Transcription
Claude and Canva. If you haven't used them together yet, stop what you're doing because these two powerhouse tools can sync and work together, and it's likely not what you think it is.
This isn't Claude spitting out ideas for you to go build yourself inside of Canva. Claude is actually inside of Canva building out the designs in real time according to what you describe. So, in this video, I'm showing you how to get it set up and three things you can make with it today. And make sure you watch all the way to the end because I've got two additional pro tips that are going to drastically level up the way that you're using Claude and Canva together.
So, when we're using these two as integrated tools, we're thinking of Claude as our AI assistant and Canva as the actual design tool. Claude's connector feature is what allows them to work together. So, if you're someone who has ideas for designs but doesn't quite know how to bring them to life or where to even start, this Claude Canva team is going to be your new best friend.
Okay, first up, let's talk about how to connect them. Inside your Claude AI account, you're going to come to the left-hand menu and click where it says customize and then click on connectors. In this connectors section, you can find all different kinds of tools to connect and integrate with Claude to use directly inside your Claude account. And you can add a new one by coming up to this little plus icon where it says add connector and choose browse connectors. This will show you all of the different tools that are currently able to be integrated directly with Claude. And when you find the one you want, you can just click this little plus icon to add it. So if you don't see Canva up here on the top, you can always search for it here in the search bar by just typing in Canva.
Now, since I already have Canva connected, mine is showing my settings wheel, but you should see a plus icon here. And when you click on it, you'll have a little connect button here that you can choose. Go ahead and choose that and go through the prompts to sign into your Canva account and authorize it. It's only a few quick and easy steps. And once it's connected, you'll see it over here under your connectors list.
When you have it open, you can see all of the different capabilities of things that Claude can do within Canva. And you have the option to go through each one of these and choose if you want to either always allow Claude to do that specific action within your Canva account. You can switch it over to needs approval, which is this little hand icon. That means that whenever I ask Claude to do that specific task, it'll go ahead and pop up with a little box that says, "Do you approve it?" So, this is just if I want to be able to approve things on a case-by-case basis, or I can choose this little block symbol to make sure that Claude never has access to do that specific task within my Canva account. I love that Claude gives us this whole list and the ability to do this based on tasks. So, you can choose certain tasks that you want Claude to always be able to allow automatically. You can choose which ones you want to approve each time and which ones you might not feel comfortable with Claude ever being able to do inside your Canva account.
And once you've gone through that list and you have it all ready to go, you'll want to click over to the left-hand side where it says new chat with the plus icon. And this will bring you over to the main chat box where you can start working. And we're simply going to start by inputting the prompt that tells Claude what we want it to do.
Now, quick note, prompting your AI tool is likely the most important part of the whole process because the output, or in this case, the design that Claude's creating for us is directly based on what we tell it to do and how much context or background we give it. Because of this, it's super important to make sure you're giving Claude a really robust, thorough prompt that's telling it specific information like background on who you are, who your audience is, what you're wanting it to make for you, the style or feel of the design you want, and things like the specific colors and size and layout. If you give it a really generic prompt, you're likely just going to get a very generic design. But if you think through your prompt and give it something that's robust and full of details, it'll be much closer on the first try.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. That sounds great, but how do I know exactly what to tell it? Prompting can be really hard when you're first starting out, especially, which is why I created my free Claude starter pack that includes a copy-and-paste style template for a mega prompt. So, it's a template you can use to just input the few things that are specific to you and what you're wanting for your project, but the rest is right there for you. So, you don't have to think too hard about how to prompt Claude. You can use this template to build your prompt each time. This starter pack is completely free to you. It's just my gift to you to help give you a little bit of a shortcut as you're getting started using Canva and Claude together. And it's not necessarily specific to Canva, so you can use this starter pack and the templates included for anything you're doing inside of Claude.
