile to help us. Thanks Jen.” I know.

Jen Hockema (03:46):

You’re welcome.

Isabelle Faletti (03:47):

Jen is a lifesaver for our team, for our customers. We love her here. We have Barbara, welcome back Barbara. Glen Lewis. That’s great. Danielle, hello. Kingdom Empowerment Family Worship Center, yes. Wow, thank you everybody for introducing yourselves. It’s so fun, again, to see who is tuning in here.

Jen Hockema (04:13):

It is.

Isabelle Faletti (04:13):

The faces here.

Jen Hockema (04:15):

It is.

Isabelle Faletti (04:18):

I can see people again, you’re already engaging. If you know of anybody who would benefit from our topic today, which is a really fun topic, we’re going to be digging into how to create graphics for your church with Canva. If you know of anybody who can use this information, go ahead and just share this Facebook live right now in your Facebook or just tag them. We want to make sure that we’re helping as many people as we possibly can. With you sharing and with you tagging your people, that’s the best way that we can expand our reach in that way. As I mentioned, Jen here, she is our customer happiness specialist. Many of you, again, you’ve already interacted with her. She is kind of everywhere with ChurchSpring. She helps out and responds and troubleshoots on tickets and websites and is on the phone a lot and just is an absolute blessing to ChurchSpring.

Jen Hockema (05:15):

Thanks.

Isabelle Faletti (05:17):

Jen, we are very happy to have you on ChurchSpring Live today and in the future. You’re going to be a new permanent part for ChurchSpring Live. Can you just share with us a little bit about who you are?

Jen Hockema (05:33):

Sure. My turn to introduce myself, huh?

Isabelle Faletti (05:36):

Yes.

Jen Hockema (05:36):

Okay. A little bit about me, I was born and raised a Midwestern girl and other than three short years in the South, I lived in the North Midwest states all my life for good reason. There’s a lot of snakes and spiders and big, big bugs in the South. In the North we have our cold and whatever but it’s not so bad.

Isabelle Faletti (05:58):

I don’t know, it is bad. I don’t deal well with the cold. I lived in Iowa for eight years, I’m done with that.

Jen Hockema (06:07):

Like you never have cold.

Isabelle Faletti (06:08):

I know.

Jen Hockema (06:12):

I married my college crush and God gave us three babies, of whom two are now in college. My oldest is now married. Technically, I now have four kids and what a better way to get another kid than through marriage. There is no childbirth involved with that. Somebody else raises them and I get the blessing of having them part of my family.

Isabelle Faletti (06:35):

That’s awesome.

Jen Hockema (06:36):

We love Cameron. I have been part of ChurchSpring family for three years. I do love working with our customers. I actually have a lot in common with many of you since I was raised as a preacher’s kid and I married a preacher boy. I understand from both sides the struggles and blessings of the ministry. I just really love my job.

Isabelle Faletti (07:02):

That’s great. Again, we’re excited to have you here. For everybody who, you may not know, ChurchSpring is a fully remote company. Jen and I, we see each other’s faces often on a video call but-

Jen Hockema (07:19):

But never in person.

Isabelle Faletti (07:20):

No. We totally get this live streaming thing. We’re friends and we’ve never met. That’s how we even considered these Facebook lives with our customers, with those of you who may be tuning in and you’re not a customer. We want to be your friend, we want to get to know you. The best way, again, will be engaging in the comments below. I would love to know who is ready to learn how to easily create graphics for your church communications? If you are ready to learn how to create graphics, type yes in the comments below so that I can see how excited you guys are.

Jen Hockema (08:00):

I have a feeling you’re going to get a lot of “yeses” from some of the support tickets we get in. People are ready for this one.

Isabelle Faletti (08:10):

Yes. Type “yes” in the comments below if you are ready to learn how to create graphics for your church communications.

Jen Hockema (08:19):

Well, I would like to say the tool we’re going to introduce today, I stumbled across it a few years back and the more I use it, the more I love it. Isabelle and I have great conversations about it -but we’re going to be talking about Canva today. The blessing of Canva is they do a lot of the work for you. You do not have to be a designer. I know some of you, I remember a ticket I got from one girl who is like, “Look at this page of this church. How do they do this?” She was struggling with the fact that some other church could do really cool designs and she didn’t know how they did that. And so that’s what we’re going to unpack for you today is exactly how you can create some of those cool graphics that you can use in your services or on your website or in your social media.

