Let’s make a words and image design in Canva. These designs are really trending right now. They started with the viral “They Not Like Us” designs and have just taken off. In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to make those words and image designs in Canva. There are a few things that set this tutorial apart from some of the others you may have seen. One, I’ll teach you how to do this with far fewer steps and two, I’ll show you where to get free images for your design.
(This post contains affiliate links. This just means if you purchase something by clicking on one of my links I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.)
Let’s start with the design concept
First of all, I want you to know that you DO NOT have to be like everyone else. This words and image design does not have to be a mascot or school themed at all. I want you to branch out and use your God given creativity to come up with some unique design ideas for this type of split image design. I’ve given 2 examples of how this can translate to Christmas and I’ve even started selling one of these designs in my Etsy shop.
In the video tutorial I use a fun snowman and a retro santa for the designs. I’ve linked each of those exact designs so you can grab them and follow along step-by-step. If you don’t have a Creative Fabrica membership, you can sign up for a free trial and get these designs for free.
Create the words and image design in Canva
Now that you have the design concept in mind, we’re going to create the design in Canva. You’ll want to start with the background for your word. You can completely design the background in Canva using creative gradients, glitter graphics and other Canva elements. Once you have the background designed, pull in your main graphic. For the first example, we’re going to use the snowman.
Simply download the snowman from Creative Fabrica and then upload it to Canva. Place the snowman on your back ground and shrink it down so that it doesn’t take up any more than ¼ of the page. Download this page as a PNG file onto your computer. This is important for the next step.
Fill your word with the background
Take that PNG you just saved and upload it back into Canva and open it on a new page. To make the words and image design we’re going to use one of the Canva Apps called FontFrame. Just click over on the apps icon in your left menu bar and in the search type in “FontFrame”. You may need a Canva Pro account for extended use of this app but for now, you can do it for free.
Type in the word you want to fill with your background and then choose a font and choose the alignment for your word. In most cases you’ll want to left align the word for this type of design. Now you can increase the size of your photo and increase or decrease the size of the outline around your word. Just play around with it until you get something that looks good to you.
Finish your design
When you get the FontFrame looking how you want, increase the size and add in another copy of the snowman graphic. Size the snowman graphic to be the same size as the snowman in your FontFrame and then use the cropping tool to erase the right side of the snowman. You can crop out as much of the snowman as you want to make the gap between your snowman and your word as large or as small as you want it. That’s all there is to it. You just created a fun split image design in Canva.