Canva Basics: Adding and Editing Text

 

Adding text in Canva is a great way to get comfortable with how Canva works and the layout of the design toolbar. You can find the text tool on the left hand side of the design desktop. This article will show you how to add text, customize the characters and the various design options Canva has for fonts.

Adding Text in Canva

On the editor side panel, click on the Text tab.

  1. Click on the option to add a heading, subheading, or body text. You can also choose from our font combinations.

Shortcut: Press T on your keyboard to insert a text box to your design.

 

Editing Text in Canva

Double-click the text box that you want to edit.

  1. Delete or edit its contents. Use the text edit options on the editor toolbar to format your text.

  2. Click outside the text box to finish.

 

Choose Font

  1. Click the font dropdown from the toolbar.

  2. Select or search for the font you want to use.

  3. Note: Canva Pro account* offers an additional 5,000 fonts - so it is easy to find fonts that no-one else is using.

Text size

Click on the current font size and enter the new size. You can also click on + plus or - minus to reduce or increase the size.

Text color

Click Text Color and select a new color from the color panel.

Text emphasis

Click Bold, Italics, or Underline to add emphasis to text. If these icons are grayed out, it means that the current font used doesn’t support adding emphasis.

Text alignment

Click on Center, Left, Right, or Justify repeatedly until your preferred alignment is applied.

List

  1. Click Bullet list to put your text into a bullet list.

  2. To put your text in a numbered list, click on the Bullet list icon again to change the bullets to numbers.

Text spacing

  1. Click Text spacing.

  2. Drag the Letter spacing and Line spacing sliders to your preferred value.

 

Curving text, adding shadows, and more

Make your text pop, and add more impact to your designs using text effects. Text effects include the following:

  • Curve

  • Shadow

  • Lift

  • Hollow

  • Splice

  • Echo

  • Glitch

  • Neon

Adding text effects on a desktop computer

  1. Click on the text you’d like to edit. Text formatting options will appear on the editor toolbar.

  2. Click Effects. Options will appear on the editor side panel.

  3. Click on the effect you want.

  4. Adjust the effect intensity and settings to your liking.

To remove the applied effect, select None from the options.

*Note: Dashleigh is a Canva affiliate and makes a small commission on Canva Pro sign ups. We use it daily and can recommend for designing commercially free website assets, adding trendy fonts and for scheduling our social media posts to Insta., Facebook and Pinterest.