Isabelle Faletti (09:05):

Yep. Yeah. You don’t have to be a designer to be using Canva. That’s one of my favorite aspects of Canva. If you’ve kind of felt frustrated, like Jen mentioned, or just confused about, “Man, how did that church or how did that company even create that graphic?” Or maybe just honestly felt unequipped to be creating beautiful images and graphics for your church communications. Canva really can solve all of that pain. We’re not overselling that. We don’t have any affiliation with Canva, just so you all know. This is just how much we know that it can help pickup the look of your church website, the look of your social media. It looks like everybody is very excited, we have a ton of yeses, yes, a yes, yes from Dale. Yes, yes, yes from Larry. Lynn said, “Give me the knowledge.” Storm, thank you, you’re very polite, “yes please.” That’s awesome.

Isabelle Faletti (10:08):

All right. We’re ready. Let’s dive into this. Jen, can you unpack a bit more of why do we recommend Canva as a good resource that really every church should have in their church communications toolkit?

Jen Hockema (10:25):

There are a lot of resources out there. I’ve narrowed it down to four, I know we could do more but I’ve thought of four reasons why I like Canva. Number one, it’s absolutely free. There is a free version. What that actually means is that they will not add a watermark to your work. I’ve been on other free sites where I’ve created something and then I go to download and they pop their watermark on the bottom of it. I was telling Isabelle, I just load it up on my phone and I crop it off and use it anyway. There’s no watermark on Canva unless you are trying to use one of their images that’s a paid image but then it’s only like, $1 if you want to use it. We like the free side of it.

Jen Hockema (11:15):

Number two is lots of templates. We’re not talking that it’s just social media templates. As you go through the listing of templates they have, it is so broad. They think of everything. In fact, I was looking, they have a YouTube channel template where you can design for your YouTube. I’m like, “Oh, that actually might work good for the headers in our ChurchSpring website.”

Isabelle Faletti (11:39):

Yes.

Jen Hockema (11:40):

But it’s so broad, they have tons and tons of templates. The next part that I love, say you’re working on something and you save it. Some places, when you save it, it’s frozen. You can’t get to it. With Canva, once you save it and let’s say you sleep on it for a night and you come back and look at it the next day and you’re like, “Oh I don’t like the colors I picked” you can go on and edit it. That is really awesome, too. They let you edit it. Then they save all your stuff for you. I’ve done this where I go back on a function, a year later we’re having a similar function. I tweak it and reuse it.

Isabelle Faletti (12:19):

Yeah.

Jen Hockema (12:20):

Yes, you can edit saved graphics. You’re not locked in. My last thing that we love about Canva, they actually offer a pro version for free to 501C3s. If you go to Canva.com/canvafornonprofits and you look at the requirements, you can see if you would qualify. You can actually have the pro level for free because you are a nonprofit church. That, to me, is a huge bonus as well.

Isabelle Faletti (12:54):

I used to work on a nonprofit and I used the Canva for nonprofits perk. You get the pro for free. I would definitely recommend, any churches listening go ahead and go to Canva.com/canva, well I have it up here on the screen here. I’ll also add it in the show notes. Again, you can use Canva for free and it’s super helpful in the free version. The pro version just gives you some extra perks.

Jen Hockema (13:26):

Yeah, like transparency.

Isabelle Faletti (13:28):

Yes.

Jen Hockema (13:29):

That’s so nice when you’re creating a logo for your ChurchSpring website, is to make it transparent so you’re not stuck with a white block behind it when you upload it.

Isabelle Faletti (13:38):

Right. That’s huge.

Jen Hockema (13:39):

Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (13:40):

It also makes you, you can easily resize images. Let’s say you created a Facebook image and then you want to use that exact same design for your ChurchSpring event header image. You can just click a button that says resize, you place the dimensions that you want, click resize and it will automatically change that design for you.

Jen Hockema (14:03):

Wonderful.

Isabelle Faletti (14:05):

It saves a ton of time using that functionality here.

Jen Hockema (14:08):

Yep.

Isabelle Faletti (14:09):

Awesome. I think that four reasons why we love Canva was actually really hard for us because

Jen Hockema (14:17):

We could do a lot more.

Isabelle Faletti (14:19):

… we love it. Yep.

Jen Hockema (14:20):

Those are the four biggest.

