Having a professional email signature
conveys professionalism, builds credibility, and communicates essential contact information.
Today, we are going to learn how to create a professional and creative-looking email signature
using Canva. Everything we are going to look at today is absolutely free, and no subscription
is required. Then, we will take a look at how to easily upload your new signature in Outlook
and Google Mail. Let's get started. First, navigate to Canva.com, and then simply type in
email signature. You'll immediately get access to thousands of email signature templates for
you to use. As you scroll down to look at the different options, you'll notice that some of them
have a crown on the bottom right-hand corner. This indicates that you have to have a Canva Pro
subscription in order to use this template. Any templates that do not have the crown are
completely free to use, and you can edit and customize them how you wish for free. I'm going to
go ahead and select this as my template to start with. Click on it, and then select Customize This
Template. Once your chosen template has populated, you can begin to edit. The first thing I'm going
to work on is uploading my own image to replace the stock image. On the left-hand side, I'll
select Uploads, and then upload my image from my computer. Once you've opened your image and it
downloads on Canva, you'll simply grab your chosen image and drag and drop it into the frame. Let's
say you want a graphic in your email signature, but you want to use a different stock image
instead. On the left-hand side, select Elements, and then you can search for something. In this
case, I'm searching for real estate, and I'm going to select Photos. You can scroll down here and
see which images are free to use and which ones require a paid subscription. Once you have found
one that you like, you can again drag and drop it into the frame. Once you have found one that you
want to use, you can click on the image, edit the photo, if you want to change some of the filters
or the effects on it. In this particular example, I want to decrease the transparency of the
stock image so that this signature pops a bit more. Clicking on the three dots in the upper
right-hand corner, I'll select Transparency, and I'll go ahead and decrease that. Once you're happy
with how your image looks, then it's time to move on to the text. When you're ready to begin editing
the text, simply click on any of the text boxes on your email signature. At the top of the screen,
you can see all of the different customization that is available to you. You can change whether
it's bold or italicized, as well as the text color and size. You also have a whole bunch of different
fonts available for you to use. You'll see that Canva has some that are recommended for you based
off of your chosen template. You'll also notice as you scroll through these, that some of them do
require a paid subscription, but there are plenty of wonderful free options. Once you have found one
that you like, you can go ahead and use this font by easily navigating back to it at any time. If I
want to go ahead and make the font the same down here, I can go back up to the font type, quickly
scroll to the top, and see the fonts that have already been used in this document. I can also
select Change All, which will quickly adjust the fonts across all of my design. To edit a line of
text, again, click into it, and you can go ahead and insert your own information. As I continue
to edit my email signature, I'm going to move on and adjust this over here on the left-hand side.
Customizing my text. And if you ever wanted to move the text, you simply click on one of the text
boxes and drag and drop. Let's take a look at some of the other fun elements that you can include
in your email signature. On the left-hand side, I'll select Elements. Here, you can either search
for a particular type of element that you have in mind, or explore some of the ones that Canva is
suggesting for you. If you wanted to go ahead and insert one of these shapes or graphics, simply
select it and drag it to your email signature. If you're unhappy with it, once you've added it,
simply press the Delete button. You'll notice here that there's some graphics that were included
for phone call, email, address, World Wide Web. If I want to change how those looks, I have a
few options. I can go ahead and click on it, and at the top of the page, adjust the color,
or I can change the image in its entirety. If I want to change the image in its entirety,
I can press Delete, grab a new image, and drag it over. I can then edit the size simply by
dragging the bottom corner, and then realigning. You'll notice that Canva makes it easy to align
font and graphics with the handy arrows that they provide to you. An additional customization could
be changing the background color. Simply click on the background and select the color at the top of
the screen. One of the great things about Canva is it automatically detects the colors that
have already been used, or that are used in your photos. If I wanted to make my background
blend in with the photo, I could select one of these. You can also see a whole bunch of default
colors and gradients available for your use. Or if you prefer the white background, simply scroll
back up and select white, or the Undo button. Now it's time to go ahead and download our image.
On the upper right-hand side of the screen, you'll see the Share button. Scrolling down,
I'll go ahead and select Download. Here, using the free version of Canva, you can download
this as a PNG or a JPEG file. My suggestion is to use the PNG file, which will make the images
pop a bit more in your email signature. Then go ahead and download this to your computer.
After downloading your new email signature, it's time to add it to your email account.
First, looking at Outlook, you'll navigate to Settings and then click on Signatures.
They'll have you add a name to your signature, and then go ahead and upload what you just
downloaded from Canva. You can go ahead and adjust the size of the image so it's not all-consuming.
If you want this image to be clickable, meaning someone could click on the image and it
would open up an external website, simply click on the three dots and then Insert Link. Now when
you click on Save, it will automatically default to this signature for all new mail. When you then
create a new email message, the default signature will be included. And you can hover over it to
see the external website that it will take you to. Now let's take a look at how to do this in
Gmail. In Gmail, select the Settings icon and then see all settings. You'll scroll down almost
to the bottom and select Create New Signature. Similar to Outlook, you'll need to name your new
signature and create. Next, go ahead and insert the image that you downloaded from Canva. Once
this image has uploaded, you can adjust the size by clicking on it and selecting the size that
you want. In order to add a link, you'll need to highlight the image and select the Link button
and then select OK. Next, you'll scroll down and for new emails, use our default signature. On
Reply in Forward, you have the option whether to use no signature or your default. Then scroll
to the bottom and select Save Changes. Now when you create a new email, you'll see that your
new email signature has pre-populated. And if you hover over the image, you can see the
link in which it will take you. I hope you found this tutorial helpful and have lots of fun
building your new email signature. To learn more about other Canva features, check out the links to
our other Canva videos below in the description.
