Canva To Indesign

Customer's Canvas can import product templates from InDesign files.

Canva Free Graphic Design
Canva Export To Indesign
Canva To Indesign Free

You're not allowed to sell the actual Canva, Adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher templates. They are still my intellectual property. You can't give away the editable files in a giveaway or to friends/family. They are for your use only as a paying customer. Template is available in Canva and InDesign formats. A4 and US Letter sizes. E-course Workbook InDesign Template. Workbook InDesign Template to design a beautifull course workbook/guide for e-course, workshop, webinar or fun freebie project.

Valid InDesign Templates

You can feed .idml files to Customer's Canvas. The editor works with one-page and multipage templates containing images, texts, and shapes. Although Customer's Canvas supports RGB, CMYK, and Grayscale color spaces, it is recommended to stick to the same color space in a single frame. Customer's Canvas does not support templates containing such master items as page numbers, footers, etc.

Images

The web-to-print editor supports embedded and linked images. You can use both raster and vector graphics in your templates. Customer's Canvas loads image frames as image items by default. If you want them to act as placeholders, add the <PH> marker to the image name.

You can create image placeholders of arbitrary forms by using frames from a free shape and placing images into these frames. To define how images inserted into the placeholders should be resized, you can enable Auto-Fit and use the following frame fitting options:

Fit Content to Frame or Fit Content Proportionally to enable the Fit mode.
Fill Frame Proportionally to enable the Fill mode.
None to enable the Original mode.

Customer's Canvas supports scale, move, and rotate transforms. Other transforms are ignored.

Shapes

Customer's Canvas allows you to work with any shape that you created in InDesign. When importing shapes, Customer's Canvas applies a solid stroke and solid fill to them.

Fancy, rounded, or other corner types are not applied. When you import these shapes into the editor, they will have normal corners.

Text

You can use both text in frames and text on type paths. Text on a path appears on the canvas with default formatting.

Text in text frames supports multi-column layouts. However, when you change the column number in Customer's Canvas, the text frame becomes a rectangular box, and the gutter resets to the default value of 10pt. Therefore, we recommend that you disable changing the columns for non-rectangular text by using the <TACCC> marker. Customer's Canvas only supports copyfitting by using the corresponding markers.

Groups

Customer's Canvas allows you to both maintain groups of design elements and ungroup them when importing InDesign templates. The FlattenGroups parameter defines this behaviour. If this parameter is True, Customer's Canvas parses grouped elements one by one and splits a group into separate objects on the canvas and in the Object Inspector. By default, this patameter is False, which allows you to keep the design elements grouped. You can also add the <GR> or <GR_f> marker to the group name to define how that group should be imported.

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As an alternative, you can paste the group of design elements into a frame in your IDML template if you want them to appear as a single image in Customer's Canvas.

Now, let us try to create an InDesign template that is compatible with Customer's Canvas.

Tutorial: Creating Your First Template

Let us imagine that we want to create a template for a badge. The size of this badge is 3.5x2.25 inches, and to keep it simple, it comprises three elements: a background image, a name, and a photo. In InDesign, perform the following steps:

Create a new document. On the File menu, click New > Document and specify the size of 3.5x2.25 inches and the portrait orientation.
Add a background image. On the File menu, click Place.
Add an image frame. On the Tools panel, select an Ellipse Frame Tool and draw an ellipse.
Add a photo. For example, drag it from the Windows File Explorer to the ellipse frame.
Add a name. On the Tools panel, click the Type Tool, and drag to create a bounding rectangle, then enter the name.

As a result, you should get something like this:

Converting Templates to IDML

Customer's Canvas works with .idml files. If you already have a library of .indd files or are going to use linked images in Customer's Canvas, you need to build a package as follows:

On the File menu, click Package.
In the Package dialog box, click Fonts and Links and Images to verify that fonts and images are available and there are no missing links, then click Package.
In the Package Publication dialog box, select and clear check boxes according to the following image:
Click Package.

To open this template in Customer's Canvas, copy the resulting .idml file with images in the Links folder to assetsdesigns. If your template uses fonts that have not been installed on your server, you can copy them from the Document fonts subfolder to assetsfonts.

When you initialize a product by using its template name, you should see something like this:

Managing the Behavior of Design Elements

You may want to manage the template's behavior in the web-to-print designer, for example, by disabling transforms of some design elements or locking the position of others. Since Adobe InDesign does not provide this type of formatting, we have created a system of so-called markers - special symbols which you add to an element name and are used by Customer's Canvas to manage permissions for each design element. You can find details on the syntax of the markers and a complete list of them in the Supported Markers topic.

So, as the last step of this tutorial, let us configure this template to disallow changing the background and enable copyfitting for the text element. This exercise gives you an idea of how to work with the markers.

To mark the background as a non-editable image, select the appropriate element name on the Layers tab in InDesign and add <LC><OID_f> to it. There is no difference in what position you place the marker - at the beginning of the name, in the end, or somewhere inside a line. Moreover, you may leave only the marker if you like.

You can enable copyfitting in a similar way. Double-click the text layer name and add the <TOS_FitToWidth> marker to fit text to the width of its bounding rectangle.

As a result, the Layers tab looks as follows:

Now if you upload the modified template to the server, you see that the background disappears from the list of editable objects and long names fit the box width.

Preparing Customer's Canvas Templates from Existing InDesign Files

It is easy to keep IDML files compatible with Customer's Canvas when you create them from scratch. However, you may already have a number of INDD files created by designers before they become aware of the way the systems work together. In this case, convert your templates to the IDML format as we described earlier in this topic. Moreover, if you load those templates in Customer's Canvas, they might not look as you would expect.