Isabelle Faletti (14:23):

Yes. It’s super easy to use. I am actually going to just share my screen here and walk through how you can use Canva. When I was brainstorming with Jen, I realized that there are two major reasons that I recommend churches specifically use Canva. Again, Canva, it’s an online graphic design tool, great for two specific options. As Jen mentioned, they have a ton of templates. You don’t have to be designing from scratch.

Jen Hockema (15:02):

Yay.

Isabelle Faletti (15:03):

Right? Thank goodness for that.

Jen Hockema (15:07):

So much time saved there.

Isabelle Faletti (15:09):

Yes.

Jen Hockema (15:09):

You just find one you like.

Isabelle Faletti (15:12):

Yeah, you don’t have to know what colors are going well or how to make your design “pop.” If our designer, Mike, is listening he’s probably rolling his eyes because that’s what every designer hates. I want my design to “pop.” What does that mean? Canva knows what that means and will make your design look great. Then you can also use it as an image editor. With ChurchSpring websites, with really any websites, any social media platforms, you have to be using specific image sizes for it to be working for that specific platform. You can use Canva to resize images, again in a really easy way. Without further ado, I will go ahead and share my screen and just walk you through that. Larry, you asked if we can put the nonprofit site in the show notes, yes. I definitely will. At the end of the show here, in a couple hours actually today, I’ll update those show notes and you can have that direct link.

Isabelle Faletti (16:18):

For starting out on Canva, you can just go to Canva.com and you can sign up for a free subscription. You don’t have to jump through a ton of hoops, very, very simple. I think it took me about five seconds for me to create an account here. When you sign it, it will bring you to this dashboard here. It may look a little overwhelming to you at first. Don’t feel overwhelmed, just take a step back.

Jen Hockema (16:52):

Just peruse, just peruse around.

Isabelle Faletti (16:55):

Exactly. The one thing that I want to walk you through is the template options. As we’ve mentioned a lot already, they have a ton of templates and that’s the beauty about Canva. They have recommended templates, you can just see here video presentation, a logo. You can create a logo. I know we had a question about that already. Instagram posts, a poster, so many options you guys, a photo collage, a flyer. It can be really fun, let me tell you. Then you can also just specifically browse by category. If you want to make a social media post for your Facebook, you can click on the social media category and then just click through to see what the options are. You can see there that there is a Facebook post option. Or you can also type in here if you want to do, let’s say, Instagram and you don’t want to browse. They will tell you all of the different template options they have. It just blows my mind. Canva has come so long in a couple years-

Jen Hockema (18:03):

Oh my goodness, I know.

Isabelle Faletti (18:04):

When I first used it, they had just a social media template and that was it. They didn’t have Instagram posts, Instagram story, Instagram story ad. It just saves you a ton of time. I will just go ahead and use a Facebook post template as an example here. To select the template, you do exact that. You click a template size and then it will pull up all of the recommended templates that they recommend that you use for this selected category and size that you picked. I would, most often, I would recommend that you use one of their templates that they provide because you can always edit the template. But they are basically laying the foundation for you. If you have a good foundation, then you don’t have to be thinking, “Man, how do I use this image that I want to use of my small group and add text and still make it look nice and be easy to read.” Go ahead, always use a template that they offer and again, you can edit. You can see here, they have so many options, different options for different categories. They have food, Facebook posts, birthday, summer Facebook posts. It is in lists. I’ll go ahead and just click on, even though it’s not spring, oh autumn. Fine, I’ll do autumn.

Jen Hockema (19:36):

Come on, Thanksgiving is next week. Get in the spirit.

Isabelle Faletti (19:40):

I love my summer, but I guess I should just accept. You can also click a see all option for a category and browse all of the fall templates that they have.

Jen Hockema (19:52):

I love them.

Isabelle Faletti (19:54):

I know, they’re so beautiful.

Jen Hockema (19:55):

They’re great.

Isabelle Faletti (19:56):

It’s so fun. I’ll just select this template here and as you can see, they have some text already in there so that you can see what your text will look like when you’re done editing it. It’s very similar to really ChurchSpring’s edit anywhere feature. You just click into a text and you can start editing away. I’ll just walk you through here how you can edit it. As you can see, you just click, I’m highlighting everything and let’s say we have a Thanksgiving small group. You can change the font size by highlighting the text and then making certain edits on this text toolbar up here. I want this text to be fitting within that brown background color block. I’ll just decrease my space, let’s say to 56 to make it fit a bit better. If your church has a specific font that you use, you can browse a ton of different options. So many fun different choices that you can have. You can browse that and then you can delete text if you don’t want that. You can add-

Jen Hockema (21:16):

Hey Isabelle?