In addition to that mega prompt template, it also includes an overview of Claude's six core features, a brand guidelines doc that you can upload to Claude to tell Claude exactly who you are, if you have a business, what your business is all about, and any other additional information that Claude could maybe use to customize the outputs more to you. and three done-for-you Claude project templates. We're going to talk a little bit more about Claude projects in just a minute, but trust me, this pack is going to be a super helpful resource for you as you get going using Claude. So again, that's completely free for you to download. I've got it linked in the description box below.
And with that, let's hop into example number one of something you can build inside of Claude using the Canva connector. So the first design we're going to ask Claude to build for us is a family command center printable. Now, whether you're wanting to use something like this for your own family in your day-to-day life, or maybe you're creating something like this to sell as a digital product, Canva and Claude can generate this for you in a matter of minutes. So, what I'm thinking is one printable that includes several different sections to help a family stay organized. Things like a weekly schedule, a meal plan, a grocery list, and a notes section.
So, here's the prompt I'm going to give Claude. I'm going to just say, "Create a family command center printable in Canva using my Canva brand kit. Sections for a weekly schedule, meal plan, grocery list, and notes, clean, modern style, soft, warm colors, letter size." Now, you'll notice here I did say using my Canva brand kit. And this is one of my very favorite things that Claude can do when it's directly integrated with Canva is access my brand kit. So, if you're not familiar with Canva, you can build out brand kits that have your exact brand colors, your fonts that you like to use. You can even upload stock photos or logos. And this just makes sure to keep everything that you're designing on-brand and consistent. So instead of trying to describe what your brand looks like to Claude in this prompt, you can just simply say, "Use my Canva brand kit," and it will go into Canva itself, pull your fonts, pull your colors, and create this from the ground up with the exact aesthetic that you're wanting.
Now, before I go ahead and let Claude run with this prompt, I'm going to make sure I do have my Canva connector turned on with this little plus icon. I'm going to choose connectors and then look to make sure that my Canva connector is toggled on. So you can toggle on and off your connectors here. So, if there's any that you're not using, you can toggle those off for this specific project. I'm going to leave Canva on, obviously, and then let it go to work. And it's really fun because it's telling me as it's working exactly what it's doing inside of Canva. So, I can see that it accessed my Canva brand kit and now it's finalizing the design. So, it's generated four different options for me. I can click on these to open it up and see the different pages that are included. So, it's got my grocery list, my weekly schedule. Now, I can either open this straight up in Canva from this little button that says open in Canva if I want to just hop in here and directly edit this myself, or I can continue in my chat with Claude to make some changes. The colors and fonts are already right on because these are my actual fonts and colors that it pulled from my brand kit. But I might want to make some tweaks like add a kids' activity section and add blanks in the grocery list section that can be filled in with needed groceries. Of course, I can continue giving it as much or as little as I want it to change and continue revising by going back and forth.
Now, here's an example of Claude trying to do a task inside of my Canva account that I chose that I want to approve instead of just giving it access every time to automatically do it. So, if there's any tasks like that, this is what it'll look like. It'll have a little popup box and you can either click always allow. You can click this little arrow to allow once, or you can deny it. So, I'm going to allow it once and it'll continue on. And here are the new designs which now include the kids' activities list and the grocery list with fillable lines. So once I'm happy with it, I can ask Claude to export directly from here. I don't even have to go into Canva. Let's say I wanted to export this. I could say something like, "Export design number two as a PDF." And you can see it's actually going into my Canva account to export. And it says, "Your PDF is ready. Download your family command center PDF here." So, I can simply click that to open it and download it straight from Claude without ever having to go into my Canva account. Just a side note though, Claude does save your design directly in your Canva account, so you can always access it later if you wanted to hop into Canva and edit further.
