You might think good photography is the most important skill to have a successful photography career, and yes, it is definitely important. But what will see you being a successful business owner is knowing how to create designs that represent your brand, make your portfolio unique, and help your business land clients.
I’m not here to offend you, but not every good photographer is a good designer.
But graphic designing is a necessary skill you should learn to design things like pricing guides, websites, logos, brand identity, newsletters, and flyers, which all are a must-have for a photography business.
Fortunately for me, I saved myself the hassle of spending time learning it when I discovered Canva.
Canva is a free online tool with special features that make graphic designing a walk in the park. It is useful for photographers who want to spend more time doing things they love, rather than the mundane tasks that come with running a business.
Here’s a list of some cool things you can do to complement your photography career with the help of Canva.
A Portfolio that Stands Out
A unique, expressive, and creative portfolio is an essential part of your business.
In a world that has access to plenty of tools, and softwares out there on the internet, pretty pictures isn’t gonna get you far. I personally think that Canva is one of the most versatile tools you can use to create your photography portfolio and let me tell you why.
Social media and website platforms allow us to think beyond sharing ‘just photos’, and welcomes us to push boundaries in presenting our images. Canva gives you access to tools to do this in a single, highly comprehensive, and easy-to-use online program. You get access to multiple design templates for Instagram stories and highlights, make carousels and galleries, as well as file sharing, and printing options too! Even if you are new to designing your portfolio, Canva makes it relatively easy because of its drag and drop feature! That’s a win for me!
You can also go with the Canva Pro version, which is even more impressive. It includes advanced branding features such as creating your fonts and storing your branded colours. These branding features can help you take your photography career to the next level by allowing you to create a brand that speaks out what you believe in and expresses what you feel.
A Brand that Attracts
The world of the internet today is synonymous with a void where anything that can’t grab attention and attract people gets lost and forgotten.
Anyone serious about their photography career will make sure that doesn’t happen to them.
This is where Canva comes in.
Create attractive, catchy, and creative branding elements that can potentially breathe life into your brand and take your brand identity to new heights. Your brand should reflect who you are, what you believe in, and how people can connect and relate with your photography. If your brand identity is weak, people might think that your art is weaker. That might not be true, but it is how the internet operates now, and there’s not much we can do about it.
A well-designed logo, or a webpage that tells a story, is enough to tell people how strong your brand is and what it represents.
Canva allows you to create that brand identity that sticks out using a huge variety of diverse elements like colours, designs, logos, templates, fonts. There’s a lot of room to experiment with these elements and find out exactly the kind of voice you want to give to your brand. You can also use animations and gifs to connect and relate with your audience better and get two steps closer to converting them into clients.
A Pricing Guide That Sells
The attraction principle dictates that whatever you’re trying to sell must look aesthetic, attractive, and exciting.
And who else can understand that better than a photographer?
Clients get bored when they ask about prices and, in return, get an email with some numbers and jargon that makes them leave instantly.
The best way to not let that happen to you is to create a pricing guide that looks beautiful and visually pleasing while showing people your experience and guiding them through the process of what it’s like to buy from you.
On Canva, you can find many buying guide templates that are highly customizable to provide the kind of experience your brand represents. Moreover, it is free, and since it is a drag and drop platform, you won’t have to waste hours designing like people normally do in tools like Indesign or Photoshop. You can customize your guides in a matter of MINUTES with features like fonts, text, colors, and images.
As a photographer, now that you know the impressive things you can do with Canva, it’s time to get right on to creating branding that’ll help you get spotted from miles away.
With thousands of professional templates at your finger tips, what are you waiting for? Try it here for free!
