Best Retro Fonts in Canva

1. Genty

2. Pacifico

3. VT323

4. Bernier Shade

5. Metropolis

6. Kollektif

7. Kare

8. Glicker

9. Yellowtail

10. Anton

Best Cursive Fonts in Canva

1. Yellowtail

2. Pacifico

3. Engagement

4. Bakerie Bold

5. Limestone

6. Genty

7. Majesty

8. Bright Sunshine

9. Sarina

10. Beth Ellen

11. Brownies

12. Ralyne

Ralyne is a stylist lovely calligraphy font with handwritten, sophisticated flows. Ralyne offers beautiful typographic harmony for a diversity of design projects, including logos & branding, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements & product designs. Ralyne includes full set of lovely uppercase and lowercase letters, multilingual symbols, numerals, punctuation and ligatures.

13. Amsterdam Four

14. Halimun

15. Daydream

Steps to Create a Text Mask in Canva

1. Search for The Letters for Your Text Mask

The first step in creating a text mask in Canva is finding and choosing the letters for your text mask.

But how do you find these letters?

First, click on the Elements tab, and search for the term: “letter frame“

You may need to scroll down a bit to reach the style of letter frames featured in this article.

Alternatively, you can search for the phrase “letter X frame” (substituting your desired letter for the X). For example, if you search for “letter b frame” you will see the style of letter B frames that will be used in this article:

2. Select and Position Your Letters

Next, select the letters needed to spell your word. For this example, select the three letters that spell the word WIN (W, I, N).

3. Drag Images Into Letter Frames

Next, you will need to drag the desired images over the letter frames. There are a few things to note during this step:

1.  When dragging an image from the “photos” tab on your Canva sidebar, make sure that you drag the image directly over the letter before releasing your left click on your mouse. Otherwise the photo may be set as the page background.
2. You can use one photo for each letter or you can select 3 unique images (one for each letter).
3. Make sure you successfully drag and drop your photo into the letter frame before attempting to resize the image.

For this example, search under photos for the phrase “background gradient“:

Next, select the pink/purple gradient image as seen below:

Below is a GIF showing how to drag the photo over each letter properly:

4. Align The Image Over Each Letter

Next, align the image over each letter, to create the gradient effect across each letter:

Example #1

You can align the photo however you want. However, for the purposes of this tutorial, align the images as seen below, to create a gradient effect across the 3 letters.

To adjust the photo placement over the letter, first drag and drop the image into the intended letter. Next, double click on the interior of the masked text. This will allow you to move the image around within the text.

You can see the finished product below:

Example #2

Another way to utilize the masked text effect, is to add unique photos to all three letter frames. In the example below, I use three unique but visually similar images. These images were already centered around the woman in the red sweater, so there was no need to adjust their position. I just dragged each image over each letter.

Because the photos are all similar (consistent background color, same model, similar scenes, etc.), this creates a sense of continuity and helps your masked text stand out.

Example #3

Another example of a cool masked text effect that you can create in Canva, is seen in the example below:

Creating this text masking effect is actually fairly similar to example 1 featured earlier in this article.

First, to create the effect seen above, search for the image of the girl jumping over a mountain. You can do this by searching for the term “athletic girl jumping” under the photos tab. Next, select the first image:

Second, drag this image over each letter.

Finally, adjust the alignment of the image in the text.

For the letter W, adjust the image so that the black silhouette of the woman in the picture is centered in the letter. For the letter I, move the image a little bit left of center. This will remove the woman from this letter’s scene. Finally, to create a sense of continuity, drag the letter N all the way, right of center.

The net effect is you have successfully “stretched” the image over the three letters. Because the portion of the image is unique in each letter’s snapshot, the text appears to be taken from a single image with a woman jumping across the letters.

Steps to Create a Text Outline in Canva

1. Enter Your Sample Text

The first step is to enter your sample text. For this tutorial, we will use the text “hardwork” to create a text outline. Type the word “hardwork” and adjust the font to Now Bold and increase the font size to 105 (if you want to recreate this sample text exactly).

You can also change the background color from white to any other color (we will be using a white outline, so we need the color contrast to see the final product).

2. Change Background Color

Next, we will change the background to a light blue color. While you can use any color for the background, avoid white since it will make it harder to see the contrast between the background and the white outline.

3. Duplicate Text

The next step is to duplicate our text. You can do this by pressing the duplicate button under the top toolbar:

4. Customize Duplicate Text

Next you can drag the two pieces of text apart so that they are not completely overlapping. The next step is to customize the newly created text. You can do this by first clicking on your new textbox (so that it is selected) and then clicking on the effects button in the top toolbar:

Next, select the image effect labeled “hollow” from the menu on the left of your screen:

5. Change Color of Duplicate Text

Next, to help us differentiate between the two pieces of text, we will make the outlined text (text with hollow effect), white in color. Whatever color you input here will be the outline accent color of your final text.

