The Ultimate Guide to making Blog Graphics – step by step

January 22, 2021 Posted by scottkandh Blogging, Grow a blog, How to Posts, Pinterest No Comments

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Last Updated on June 21, 2021 by scottkandh

This blog post provides you with the Ultimate Guide to making Blog Graphics – with step by step instructions. I would venture to guess that nearly 99% of the graphics used on blogs are Pinterest pins. Because Pinterest has gotten so popular. This post will help guide you to make Pinterest pins – (graphic images for you to place on your blog).

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of making blog graphics let’s take a brief moment to looks at a few basics of Canva (items #1 – #9). Then we’ll go and look at designing the pins at the bottom of this post (Step #10 if you want to head straight to it).

Table of Contents

☐ 1. Scroll through your designs

The majority of the time when you look at Canva you’ll be going directly to “Your Designs” . If you hold your mouse directly over one of your designs and just let it sit there, you’ll be able to look at all of the pins that you’ve designed within each of your named designs. This can be useful if you’re looking and searching for a particular pin.

Depending on the type of pins that you are commonly going to be using you might want to get into the habit of saving your designs. Especially if you’re going to be making a lot of pins for that particular post. It’s nice to have one set of templates so that you don’t have to start completely from scratch that will at least have your heading, body, and website URL.

For example, I have the design: 300 Motivational Quotes and Inspirations for my blog post with the same name. On an average day I’ll get in there and whip out 10 pins for that blog post. I can quickly do this because the template is already there and I just need to add new text, and replace the images.

☐ 2. To look at all of your designs

To look at all of your designs, click on “All of your designs” (the 2nd button down) and it will show the names of all your designed templates (but not the pins within them).

Another advantage to using this is that you’ll be able to scroll through your pins as described above and the pins will be slightly larger (because it’s bigger images).

To look at all of your pins, jump down to item #8 below.

☐ 3. Looking for a particular template

If you are looking for a specific type of template (see picture below), click on Templates and you can jump straight to the type of product you are trying to make within Canva. 99% of the time I’m personally creating Pinterest pins, but there might be a time that you need one of these other types.

Social Media
Personal
Business
Marketing
Education
Trending

☐ 4. Templates

The templates button is seldom personally used to make Pinterest pins. I find it much easier to create the pins from scratch rather than using these pre-made templates. But that doesn’t prevent you from using them.

If you get the notification: Add template as new page? You can click on the button:Don’t show again or leave it alone and select from one of the remaining two options:

Replace current page – replaces the template with the new photo
Add as new page – creates entirely new page at the bottom.

☐ 5. Uploads

This is not used that often. But it’s useful in the instances where you’d like to add pins that you’ve already created or display your freebies. NOTE: PinterestArtwork.com is the old name of my website. I was forced to rename the site so that there wouldn’t be a trademark/copyright conflict.

After you have uploaded the pins, you can delete them. I found that the easiest way to delete one or two at a time is to right click on the pin and then select trash to delete the pin. If there are multiple pins to delete you can click on the little rectangles within each pin and once they are all selected click the trash can at the bottom to delete them all.

Let’s change it up now and have you jump into one of your random pins (click on one of your designs) and we’ll look at information pertaining to Pinterest pins. The two that you’ll be using the most to make your pins are photos and text.

☐ 6. Photos

This is by far the #1 item to make your Pinterest pins. The second one being (text) to add your heading and sub-headings. For the sake of an example, this post is about The Ultimate Guide to making Blog Graphics – step by step!

Therefore, you need to do a search (in the search box) for something that stands out in your text to make your picture.

Have the picture and the image coincide with one another. This is part that is going to require patience on your end to find that magic picture that is the AHA moment. When you are looking at which picture to use for the pin try to keep your audience in mind. Some of the keywords that stand out in this example would be the words: Ultimate, Guide, Blog Graphics, or step-by-step.

☐ 7. Elements

I seldom use the elements. But it is useful if you need to add lines, shapes (rectangles, squares, circles, etc), or frames. The frames are just that. The frame will surround your picture for a nice special effect. A lot of the frames are how free templates are made for you to make new pins with pre-designed templates.

☐ 8. Text

With the text button you can select from three types of texts:

a. Add a heading (your main heading)
b. Add a subheading (smaller text for sub points)
c. Add a little bit of body text (such as your website URL or other small tidbit info).

In addition (if you have the Pro version) you can select from a bunch of other texts. As a norm I like sticking to the three types of text below.

There are some other buttons on Canva that I seldom use.