Isabelle Faletti (21:17):

Yeah.

Jen Hockema (21:18):

Show them how to unlink boxes. That was huge for me as well. They come with all those boxes linked together. If you highlight, there’s a little button on the top right there that’s going to unlink those. You can move them around and have them be separate.

Isabelle Faletti (21:35):

Yes. When you click on some of the templates, like Jen had just mentioned, some of-

Jen Hockema (21:42):

Those three are linked together.

Isabelle Faletti (21:44):

Yeah, some of the boxes here that are highlighted, they’ll be grouped together so that you can easily drag it around. You can click that option that said ungroup, right here. Right now when I click this, that whole text area moves however if I select ungroup, then I can just move this half.

Jen Hockema (22:09):

That’s so nice to do that.

Isabelle Faletti (22:11):

I can delete this little text area, since I don’t want that anymore. Good recommendation, Jen. Again, I can update my text. Let’s say starts at 4:00 pm at the church. Okay. You can also edit colors here. You can browse default colors. You can also choose your own color options if you have a specific color that you use for your church brand or it will also pick up colors based on the photos that you are using.

Jen Hockema (22:43):

I love that option. That’s so great. It’s on all of them, it picks up those key colors, right?

Isabelle Faletti (22:50):

Yeah. That’s a newer feature in the last couple of months I’ve noticed. Then one of my favorite features is their photo library. They have, if you click on the left side panel here, you can select photos and search any photos. This is linked to their image library. They have free images that you can use and then some pro images that you have to pay for if you are on the free version. I believe when you’re on the pro, it includes those images.

Jen Hockema (23:27):

It does, yep.

Isabelle Faletti (23:29):

In this case, let’s just type in Thanksgiving and see what options. You have a ton of images so you don’t have to go onto another website and find an image and upload it. You can upload your own image if you do want to. If you have an image of your small group of your church, definitely make that image relevant to your church. You can upload that here or again, you can always browse different background images or different images that they offer. To select image you just click it, click and drag into the back and then it will automatically know what you want and add it, replace that previous image. You can resize, you guys the opportunities are truly endless.

Jen Hockema (24:19):

Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (24:21):

Another kind of design tip for everybody, Canva, again, it’s very intuitive. If you’ll see, here it’s probably difficult to see on my screen but when I move this brown box, you’ll see a little design. Let’s see if I can enlarge this. Let’s do 100, no, not 10%, 100. Okay, there we go. When I move this brown box, you’ll see that there’s a small, little pink line going up and down. That means that this box is centered on the image. You won’t have to worry that it’s off centered. Then it will also tell me, when I pull this box down, you’ll see now a horizontal line. That means it’s centered vertically and horizontally. You’ll know, again, that your proportions are correct. That’s one of my favorite things because then you’re not sitting an inch from your screen trying to figure out if it’s actually-

Jen Hockema (25:36):

Centered.

Isabelle Faletti (25:37):

… centered, yes.

Jen Hockema (25:38):

Nice.

Isabelle Faletti (25:41):

When you’re done, when you like your image, you can then download it to your computer but clicking this little download. Then you can download it in a couple different options that they give you, just usually I go with their default, the PNG. Then you can upload that on your social media accounts, on your church website, whatever option you are doing this for.

Jen Hockema (26:06):

Have you ever noticed, Isabelle, sometimes depending on the template I chose, they want me to download it as a PDF? Then I’m like, “Oh no, I actually want to use this on my website so I need it as a PNG.” You can actually change it but pay attention to what they want to download it as.

Isabelle Faletti (26:23):

That’s good. If you select a certain template that would be a PDF by nature, for example, let’s just do a business card. That’s probably more accurate. This is probably going to download as a PDF. Actually, will it? I don’t know, let’s see. PDF, yeah. That’s what they it for it.

Jen Hockema (26:46):

Maybe you like the size and you wanted to work with that size or something. You can change it.