6. Align The Two Pieces of Text

Finally, we will align the two pieces of text so that the outline text is on top of the original text, which serves as the inner layer of the newly created text effect. Make sure the images overlap completely or the effect will not work. You can accomplish this by manually dragging one image over another or by using the

Make sure the images overlap completely or the effect will not work. You can accomplish this by manually dragging one image over another or by using the “Position” tool in the the top toolbar (select “middle” and “center“).

7. Adjust the Outline Text Settings

Now that you know the basic steps for creating outlined text with Canva, I will show you how to create the other two sample pieces of text found at the beginning of the article.

First, make two copies of the completed text from step 6, using the “duplicate” button from the top toolbar:

Now, we will quickly recreate the other two pieces of text:

For the first version of the text, you are going to go through the same steps, but will make your original text pink (hex color #FF66C4 ) and your outline text white (as we did before). But you need tochange the font of the hardwork text to “Knewave” to achieve the same appearance.

In the second example, you will make the original text white (#FFFFFF) and make the outline text black (#000000. You need to change this text to “Architects Daughter” to achieve the same appearance.

You can also adjust the size of the text outline to create a unique appearance. By default the outline thickness for the hollow effect is set at 50. But you can easily change this by dragging the slider higher or lower.

A higher value will create a thicker text outline. For example, I adjusted the three pieces of text from a 50 thickness to an 80 thickness:

A lower value will create a thinner text outline. For example, I adjusted the three pieces of text from a 50 thickness to a 10 thickness:

You can even layer multiple outline layers on the original text, creating 3, 4, or as many layers as you want! However, it becomes hard to see at some point as seen in this Canva text outline with 4 layers (2 layers added to image above):

Final Product

This leads us to the final product:

As seen above, Canva offers designers a number of ways to easily create outline text, edit the outline text’s color, change the outline text’s font, and even adjust the thickness of the outline itself.

2. Animate Your Design

The next step is to animate your page. Click on the white background of the page, and then press the “Animate” button from the top toolbar:

3. Choose Page Animation Style

Canva offers 5 animation styles for free users (and an additional 5 styles for Canva Pro users) but for the purposes of this example we will focus on the first 5 styles which appear under “Page Animations” once you press the Animate button: Block, Fade, Pan, Rise, and Tumble.

To achieve the effect that I created in my example, select the “Tumble” page animation.

4. Preview Your Animation

Once you select your page animation style, you will see a quick preview of the animation effect. Below are previews of those 5 free effects:

5. Download Animation as a GIF

The final step is to download your animated image as a GIF (not a JPEG or PNG file as you probably are used to downloading in Canva. Simply click the download button in the upper right hand toolbar, select GIF as the file type, select the correct page number, and click done.

6. Final Product

Canva will then begin processing and downloading your GIF. In the case of our sample GIF used in this tutorial, this is the final product:

Note: Canva by default displays its animations over 5 seconds. However, you can edit the image animation duration by clicking on the time button next to the animate button:

Steps to Create an Image with a White Silhouette Background (YouTube Thumbnail Effect)

1. Select Your Image

Canva offers a wide selection of images. Select an image in Canva. In this example, we’ll use one of Canva’s free images. Specifically, the photo of of a woman with a dark blue background, as seen below. You can find this image by searching for “person” under the photos section of Canva:

2. Change the Background Color

Next, we will change the background to a green color. While you can use any color for the background, avoid white since it will make it harder to see the contrast between the background and the white outline.

3. Remove Background Image

The next step is to remove the background from the image. To do this, click on the image, click on effects, and click on background remover tool on the left hand menu.

Note: This method only works for Canva Pro users. If you have the free version of Canva, and want to make you image background transparent, you can use RemoveBG as a free alternative.

4. Duplicate The Background-Free Image

Next, we are going to duplicate the background-free image. Click on the duplicate icon in the upper right hand menu:

5. Edit The Second Image Using Duotone

The next step is to edit your image using Duotone Effects, one of the built in effects offered by Canva. To do this, first click on one of your images of the woman. This will be your image background (the part changing color). Select the “effects” button from the Canva toolbar. Next, click on the Duotone icon. Under Duotone, click on the option labeled “Cherry.” This will create a red stylized version of the photo of the woman.

6. Adjust the Duotone Settings

The next step is to adjust the duotone effects and colors. Edit both the “Highlights” and “Shadows” so that they are both set to a white color (hex color #ffffff). Keep the “Intensity” set at one.

7. Drag Clear Image Over the Blurred Background Image

We can now drag the original image of the woman over the solid white background. Next, increase the size of the background image ever so slightly.

8. Drag Clear Image Over the Blurred Background Image

We can now drag the clear image of the woman over the blurred background and center both images. Make sure that the clear top layer image is slightly smaller than the solid white background image.

9. Group Images

Next, you should group the two images. To do this, click on the green background, press CTRL + A, to select both images.

While both images are selected, press the group button to keep the two images permanently fixed together.

Final Product

Now that the images are grouped together, you can increase (or decrease) the size of your image, while maintaining the ratio of your image to its white outline.