☐ 9. Folders Button

Pro-Tip: If you click on Folders, then “All Designs” you’ll be able to see all of the designed pins that you still have saved with Canva. That way you can quickly jump to one of your saved pins if you want to copy and redesign another pin for one of your posts.

☐ 10. Step by Step Instructions

Step 1. Put your headline (heading) on the template

From the text button, add the top text entitled: Add a heading.

Don’t worry about his position at the present time, dependent upon the picture used you might have to reposition it so that it’s visible or changes color.

Step 2. Add your websites URL

The reason that I’m suggesting that you add the URL is this will remain constant except for its location.

I normally place the URL at the bottom of the pin. Depending on the graphic used I normally use one or the other of the smallest two texts.

You do however, want it big enough so that the URL is legible enough to be read.

Once we have the heading and the website’s URL on the pin, move on to Step 3 – Name your design.

Step 3. Name your design

Before you get too far into designing your pin take the time to name your design if it is just a random one or two pins this step can be skipped but if there is a lot of pins to make for this blog post I strongly encourage you to name the overall design of your pin.

In the top right (to the left of Share) click in that field to name your design.

Pro-Tip: When you save (download) your pins you can use the same name as your description. Naming your pin and providing meaningful names to your images is a key element for Pinterest Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We aren’t ready to download our pin yet (that’s reserved for Step 8), I just wanted to bring this important point to your attention.

You don’t have to do this yourself, but it’s a big time saver. When I have bunch of pins (normally I create a batch of 10 pins at one time) I download them, then copy and paste them into a folder with the name of the post. After they’ve been put into the folder and while all of the files are still highlighted, I click rename and rename the 1st file. The rest of the files will have the same name and get truncated with a suffix (i.e. file name(1), file name(2), etc.).

Step 4. Are there any numbers in your heading?

If No – Go to Step 5.

If Yes – Read below

Add a shaped element to your number to make it stand out. A lot of people like to use circles but you can use any element that you like or simply use the number itself with no element behind it.

Once you’ve placed the element you might have to slightly resize the element.

See the pins provided below to see how the number stands out more than if it was simply typed.

In addition to the shaped element change the color if necessary. I personally like to change the color so that it coincides with the other main colors of the pin.

How to change the color?

To change the color, after you’ve added the element you’ll see a rectangle in the upper left. If you hold your mouse over it, it’ll prompt you with: Color.

You need to click on the element first, then click on the rectangle to change to the color of your choice.

Don’t overdo the contents of the pin.

Don’t put too much info on the pin – put enough info on the pin to create an interest in the pin so that visitors will want to visit your site

Spacing around the pin

Leave enough space around the edges so that your text doesn’t run too close to the edge – a good rule of thumb is about 1/4 of an inch away from any of the sides.

Step 5. Add your photo

This is the make or break point of your pin. Here’s a good tip to select the “right image”: If you saw the picture (that you are about to make a pin) and you were looking at Pinterest would you pin it?

The Pinterest algorithm looks at many different factors but the most obvious characteristic that gives a Pin preferential consideration to the Home Pinterest feed is the “impression” of the pin.

Once you’ve selected your photo you can decide where you want to place the pin.

At this venture, I’d like to point out two posts that will help you to perfect laying out the design of your pins.

a. 50 Pins to inspire creating your own Awesome “Viral” Pins.

b. Blogtober Day 25 – Top 20 Favorite “Viral” pins from Pinterest

Step 6. Resize the photo

Decide if you want to use the whole picture. If you use the whole picture you click on the picture and select: “Replace Background) or you can drag it from the left into the picture. Sometimes while you are dragging it, it will automatically fill up the whole page.

Does it fit?
Does some of the information run off the pin?
Is the picture too small or too wide?

If any of the questions above render the photo unusable (for the whole page), you can click on the image and select: Detach Image from Background.

Once you’ve placed the graphic with where you want it placed moved to the next step

Step 7. Adjust your text

You’re nearly done all you need to do is make any last minutes changes to your text, color, size, the position, and check your spelling and punctuation.

Step 8. Download your pin(s)

You can download all of the pins or you can select specific pins by the page number (see below). To download all, simply click on download and it will download All of the pages.

However, if you want to download “specific” pins, click on the drop-down box next to Select pages and put a checkmark on the pins you want to download. Press Done. Select Download.

After you’ve selected Download you’ll be prompted with if you want to Open the file or Save File. I personally like to save all of my pins. And the pins are saved to your Internet Browser Downloads.

I hope that you have liked this post. If so, please save one of my pins. Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog.

For the sake of this blog post, I’ve created different variations of this pin (in addition to the pins above – the featured pin and the pin at the top).