Isabelle Faletti (26:50):

Exactly, you can always change that. Larry, I see you have a question about fonts. You asked, regarding fonts perhaps we can have a blog later on tips for fonts, there’s so many it’s sometimes hard to choose the best ones. Totally agree. That is when I would just rely on Canva and the fonts that they are recommending in that template. You’ll see here, there are different template options that they have in this template. It totally works. Use Canva, use their designers, they’ve already put in that hard work of knowing which fonts are working well for you. That’s how you can use the template option. There’s a lot that I could go into, honestly, with Canva on how to use templates. For time sake I won’t, this is more of an intro of what’s waiting for you behind the Canva.com door. But you can also add videos, video backgrounds, there are different elements, stickers. Some are moving stickers which are really fun if you want to add a little graphic like that to catch the eye when someone is on, again, social media. Make that a bit smaller. That’s a little distracting so I’m going to delete that.

Isabelle Faletti (28:25):

Go ahead and just log into Canva after this ChurchSpring Live and have fun. You can always undo any changes that you make. As Jen said, you can go back and edit any designs, it will save any designs on your home page. You always have access to your designs. That’s an intro to the templates. Then I also want to walk through how you can resize images. Here at ChurchSpring Jen and I pretty frequently tell customers to use Canva as a free, easy to use online tool to resize images. To resize images or graphics to use on your ChurchSpring website. With our ChurchSpring website and with other website platforms, there are recommended image sizes that you use on your website so that the platform will optimize or resize that image based on the screen size. If someone is looking at your website on their phone or if they’re on their tablets or a laptop, you want that image to always be changing and still be easy to read and still catch the eye. That’s why we recommend certain image sizes. But if you don’t have Photoshop, or if you do have Photoshop but let’s be real, it’s a bit confusing sometimes to use Photoshop. Canva, you can also use it to resize images.

Isabelle Faletti (30:04):

Jen and I actually have a different method-

Jen Hockema (30:07):

They both work.

Isabelle Faletti (30:07):

… her and I have different methods to resize images. I’ll show the way that I resize images. Maybe it’s the lazy girl’s way, I don’t know.

Jen Hockema (30:18):

I’m actually going to learn on this one because I was showing her how I do it and she’s like, “Oh I didn’t know about that option.”

Isabelle Faletti (30:24):

Yeah. I’ll link to Jen’s, the way that she does it in her show notes. I’ll just walk you through here, close out of this tab. Let’s say for ChurchSpring members, you need to resize your pastor’s image, headshot, for your leadership page. To do that, we have a recommended image size of about 500×500 pixels. Click on the purple create a design and then you’ll see custom size. That’s what you’ll select on when you want to resize an image when you know the specific image sizes. Click on image graphic size. Then you can type in the width here in pixels. Again, in this case it’s 500×500. It does save the width and the height by the way, you won’t have to be guessing which is which. Then you can create new design. Then it will pop up in a blank, white template. Then in this case, I have an image, my pastor’s headshot that I want to fit within my specific size for my website.

Isabelle Faletti (31:42):

I will go into the upload section. I’ve already uploaded an image here. But you can upload your photo here that you want to be resizing or in the templates, adding to your template. Then you can add video and audio. You can use Canva not just for graphics, well, you can use Canva for multimedia graphics. You can add video. That will be a part three one day when I get into the that. Again, upload your image from your desktop or from your computer and then you can just click and drag. The great thing about Canva, I’ll start all over again, is when I click and I just drag and place it over, it snaps into place to fit within this image size.

Jen Hockema (32:39):

Can you drag that down to create some “padding?” Is it moveable?

Isabelle Faletti (32:46):

Yeah. Let me go down to do 75. You can drag the picture around to however you want it to fill the space.

Jen Hockema (32:57):

Way easier, Isabelle. I’m going to do it your way from now on, don’t even put my way in the show notes. Yours is easier.

Isabelle Faletti (33:03):

We all learn, we all learn. Then when you like how it’s centered, then you can just click download, again as a PNG, JPEG, whatever you need it for and it will save to your desktop. Super easy, you can do the same thing for your logo if you want to use that on your website. With ChurchSpring we recommend that you have a logo size of, what is it, 300 wide, 65 tall?

Jen Hockema (33:36):

By 65.

Isabelle Faletti (33:38):

Yep. Canva is your tool to be making that adjustment. You do the exact same thing. Create a design, custom size, you would add your width, 300, I think I just did that right, let’s see. Okay, yep. Then again it will be a blank canvas. You’ll see here, if it’s a commonly used size they actually do offer templates. If you do see that, that is why. Same idea, you can go to your uploads, upload your church logo and then you can click and since you’re resizing your logo I would recommend just drop it in the middle and then you can use these sidebars to click and drag until it fills the entire space. Because you want your logo to be filling this entire space. Again, you can use these little tools to make sure that it’s centered.

