How to Create a Digital Vision Board with Canva

Introduction

As I mentioned in my blog post How to Create a Vision Board that Really Works, a vision board is an amazing tool for turning your dreams into your reality.

The best thing about a digital vision board in particular is that it is highly portable – you can take it with you pretty much anywhere.

In this blog post, we’ll be talking about how to create your own digital vision board using Canva, a free and popular online graphic-design tool.

Here’s a peek at the digital vision board I made with Canva. I keep it as the desktop background on my laptop that way I can look at it about a million times a day.

Read on to learn how you can create your own digital vision board!

What is Canva?

Canva is a free online graphic-design website that is perfect for creating digital vision boards. Its easy-to-use interface provides a drag-and-drop builder that makes it painless to create a vision board you’ll love.

How to Create a Vision Board with Canva

In this tutorial, we will walk through the following steps:

1. Create a Canva account. How to create a free account in Canva.
2. Upload your vision board images into Canva. How to upload the images you want to put on you vision board into Canva.
3. Create your vision board. How to create your digital vision board using Canva.
4. Export your vision board. How to export your vision board out of Canva and into an image file so you can save it as your desktop wallpaper.

The steps in this tutorial assume two things:

1. You already know what a vision board is. If not, check out my post called How to Create a Vision Board that Really Works – it’s a complete guide to everything you need to know about creating a vision board.
2. You’ve already downloaded all the images you want to put on your vision board to your computer.

All set? Let’s dive in.

Step 1: Create a Canva account

First things first, you’ll need to create a Canva account.

Open a new browser tab to https://www.canva.com/.

On the left side of the page, you will see a section called “Design anything. Publish anywhere.” This is the sign-up section at the time of this writing.

Enter your name in the “Name” field.

Then, click on the “Tell us what you do” drop-down menu, and select the appropriate option for yourself. If you are creating a vision board for your personal use, choose “Personal (home, family or friends)”.

You then have the option of completing your sign up using your Facebook account, your Google account, or with your email address. Choose the option that works best for you, and get yourself logged into the site.

Step 2: Upload your vision board images into Canva

Next, you’ll want to upload all your vision board images into your “Uploads” folder on Canva. This makes the creation process a lot more enjoyable because you won’t be switching between a million screens and tabs during the process of making your vision board.

To do this, start from the main Canva page (this steps assumes you are already logged in), and click on “Folders” on the left.

From the Folders page, you will see a section called “Photo Folders”. Click on the “Uploads” folder.

In the upper right-hand corner of the Uploads page, click on the “Upload” button.

Select and upload all the images you want to incorporate into your vision board.

Step 3: Create your vision board

For the purposes of this tutorial, we are going to make a vision board that is the right size to put it as our computer desktop background.

In the navigation tabs on the left side of the page, click on “Home”.

In the “What would you like to design” section, type in “Desktop Wallpaper”. This will set up our canvas to create a vision board that is 1920 px by 1080 px. This is a standard desktop background size.

A note about dimensions. If you want to create your vision board with different dimensions, then instead of searching for “Desktop Wallpaper”, in the upper right-hand corner of the page, click on the “Custom dimensions” button and enter the dimensions of your choice. I used 1440 px by 900 px for the vision board I shared at the beginning of this post.

Now you should have a nice blank, white canvas in front of you.

There are two ways you can make your vision board from here:

1. Using grids. Grids provide pre-formatted layouts that will help you place and crop your images.
2. Using a blank canvas. A blank canvas gives you complete freedom on the design of your layout.

The next couple of sections walk through creating your vision board using a grid versus using a blank canvas.

Using grids to make your vision board

Canva grids provide pre-designed collage templates that come with pre-sized pockets that enable you to drag-and-drop your photos into specific spots.

To browse all Canva grids, click on the “Elements” tab on the left side of the page.

Locate the “Grids” section and click on the corresponding “All >” link.

Once you’ve found a grid you like, single click on it to bring it into your canvas.

Next, click on the “Uploads” tab on the left side of the page to access all the images you uploaded in step 2.

From here you can drag-and-drop each of your vision board images into one of the pre-sized pockets in your canvas.

Here are a couple of quick tips you might need while you are dragging, dropping, and arranging your images:

• To remove an image from your vision board, you can either hit CTRL+Z or single-click on the image while it’s on your canvas and hit the Delete key on your keyboard.
• To adjust the cropping on an image, double-click on it while it’s on your canvas. Then you can drag it until it fits within your desired crop window.

Drag-and-drop until your vision board is complete!

I actually found the grids to be a little restrictive when I was making my vision board, so I opted to use a blank canvas instead. I’ll explain how I did that in the next section.

Using a blank canvas to make your vision board

Using a completely blank canvas to create your vision board offers more flexibility in where you can place your images and how you can resize them.

To start adding images to your vision board, click on the “Uploads” tab on the left side of the page. This will bring up a gallery of all the images you uploaded earlier.

Select an image and drag-and-drop it onto your canvas.

Once an image is on your canvas, Canva provides several “handles” you can grab to do several things with your image:

1. Resize it
2. Crop it
3. Rotate it

The following image demonstrates how to do this:

Once you’re satisfied with your image sizing and placement, drag-and-drop another image from your uploads and modify it to your liking.

Canva offers a really nice “snapping” functionality that helps you line up your images next to each other, or center them, etc.

Drag, drop, and edit until you’ve placed all your images in your vision board and voila! Your image board is complete!

Note, it may take a little bit of playing around with the placement and size of your images, but that’s part of the fun!

Step 4: Export your vision Board

Once you’re done designing your vision board, it’s time to export it to a file.

In the upper right-hand corner of the page, click on the icon that contains an arrow pointing downwards. This will bring up the “Download” dialog.

Select which file type you’d like to use – I used “PNG” for my vision board.

Click the “Download” button. Canva will export your vision board to your chose file type – and you’re done!

Your vision board has been transformed into an image file that you can use as your desktop background!

Free Workbook: How to Create a Vision Board that Actually Works

I’ve put together a free 21-page workbook to guide you through the process of creating and using your vision board! Just pop your email into the form below, and you will receive a link to the download in your inbox!