How to Create and Publish Your Own Templates on Canva (2024)

A Canva design template is a common go-to for most content creators or social media managers, among many other digital creators. To avoid using the same generic templates as everyone else on social media, you can easily make your own Canva templates for future use. Design once, and use multiple times. You’ll save yourself a lot of time.

Here, we will show you how to create and publish your templates on Canva.

What Are Canva Templates?

Canva as a design tool has a unique advantage over many other design tools in that it provides many premade and high-quality designs as templates for users to edit. Templates in Canva work similarly to templates in other systems—a premade design that can be easily edited without much effort.

From the homepage, you’re provided with an infinite list of template options. These are premade designs for a variety of uses like presentations, YouTube thumbnails, flyers, or social media posts. Using templates is helpful, stops you from getting into a creative rut, and saves a lot of time and energy if you just want good, fast designs.

Creating your own template allows you to keep your design in a hidden folder for personal use. You can also send the link to friends or colleagues to share your template, or even sell them on online marketplaces to make money from your designs.

Canva often gets compared to Figma. Like in Canva, you can create your own master template in Figma to use for future designs and to keep your visual presentations consistent.

How to Create and Publish a Template in Canva

If you know how to create designs in Canva, you’ll find it an easy process to make your own templates. There are only a few extra steps from design to template creation.

Step 1: Subscribe to Canva Pro

To be able to design or create a template for future use in Canva, you need a Canva Pro account. While the designing of a template is the same as other Canva design workflows, the ability to save it as a template is exclusive to Canva Pro users.

While Canva is affordable, from $12.99 per month, new users can get their first 30 days of Canva Pro for free. Head to the Canva website and select Try Canva Pro​​​​​​.

Once you’ve created your Canva Pro account, log in to your account.

Step 2: Create a Design

Starting on the Canva homepage, select Create a Design on the top right. From the short dropdown menu of options, you can select one of the popular social media sizes, or select Custom Size at the bottom and type in your own dimensions if you know the dimensions of your project.

See Also

How to Use Canva to Design Like a ProfessionalDe mooiste templates met Canva | Onze beste tips & werkwijze

If you know the media type you want to design for, you can also type that as a search term in the menu’s search bar, then choose the result from the options generated.

Step 3: Design Your Template

You can create your design in Canva’s editor in any way you’d like. Set a background, add images, and write some text. Lay it out the way you want your template design to look.

If you’re making a universal template for multiple purposes, think of how the layout might change or be affected by new images or word lengths in the future.

Step 4: Publish Your Canva Template

When you’ve finished your design, select Share > Brand Template. From here, you can choose a folder to save your template in, and then select Publish or Add to save your template in the folder.

After saving or publishing your template, a link is generated for you to share your template design with others. Copy and paste the link to share.

Step 5: Open and Edit Your Saved Template

Once you’ve made your template, you’ll want to use it in the future. To find it, select Projects on the left-hand menu of the Canva homepage. From the Projects page, you’ll see your recent projects and under that, you’ll find the folders in which you saved your templates.

Navigate to a template and select it to open it in the editing window. Edit the parts of the template you need to and save it like any normal Canva project to use however you wish.

How to Create and Publish a Canva Template on a Phone or Tablet

Most Canva features for desktop are found on your smartphone or tablet too. You can create templates for Canva from your handheld device in a few similar steps.

1. Sign in to Your Canva Pro Account.
2. Tap + to start a new design.
3. Make your design.
4. Go to Share > Brand Template and choose a folder.
5. Tap Projects to find your saved templates.

Can You Import a Premade Template in Canva?

You can import PDF, AI, and PSD files that have been created elsewhere. However, when importing PSDs or AI files, you can’t edit individual elements in Canva, meaning these cannot be used for editable Canva templates. The good news is that you can edit PDFs in Canva, so you can save your Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign designs as PDFs to turn into templates.

To get around the inconvenience of non-editable PSDs or other formats, you can import individual elements that you’ve created elsewhere to make templates in Canva. You can use Canva’s template-making feature by providing all of your own supplied design elements—your template designs will be unique compared to other Canva users utilizing Canva’s provided elements.

What Can You Do With Canva Templates?

You can use your customized Canva templates in the same way you’d use and edit any pre-existing Canva design templates. The good thing about this is that since you designed them yourself, you already had creative input on the design idea and won’t have to change much.

If you want to share your templates with team members, colleagues, or friends, you can generate a link to send to others. From the Projects page, select your chosen template and copy the link in the pop-up. From this pop-up, you can also edit your template, or use it directly as it is.

Another great option for creating Canva templates is to sell them. Selling templates is a great way to make passive income from your design work. You can list templates on online marketplaces like Etsy or even give them away for free.

If you plan to sell your templates, Canva Pro elements are not licensed to be sold to anyone not subscribed to Canva Pro themselves. If you wish to sell templates or Canva designs, use free elements or create them yourself from scratch.

Simplify Your Workflow With Canva Templates

Canva’s main business model focuses on using premade template designs for a variety of purposes. While you can design from scratch in Canva, creating your own template makes designing from scratch less of a burden when you’re making multiple similar designs.

Save time for future you by creating templates with Canva Pro. You can even make your designs work for you by selling them to anyone who doesn’t want to make their own.