Jen Hockema (34:40):

Nice.

Isabelle Faletti (34:41):

Then click download. That is a crash course into Canva.

Jen Hockema (34:51):

That was great, Isabelle. That was good.

Isabelle Faletti (34:53):

It looks like we have a couple of questions. I will go ahead and actually go through those and then keep my screen here in case I need to share anything with you on screen. If anybody has any questions, please go ahead and put that in the comments right now. Again, I see we already have some so I’ll run through those but ask away, we want to help you out. Let’s see. Larry you asked PNG versus JPEG, what are the differences and the preferred uses? The main nontechnical difference is when you have a PNG and they have the option for a transparent background, when you download a PNG it will not have this white background on it. When you download a JPEG, it will automatically add a white background. If you’ll see here on the ChurchSpring logo on the left side, this actual graphic, this image is actually a PNG. Our designer, Mike, he created it, he downloaded it, he designed it without a white background so it’s just our logo and the text. When he downloaded it, it didn’t add any white background. However, if he would download it as a JPEG, then it would automatically add that white background and kind of lose the clean feel of that logo. As Jen had mentioned, with Canva there is a pro, paid version that you can get for free if you are a nonprofit, 501-

Jen Hockema (36:36):

501C3.

Isabelle Faletti (36:40):

Whew, my tongue got all jumbled there.

Jen Hockema (36:42):

You did it.

Isabelle Faletti (36:44):

Then you can download PNG’s transparent background images. Larry, I’ll link some more resources in our show notes that can walk you through the difference on that. Glen, you had a similar question, can you make that box transparent? You would want to, again, use a PNG. With the pro version they give you the option to make transparent boxes. If you’re interested in that-

Jen Hockema (37:15):

I think, Isabelle, even in the unpaid, free version, they’ll give you that option. You’ll just need to give them your credit card and pay for it.

Isabelle Faletti (37:24):

Okay, perfect.

Jen Hockema (37:25):

It’s free in the pro version but I think when you click the download, is that where it asks you if you want it, was there a transparent option there?

Isabelle Faletti (37:38):

I think it might be based on what my image — you’re right. Yeah in what edits I’m making.

Jen Hockema (37:48):

You can do transparency whether you’re paying or the free version. You’ll eventually have to pay for it.

Isabelle Faletti (37:55):

Right, exactly. You won’t be able to ever download a transparent image if you’re on the free version. It won’t even download as transparent, at least not from my experience.

Jen Hockema (38:06):

Not automatically, right.

Isabelle Faletti (38:07):

Yep. We had a question from Cheryl, can you explain the grids on Canva? I think you’re mentioning the centering grids Cheryl. I’ll pull up, I should have kept my … Let’s see. All my designs. I didn’t save my design, my Thanksgiving. Always make sure you’re saving your design. I’ll pull up a Thanksgiving post here. The grids, again, you can see that pink line hopefully on my screen here. You will want to have this pink grid go from the top to the very bottom of your image. When you see that, you’ll see I’m kind of moving this text, I don’t see that, I don’t see it. Then poof, there is it. That means it is completely centered between the two halves on the image. Okay, I want to keep it on this plane and I want to make sure that it’s not only centered on both halves but it’s also centered horizontally. Then I will scroll down until Canva kind of finds that center and then when it finds that center and I’m at there, at the center point, the focal point, it will pop up that the cross hairs, that other horizontal line. That tells me this text here is completely centered. Cheryl, I hope that is what you were referring to, if not let me know and I can pop up something else here.

Jen Hockema (39:51):

Maybe even if we change the background to black, maybe she wasn’t able to see it. It kind of blends a little bit.

Isabelle Faletti (39:57):

Yeah it does. Oops. That’s the whole image.

Jen Hockema (40:07):

She’s trying to click outside the image so that she can change the background color for you. There. Now see if she can see it. It’s still really light.

Isabelle Faletti (40:19):

Not at all. Cheryl, it looks like you asked actually they show grids under elements. Okay. Let me pull that up. Elements, oh grids. Good question. First off, I need to be changing this template because I don’t like this template. It’s not working for me. Okay there, that’s much better. Grids are an option that you can add an image frame and then Canva will snap an image that you’re adding into that photo frame to fit that size. Let me just show that to you. We have grids here, I’ll click into show all. If you want to create a multi-image-

Jen Hockema (41:05):

Photo gallery.

