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🎨 Design with Canva · The Skills Lab

Using Templates Without Looking Generic

Canva's templates are a great starting point — but only if you know how to make them your own. This lesson shows you exactly how.

⏱ 8 minutes 📖 Practical 🎯 Lesson 4 of 8
Your progress
4 of 8
✓ What Is Canva? ✓ Set Up ✓ Text, Colour, Images 4 Templates 5 Fundraising Poster 6 Social Media 7 Sponsorship 8 Your Flyer
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Why templates are a starting point, not a finished product

Canva has thousands of templates — pre-made designs you can customise. They are genuinely useful because they give you a professional layout to start from. But there is a problem: everyone else is using the same templates.

If you just change the text and leave everything else the same, your poster will look identical to dozens of others. The goal is to use the template's structure but make it look like yours.

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The five changes that make a template your own
1️⃣
Change the colours
Pick 2–3 colours that feel right for your campaign. Click on any coloured element and change it. Do this consistently throughout the design.
2️⃣
Replace the photos
Click on any photo in the template and replace it with your own or a different free image. Your own photos are always more powerful.
3️⃣
Change the font
Select all the text and change the font to something different. Canva has hundreds of free fonts. Try one bold display font for headings and one clean font for body text.
4️⃣
Rewrite all the text
Replace every piece of placeholder text with your own words. Make the headline specific to your campaign. Add your name, your goal, your contact details.
5️⃣
Remove or rearrange elements
Delete anything you do not need. Move things around. You are not locked into the template's layout — it is just a starting point.
✏️ Your task for this lesson
In Canva, search for "fundraising poster" templates. Open one that looks close to what you want. Apply all five changes above — colours, photos, font, text, and layout. Do not worry about it being perfect. The goal is to practise making a template feel like yours.
🎨 Open Canva
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Lesson 4 of 8Using Templates Without Looking Generic