Here is a list of the most common issues with IDML files and guidelines on how to address them.

Images Do Not Load

Customer's Canvas loads linked images if they are in the same folder as the IDML file or in the Links subfolder.

Solution: First, verify that these images are in the required folders. If they are but still do not load, relink them in InDesign:

Open your IDML template right from the designs folder.
Navigate to the Links tab and specify the correct path.

As an alternative, you can embed these images in the IDML template:

On the Links tab, right-click an image link, and then click Embed Link.

Ensure that image links have either the OK or Embedded status.

Only the First Page Appears in the Editor

When you define products through the surfaces array, Customer's Canvas loads only the first page from IDML files.

Solution: To open a multipage IDML template as a product, use the ISurfacesFromMultipageTemplate interface and set the file property to this multipage template.

Group Splits into Objects

Customer's Canvas ignores groups in IDML templates and parses group elements one by one. This may result in poor performance.

Solution: Paste groups into frames in your IDML template.

Anything Else?

If your template is displaying incorrectly, you can contact our tech team and send your zipped template to us. We will see what the problem is with it and suggest a solution.

Is Freemium Graphic Software a Solution?

Typically, event planners are all-rounders. It does make sense to have a look at special solutions for content marketing that are available to those of you who are less graphically versed and that are aimed at making graphic production for online marketing easier.

One of these tools is Canva.com, a graphics tool that allows the user to create template-based graphics for blogs, social media, emails or online advertisements. The basic version is free, and you can purchase various upgrades. A kind of freemium-model that we know from event software, too.

Together with our graphic designer Volker Albrecht, we took a look at the benefits of such a tool compared to pro tools like InDesign or Adobe’s Photoshop – and where the classic tools are still ahead of online services.

Where Will The Online Tool Beat Classic Graphic Software?

Canva.com was founded in July 2012 in Australia. Founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht came up with the idea for an online design tool when they realized that even graphic design students struggle with existing tools.

Melanie and Cliff developed an online platform that focuses a lot on professional layouts and the inspiration of other users. Since then, the service has been growing continuously, with over 9 million users worldwide (source: Canva.com)

By means of a very simple and clearly arranged user interface, you can use various image processing tools, combine images with text and use many templates that are geared towards social networks and online media – platforms that event planners use to promote their congresses, events and trade shows.

What are the strengths of such a service?

Let’s start with the cost factor. Canva.com is free in its basic version and provides a number of features to produce professional graphics. This version will probably be good enough for most applications. You want more? Switch to Canva for Work and pay 9,95 USD per month – which makes it a lot cheaper than cloud versions of Adobe software (starting at 23,79 EUR per month).
Images on demand: When you need a picture for a design, you can either upload your own pics (free of charge) or use the integrated image search engine and choose from over 1 million images that come along with the service. This will cost you 1 USD per design – a fair deal, considering that gives you copyright-free access to images for your layout.
Using Canva.com is very easy. Even event planners that do not have sophisticated online and graphics skills will be able to handle the design tool after a very short period of time. You’ll find a lot steeper learning curves with graphics software such as Photoshop or Indesign.
Canva is a web application, which makes it ideal for working in teams. Several users have access to and can collaborate on the same designs and layouts. Adobe has done a lot to improve team collaboration via the Creative Cloud, but we believe Canva.com beats the classic software in this respect.
Canva is a ‘speedboat’ with a straightforward workflow. Of course, software like Photoshop or Indesign can do everything that Canva.com can do. But they can do a lot more, which turns them into a bigger, slower ‘tanker’ solution. As Volker Albrecht, our graphic designer puts it: “I see it as a pro that the scope of functionalities is limited with Canva. Sometimes, you tend to use Indesign or Photoshop as a graphic designer for tasks that they were not meant for.”

Where Are the Graphic Design Classics Better Than the Online Services?

The big tankers Indesign or Photoshop can accomplish everything that Canva can do – and much more! Where are they a step ahead?

It is a lot easier to create complex, multi-column layouts g. for brochures using Indesign – this is clearly not Canvas’ cup of tea.
Photoshop is pixel-based and provides comprehensive features for image processing, exceeding Canvas functionalities by far. You can, for instance, use smart objects to automatically edit pictures in various documents and sizes
Indesign will leave the field behind when it comes to creating your own templates and importing images and text (XML import) automatically. You’ll need such functionalities when you create trade show catalogues or brochures that have to follow a certain layout pattern.

What Are the Alternatives?

There is a high demand for simple and specialized graphic applications. No big surprise that other suppliers have jumped on the bandwagon, too.

One of Canvas competitors is Wordswag. This iOS app is even simpler to use as compared to Canva, but it is more limited in its functionality. For 3,99 USD you get an app that allows you to create attractive visuals for social networks in seconds. However, the export formats are very limited. It is worth considering, though, for event planners that want good results, hassle-free.

Adobe offers some basic applications, too, that can be seen as Canva competition. The strategy is clear: Lower the entry level to professional applications by providing such free services.

Canva Export To Indesign

Last year, Adobe launched Adobe Post, particularly for the creation of social media visuals. The iPhone app allows you to export a design in various formats (e.g. for Pinterest, Facebook Twitter, blog).

The big disadvantage, though, is that the app only works on iPhones, making it rather useless for professional content marketers. At least a decent version for iPad / iPad Pro would be nice to have, so that you can use it properly.

In a nutshell