Isabelle Faletti (41:07):

Yes. Grids are a great way that you can do that. You don’t have to be cropping each image. I’ll just pull up this option here. That’s now a background. I can then add a photo to my grid A. This is going to be very not a good image.

Jen Hockema (41:28):

Oh dear, it’s a demonstration.

Isabelle Faletti (41:33):

Don’t use this background image you guys. Let’s just do turkey. Oh dear, this is an embarrassment. Then you can click and drag the other image to the second grid. Then you’ll see that when I drag the image over that grid, it snaps into place. This is a very ugly image. I’m sorry, Mike our designer, if you’re watching this I am so sorry.

Jen Hockema (42:05):

It’s okay. It’s just the demo.

Isabelle Faletti (42:09):

Yep, just the demo.

Jen Hockema (42:11):

We’re not going to publish it Mike, we promise.

Isabelle Faletti (42:14):

Yes, what we all learned today in ChurchSpring Live, how not to be like Isabelle and create this graphic. Cheryl, I hope that answers your question here. Let me know if you have any follow up and I can help you out offline here. Let’s see. Tom, you had asked what about uploaded a photo to edit? I did go through that, let me know, though, if you had any other questions. Again, that’s in your uploads. Always make it personal to your church. If you’re adding an image for Christmas Eve service. If you have an image from last year of your candlelight service, upload that image and then use it within your design. That adds the human element for visitors coming to check out your church. That is a great way for visitors to just kind of get a feel of what your church culture is like.

Jen Hockema (43:10):

That’s good.

Isabelle Faletti (43:12):

All right, I think I covered all the questions. If I missed anybody, pop your question again once more down below so that I can make sure to review that. Whew.

Jen Hockema (43:23):

You did good.

Isabelle Faletti (43:26):

One thing I did want to real quick address, we had a question before from Rick. Rick, if you’re on, hello, I saw your question. He mentioned that he was trying to create a logo, potentially using Canva. Canva does have an option, actually, in their templates to create a logo. If you need to be creating a church logo, go to Canva.com, they have a logo category and you can browse and make edits to some recommended logo templates. There are also a couple other resources that Jen and I recommend for churches who may not have a logo and they need to be creating a logo. I will add those also in the show notes at ChurchSpring.com/csl026.

Jen Hockema (44:16):

That’s great. Do we have a couple bonus minutes to talk about a blog image?

Isabelle Faletti (44:23):

You know-

Jen Hockema (44:23):

Or are we out of time?

Isabelle Faletti (44:24):

I think we’ll put that on the show notes here.

Jen Hockema (44:26):

Okay.

Isabelle Faletti (44:27):

We’re going to have a lot of fun show notes for everybody. Canva-

Jen Hockema (44:29):

They’re going to be long.

Isabelle Faletti (44:31):

… as you saw, there are a lot of different ways to use Canva for your church website, for your social media. Bottom line, it’s easy to use, it saves you time because you’re not having to think how do I crop this image? What colors go well? What fonts go well? Canva takes all of that guesswork out of your design. Go ahead, I want everybody listening today to commit to either creating a Canva.com account if you don’t have that yet and creating a Canva graphic for your social media, for your church website. If you have a Thanksgiving event coming up next week, a week from today, if you have Christmas Eve service, Canva’s a great way to make graphics that really look beautiful, that look like you have a full time designer on your team and can communicate information in a very easy to understand way. Go ahead and go to Canva.com, create your first graphic. I would love to see the graphics that you design.

Jen Hockema (45:50):

Yes.

Isabelle Faletti (45:50):

If you’re a ChurchSpring member, send in a support ticket and share with us your graphic that you created. You can send it as an attachment or just link on over to your website page or your social media. We want to celebrate with you.

