8 ways Canva makes presentation design easier than ever

Despite growing up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, PowerPoint isn’t my go-to presentation design tool. I gravitate towards Canva because I can produce better presentations with more engaging visuals, and I can do it much faster in

Canva than using PowerPoint
or other presentation tools. If you want to move away from more corporate feeling presentation tools, Canva is exactly what you need. Most presentation design features are available in the Canva Free plan, with few tools to enhance your workflow further available for Canva Pro users. There’s no reason not to be using Canva for your presentations.

8

Well-designed template library

Great if design isn’t your thing

Canva is most renowned for its template library. You’ll find templates for almost any design type — such as social media posts or videos, printed business cards, and YouTube thumbnails — it boasts a large presentation template library too.

The presentation templates include multiple pages of the presentation, not just the front cover. This allows you to pre-set an entire presentation’s worth of pages — most templates have around 10-20 slides ready to go — and mix and match the order of the pages, as well as easily edit the design for your own purpose. Templates remove the stress of a blank page.

7

Remote presentation access from mobile

Present from across the room

Presentation clickers or wireless remotes might seem like overkill to buy if you don’t present often enough, but walking around while presenting is often better for engagement and stage presence.

Canva lets you connect your mobile device to use as a remote clicker. Since you already have your phone in your pocket, it saves you buying – or remembering — a clicker.

From the remote presentation option, you can play fun animations like drumrolls, curtains closing, or a microphone drop for better engagement throughout your presentation.

6

Engaging animations

No cringey transitions

Canva’s animations can be applied to any and all elements within your presentation. Choose whether to animate your elements on entry or exit of each page, or on-click. Canva Pro users have control over speed and timing. You can also animate page transitions by right-clicking the page from the timeline or create a path on which your element will animate along.

Try to avoid animating everything or using different animation types on each element or page. Give your presentation continuity and professionalism by using the “less is more” approach for animations.

The Magic Animate feature intelligently applies animations to your pages, so you don’t have to. This can be edited if you don’t like the results, but it saves you time and applies the animations across the board in one go. This feature is only available to Canva Pro users.

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5

Present in offline or online mode

Opens your opportunities

You could download your presentation as a PDF to present it more statically; however, a PDF won’t play your animations, videos, or transitions through pages. PDFs also won’t benefit from Draw mode or the mobile remote access. This is one offline option if you require it though.

Hitting Present from your Canva project reveals options for how to present your presentation, as well as a note for how to access it offline (from Canva Home, find the presentation design, then select Enable Offline Presentation).

The presentation options allow for instant presentation direct from Canva in a new browser tab. You can present with Presenter View, so you can view your notes and a timer countdown to stay on track. And there are Present and Record and Autoplay options, for which you can choose the timing of from the project artboard page.

Write, design, and more

Canva has a bunch of AI tools available in the Dream Lab or the Magic Media tab. You can use Magic Design to create a presentation draft — and even apply your branding to it with Brand Kit if you’re a Canva Pro user — to avoid staring at a blank page.

Once you have a draft, you’ll benefit from the Magic Write tools which can help find your wording for the presentation, including rewriting or translating.

The AI Magic Animate setting animates your presentation’s elements for you. These are applied based your presentation’s content, ensuring you’ll have suitable animations throughout.

Whether you prefer to use AI or not, Canva’s native AI tools are great options for improving your presentations, even down to its intelligent search for graphics or templates based on your design. Canva Apps features third-party AI tools if Canva’s aren’t what you’re looking for.

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3

Draw in present mode

Add live annotations

It can be important to highlight or emphasize part of the visuals mid-presentation, or perhaps to add a quick note in the moment. While you can integration animation in the design, such as circling a word or underlining a phrase, it adds a sense of realness to annotate live.

With Canva’s Draw feature, draw directly on your presentation while in Present mode. Just hover your cursor to the bottom of the presentation screen and select the Draw mode. You’ll have a basic choice of drawing implements, and you can draw and annotate any part of your presentation.

2

Visualize data beautifully

Great design for great information

Canva Charts provides pre-designed graph visuals to which you can add your data easily. You’re given the choice of the type of chart or graph, from bar, line, donut, and more to apply to your presentation.

Within the Chart settings, you can add your data manually to the table, upload a CSV file, or use the integrated Google Sheets app.

You have control over how the data is portrayed in your presentation. You can toggle legends on or off, show data in percentages or numbers, and choose whether to have labels or not. The graphics can be resized and recolored to fit your presentation.

You’re unlimited

Canva already has an abundance of great features, from pre-made templates, Brand Kit, native AI tools, and text tools, but there are ways to get even more for your Canva presentations by using Canva Apps.

Canva Apps are updated frequently, but they largely feature big name tools like the Google Suite, productivity tools like HubSpot, fun artistic tools along with AI generators from other brands, and some Canva-native apps like the aforementioned Charts app.

Canva Apps improve artistry, productivity, accessibility, and interactivity within your presentations. Save time by integrating apps to improve your work process

Canva makes presentations light work

Whether you choose to stay with Canva’s free plan or purchase a Canva Pro subscription, you’ll easily find ways to make Canva work for you and your presentations. With huge libraries of templates, images, video, audio, and graphics as a minimum expectation of Canva, you’ll find a bunch of other tools to make your presentation design a breeze, so you never look back. You could use Canva’s AI tools, remote access and live drawing features, or simply just use it to make fun presentations. You’ll easily make great presentations without a doubt.