How to invite your team and collaborate on designs

Save time and encourage creativity (while staying within your brand parameters) with Canva Teams.

Today, marketing and design teams work together while scattered across the globe. Companies continue to embrace hybrid work, and employees are enjoying the freedom to work from wherever they want. It’s a totally new way to run a business, so new ways to collaborate have emerged.

They say that if everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself, and here at Canva, we couldn’t agree more. That’s why we make it easy to collaborate and share your designs.

Below, we will give you a step-by-step guide to the collaboration capabilities of Canva Teams⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and how seamless connection can help your team work better, more efficiently, and in a way that’s simply more fun.

Traditionally, we’ve relied on meetings and emails to plan and orchestrate big projects. Project managers have scheduled revision after revision, check-in after check-in, and eventually, projects get finalized and published. But this long-used approach has a major drawback: it is so time-consuming, and time spent in meetings is time not spent creating engaging designs.

Since collaborating in groups is a common part of many jobs, especially when design is involved, Canva Teams⁠(opens in a new tab or window) aims to make communication and design more efficient than ever. It’s built for groups of all sizes to be able to collaborate smoothly from anywhere, design on-brand content in minutes, and gather feedback and implement it seamlessly.

Companies that get their teams working together in Canva find they have increased consistency and quality control with their designs, and have an easier time representing their brand.

Read on for some easy ways you can start collaborating with Canva.

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With Canva Teams⁠(opens in a new tab or window), there are a few ways you can invite your team to collaborate on designs. Whether it’s with a team, a shareable link, design folders, or via email, you can get everyone working together in a way that works for them, in moments.

First, create your team in Canva through your Account Settings > Billing and Teams. You can then add teammates directly from your team, so they can see everything you want them to access, including previous designs, team templates, folders, and more. You can also create multiple sub-teams, like one for design, one for marketing, and one for sales.

If you want to share individual designs with any collaborator, you can take any of the following paths:

Click Share and add contributors: In the top-right corner of your design page, you’ll see the Share button. Click and add your teammates and grant them the level of access they need.

Share designs with links: If you would like to send a link to your team members, you can Copy the link provided in the Share menu and choose whether you want the recipients to view, or, view and edit the design.

Share designs via email: If you would like to email your team and invite them to designs, you can add the email addresses within the Share drop-down menu. You can also choose how much access each member has to the document you are sharing.

Share design folders: With Canva Teams (and Canva Pro), users have the capability to share specific design folders with one another, like one for logos, another for pitch decks, and another for social media templates — it makes content creation so much more organized, and much quicker. Once you’ve created a design folder on the homepage, ensure that you have named the folder clearly. Next, click on the folder you wish to share, and press the Share button in the corner of the folder. You will then be taken to a directory that allows you to choose who can view and edit this folder.

Now you’re ready to get started and co-design in real-time from anywhere. And for teams who require Single Sign-On⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and two-factor authentication, don’t worry — Canva can fit right into your existing tech stack.

Canva reflects changes made by anyone, anywhere in the world, in real time, which cuts down on versions, meetings, and missed expectations - especially useful if you operate remotely and hire internationally⁠(opens in a new tab or window) as a company.And helps reduce creative bottlenecks that slow down marketing growth. Instead, working as a team in Canva leaves room for true live collaboration and implementing new ideas.

If you’re looking to reduce wasted time and help your team do better work, more efficiently, here are some tips for using Canva for all your design-related projects. For everything from creating social media posts⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and designing onboarding presentations to pulling off multi-week design projects, Canva has created several features that help teams collaborate, no matter where they are.

Creating a clear visual identity⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is important when establishing and growing a brand, because it helps people see who you are and gives hints about the services you offer.

Canva Teams (and Canva Pro) users are able to create a brand kit that has your key colors, fonts, and logos saved all in one place⁠(opens in a new tab or window). With this feature, when any member of your team is creating their designs in Canva, they can do so using the clear parameters of the brand kit folder. No more guessing which shade of turquoise is the correct one (or wasting time looking it up), and no more sending employees back to the drawing board because they’ve veered way off-brand.

You can also save multiple different brand kits in Canva Teams, which lets companies easily create content for separate product lines, campaigns, and various sub-brands.

Media kit templates⁠(opens in a new tab or window) are a perfect example of how color, font and imagery can help communicate your business identity. And by having these key elements on demand using Canva’s Brand Kit⁠(opens in a new tab or window), you’re easily able to update information and design elements while still sticking to branding guidelines.

Bonus Tip: Improve comprehension across language barriers by leveraging Canva's built-in document translator⁠(opens in a new tab or window) tool to enhance collaboration among your team of designers. You can effortlessly translate design briefs and media kits, ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Brand templates⁠(opens in a new tab or window) are one of the most beloved features available to Canva Pro and Canva Teams subscribers. This functionality allows you to create and save various on-brand templates in one place.

From posters to packaging labels to business cards to social media posts, teams have access to ready-to-edit templates that help content creation happen in minutes, not hours.

Here’s how to create brand templates for future use⁠(opens in a new tab or window) by your whole team:

They’re great for maintaining the integrity of your brand, too — from a design perspective, team templates let any employee, with design experience or without, reinforce your brand’s visual ethos within the company and externally.

Learn more about how to use brand templates here⁠(opens in a new tab or window):

Here’s how to work on designs as a team using Canva’s brand management tools⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Another way to stay organized and improve efficiency is to keep all relevant folders in Canva separated and clearly labeled⁠(opens in a new tab or window). By allocating folders for different types of designs, campaigns, or teams, everyone will be able to access approved brand assets that already exist. This way, teams are less likely to double-up on work that has already been created and have clear reference tools and templates when creating their own designs.

Canva lets the owner of each design share files with users that will either allow them to view and edit, or simply view. To ensure quality control, we suggest being strategic about who you give edit permissions to, only selecting a small amount of the team to have edit access. The View Only access is a great tool for allowing members in the team to review work and communicate any suggestions for the design, but not move things around or add any new unwanted elements.

Design teams know the struggle of sending files back and forth between creatives and various decision-makers, implementing feedback, sending it back, and receiving even more feedback. But with Canva’s simple approval workflows⁠(opens in a new tab or window) (and the ability to make changes that everyone can see while on a Zoom call), versioning is a thing of the past.

Here’s more on How to assign and receive feedback in Canva⁠(opens in a new tab or window):

Canva’s content manager⁠(opens in a new tab or window) lets social teams design, schedule, and upload content right from within Canva, letting them skip the ceaseless downloading from design platforms and uploading to various social feeds. But it also means any teammate, manager, or approver can jump into the content calendar easily and provide instant feedback or edits.

Collaborating with distributed teams isn’t always easy, but with the right tools, design brainstorms and feedback sessions can be even more productive than they were when everyone was in a room together. Canva Teams⁠(opens in a new tab or window) is the perfect platform to enable teams of all sizes to design their most striking, effective content yet, while connecting with teams all around the world.

To learn more about team collaboration in Canva, this Canva Design School collaboration webinar⁠(opens in a new tab or window) has everything you need to know.