Jen Hockema (46:08):

Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (46:09):

Please share, when you create that graphic, if you want some feedback on it, we can help give some recommendations for next steps. If you are new to ChurchSpring and you don’t really know how do I make this work for my website? I would invite you to sign up for a free demo webinar. Our co-founders, Mike and Ron, they’ve done an amazing job at unpacking how a ChurchSpring powered website can really save you time and make it easy and frustration free to manage your website. That’s what we’re all about here. Frustration free. Go to ChurchSpring.com/demo if you want a behind the scenes look at ChurchSpring. It’s less than 60 minutes, live chat support is available, you’re looking at two of the people here who manage that live chat. We are real people here. Or if you just want to kick the tires of ChurchSpring, see how again, you can easily manage your website. We have church management options, if you just want to get in yourself and see what we’re all about, you can sign up for a free, seven day trial at ChurchSpring.com/trial. You have full access to your ChurchSpring plan when you sign up. We’re not holding back on you, you’ll have full access to features, to our support team here. ChurchSpring.com/trial for that.

Isabelle Faletti (47:43):

Look, we have Barbara saying signing up now for Canva nonprofit account. Awesome Barbara.

Jen Hockema (47:49):

Oh good.

Isabelle Faletti (47:50):

Great, let us know what you think about it.

Jen Hockema (47:53):

Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (47:53):

Jackie, you actually save as a PNG or PDF. As we had talked about before, that is dependent on how you want to use it. If you want to be using it as an image on your website or an image on your social media accounts, save it as a PNG. That’s their default recommendation for a lot, go with their default.

Jen Hockema (48:16):

If you’re going to print it for use in your church, save it as a PDF.

Isabelle Faletti (48:21):

Exactly. That’s awesome. Jen, thank you so much for someone ChurchSpring Live. How was your first ChurchSpring Live today?

Jen Hockema (48:31):

My debut, I can’t believe it. I’m a debutante.

Isabelle Faletti (48:37):

Yes.

Jen Hockema (48:37):

This was fun.

Isabelle Faletti (48:38):

I hope for everybody attending that this was helpful. If you’ve been listening in to ChurchSpring Lives you know that I talk about Canva very frequently. This has been a long awaited ChurchSpring Live for myself and I know for a few of our listeners. If you have any followup questions about Canva, again reach out. We want to help you. If you have any questions about ChurchSpring, also reach out. You can contact us at support@ChurchSpring.com and we will be happy to help you out. Before we head out here, I do want to invite everybody to next week’s ChurchSpring Live. Next week, a week from today is Thanksgiving. We will not be doing a ChurchSpring Live on Thursday but we will be having our ChurchSpring Live on Tuesday next week. Put it on your calendar, next week, Tuesday November 24th, we will have episode 27. Jen and I are going to have fun next week.

Jen Hockema (49:40):

You’re breaking me in, two in a row.

Isabelle Faletti (49:42):

I know. You’re a pro now. If you’ve ever just felt like your website is a bit stale but you don’t really know what you need to do to improve it or maybe you just feel stuck on the next steps to actually be using your church website to meet your goals for this Christmas season, for the upcoming New Year, make sure to attend ChurchSpring Live next week on Tuesday. We are going to completely remove all the guesswork that you may have about what you need to be updating on your church website. Jen and I are going to be reviewing two to three church websites in live time and offer super practical tips that anybody can take to accomplish your number one website goal. If you would be interested in us reviewing your church website, you don’t have to be a ChurchSpring member. If you are a ChurchSpring member, great. If you want us to review your website, then you can submit your request at ChurchSpring.com/review. You will leave, again, with specific action items that you can immediately take. Jen and I love website reviews. We do it sometimes when we’re on the call with a customer. This way, more than one person can benefit from a website review. Again, go to ChurchSpring.com/review. We may review your website in real time and kind of help you with next steps to optimize your website.

Isabelle Faletti (51:28):

Thank you everybody again for coming out for ChurchSpring Live. It’s always such an encouragement for me to be hopping on this livestream every week and just kind of sharing the space with our live attendees and I’m sure our replay attendees also. Thank you for letting us support you and encourage you. We’re here for you. Please reach out and let us know how we can support you and your ministry. That’s what makes us get out of bed, excited to get out of bed and come to work every single day. Thank you for letting us be a blessing to you as a ChurchSpring member, as a church leader, as a ministry leader in your community. Thank you again for tuning into ChurchSpring Live. Thank you Jen, this was fun. We will be having a lot of fun episodes in the future with Jen. Get used to Jen.

Jen Hockema (52:28):

I have to get used to it, right?

Isabelle Faletti (52:30):

You did great. Thanks everybody, we’ll see you-

Jen Hockema (52:34):

Bye everyone.

Isabelle Faletti (52:34):

… next Tuesday at 10:00 central, November 24th. Until then, God bless.

Jen Hockema (52:40):

Bye.