In this week's episode I introduce you to Canva, share a list of storytellers for you to follow on Snapchat, and let you know what I got in the mail this weekend.
Welcome to Blog Oklahoma
I've been using an online service lately that's actually made doing some graphic work so much easier. It's call Canva and you can find it at canva.com. Canva is a free cloud based service that'll let you easily create beautiful graphics and documents. It’s available on the web and as an iOS app. There is a paid tier for some team features, and they do sell some graphical elements, but practically everything is free to use.
Have you even seen those quote images shared on Instagram. You know one of those with a famous quotation on a generic background shared everywhere on social media. Well you can quickly and easily create one of those in Canva. It’s so simple that I’m going to walk you through the steps to create one of those kind of images.
First you need to have a quote. So I went to brainyquote.com and for a random Will Rogers quote. Here’s a good one:
“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” - Will Rogers
Okay now let’s go to canva.com. It only takes a few moments to setup up an account if you haven’t done so already, otherwise just login.
On the left just below your name is a big red button that says “Create A Design”. Click it, and on the right you’ll be show a page full of ready made designs.
Click on the one that says Social Media. It should be the first one in the list. This will automatically set up an 800 x 800 px image for you to use.
On the right you’ll see a big white square, and on the left you’ll a toolbar. If it’s not already selected click on the Layouts button.
Now you should see a list of some premade layouts. You do not have to use any of these to work on your graphic. You can do everything from scratch. For the sake of this very quick tutorial I’m going to select one of these premade layouts. Please note some of these layouts cost money, but they have plenty of free ones to select from. So skim down the list and you’ll find a nice free one with a picture of field and a quote in the center of it. Click on it and it will fill in the big white square on the right. You’re just about done.
Click on the quote text in the center, and you should see it highlight and there will be a new toolbar above your big square near the top of the page. So let’s change the text to our Will Rogers quote. When you’re done typing you can adjust the color, text size, or font with the toolbar at the top. Next click on the name and change it to Will Rogers.
That’s it you’re done. Now of course you can change the background, add more elements, and all sorts of things to this image, but for this quick example. I’ll stop here.
On the top right of the page you should see a button that says “Download”. Click on it and you can download the image you just created. That image is ready for you to post on whatever social media platform you want.
In fact after a little more tweaking in Canva, I downloaded to quote we just did, transferred it to my iPhone, and uploaded it to [Blog Oklahoma's Instagram](https://instagram.com/blogoklahoma. You can see it right now.
This was a simplistic example because you do so much more than just this in Canva. For the last week I’ve been using it to prototype some print advertising, and they turned out so well, we just use the images I created. Normally I would have done all that work in Photoshop, but I didn’t have to this time.
So there you have it. A nice online tool to quickly generate some nice graphics to add to your online toolbox. Canva.
Register To Vote
An important date is getting closer everyday and that is October 14th. That is the last day you can register to vote for the November 8th general election in Oklahoma. For details please visit [ok.gov/elections](https://ok.gov/elections. Please register to vote.
Pocket Constitution
This weekend I received in the mail something I ordered during the summer. That is my very own pocket edition of the Constitution of the United States of America. This handy little document is something every American should read. It is the foundation of our country and of which all of our laws have been built. You can order these pocket editions from just about any bookstore including Amazon. I received mine for free from the ACLU. And as of the time I’m recording this podcast the ACLU are still giving away free pocket Constitutions. I will provide a link in the show notes so you can get one yourself. And I thank the ACLU for providing this important pocket edition to everyone.
This episode's writing suggestion is to
Well not exactly write something this time. Why don’t you build a quotation graphic in Canva and post it to on your blog. I’d love to see what you came up with.
Top 5
Here are the top 5 storytellers on Snapchat I recommend you follow.
- joewilsontv - Joe Wilson
- ilikerockets - Destin of Smarter Every Day
- evoterra - Evo Terra
- snapatunde - Baratunde Thurston
- littlebabyfarm - Emily @ LittleBabyFarm
Read these show notes with your phone and you’ll be able to click and add each of these people on Snapchat. Oh and don’t forget to follow me @programwitch on Snapchat. I might start posting again any day now.
Links from this episode
- Canva
- BrainyQuote
- Register To Vote
- Get a free pocket edition of the Constitution of the United States of America from the ACLU
- Our CafePress Store
This episode's bonus interesting articles
- The Storm King is Coming - Girl Genius
- Oklahomans to face tightened ID requirements at federal installations - NewsOK
- 'Ghost Hunters' Cause Headaches For Owner Of Former OKC Insane Asylum - News 9
- Election Game 2016! - The Nib
- Analysis: Pointing the Finger When It Comes to Low Texas Voter Turnout - Texas Tribune
This episode's bonus musical selection
You can listen To the Blog Oklahoma Bonus playlist on YouTube or Spotify. Enjoy.
- New To The Playlist:
Blog Oklahoma
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I'm happy to announce as of September 18, 2016, Blog Oklahoma has 909 registered Oklahoma bloggers.
Connect with us
Please feel free to connect with us at: Google+: +blogoklahoma, Twitter: @blogoklahoma, Instagram: blogoklahoma, Facebook: blogoklahoma, Reddit: /r/blogoklahoma, YouTube: blogoklahoma, Telegram: blogoklahoma, and Snapchat: programwitch.
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