Okay, let's move on to our next example of a type of design you can build using Claude and Canva together. And this is a set of social media posts. So, before I even input the prompt for this, instead of using my brand kit on this, I'm going to show you a different way that you can give Claude some context around what type of vibe or aesthetic you want these to have. If you've seen someone else's Instagram post that you loved the look of, or even seen a Canva template that you love the look of, you can simply take a screenshot of it and then upload that to Claude by coming here to the plus button and choosing add files or photos. Here's one that I found that I liked the look of. And here it's loaded it in. And I'm just going to give it a prompt that says, "I'm uploading a screenshot of an Instagram post I love. Using a similar aesthetic, style, and feel, create a set of five matching Instagram post templates in Canva. I need one quote template, one tip post, one promotional post, one behind-the-scenes, and one announcement, modern, bright, airy style." So, of course, you can always just describe the look that you're going for in your prompt itself, but uploading a screenshot is just going to give Claude more context and a visual representation of exactly my goal here. And I'm going to, of course, make sure my Canva connector is toggled on, which it is. So, I'm going to go ahead and submit this to Claude.
And it's given me these four design options. Of course, I can click on them to open and look at them larger. I can click to open in Canva. Or I can stay here in Claude and continue to edit through my prompts. So, I might want to say something like, "Incorporate an elegant handwritten font as an accent font." So, here are the four new designs, and I'm going to tell it which one I like the best. Let's say I like design number three. And now it says it's saved. "Your template set is now live in your Canva account and ready to customize." So here I can click to open it in Canva and customize further. And I love how Claude is even offering to help me generate the actual copy for any of the five posts. So for instance, for the quote post, if I don't really know what quote I want to put in there, Claude can help me generate that. It can give me a tip for my tip post. It can pretty much help me do the entire thing from start to finish.
Now, quick note. If you're looking at these Canva templates thinking, "I could actually sell those as digital products," then yeah, you're exactly right. These are one of the most popular types of digital products among many others that are hugely in demand right now. Mostly because there are people who don't want to go in and create or edit a template themselves. They want to just purchase something readymade. So, if you're someone who wants to maybe work from home, make some extra income selling digital products, then I've got something that's going to be super helpful for you. It's my deep-dive, 45-minute long digital product powerhouse masterclass where I go through the four crucial steps you'll need to take to start and grow a profitable digital products business. The kind where you can create these types of products and set them up to sell on repeat over and over again, earning you passive income. It's honestly the class I wish I'd had when I first started selling digital products. So, it's just my free gift to you for being here. It's completely free for you to watch. I've got it linked in the description box below. So, definitely hop over and watch that class after you're done here watching this video.
Okay, let's move right along to our third example of something you can create using Claude and Canva together. And this is a template for a weekly church newsletter. You can use Canva for so many different types of things. And this is an example of something that you can create a template for once and then just switch out the copy week to week as you need to add new updates or references to it. So even though this example is specific to a church, you could use something like this for any type of newsletter, a business newsletter, a newsletter for your school, for students, families.
So back inside Claude, I'm not going to use my Canva brand kit for this one. I'm not going to upload a screenshot like we did in the last one. I'm just simply going to describe what I want in the prompt and see how Claude does. So for this one, I'm going to say, "Create a church weekly bulletin in Canva. Sections for service times, announcements, upcoming events, a scripture of the week, and prayer request. Classic clean style, navy and gold. Letter size, two columns." Okay, let's see how it does.
All right, so here are the four candidate designs that it created for me. We've got our scripture section, announcement and request, the date. These each have a totally different feel, but they are using the colors and layout that I asked for. So, I might want to make some tweaks. Let's say I like design number one, but modernize it while still using the navy and gold colors. Add a logo placeholder. Only include the specific sections I mentioned before. Add a professional-looking stock photo of a church. Okay, so it's telling me it's going to pull a stock photo from Canva's library of photos, which is great. And it's going to regenerate with a modernized take. Now, remember, if I'm not happy with what I'm seeing in the designs that Claude is giving back to me, I can always just have Claude save that design in my Canva account and then hop over to Canva itself to go in and manually edit on my own. Either way, this same workflow works for so many different types of designs for a template that you create once and then can use over and over again.
Okay, so it's time for our two additional pro tips that are going to drastically help you level up the quality of your designs. So, tip number one is to ask for multiple versions at once. So instead of just building one design and tweaking it and going back and forth forever, you can say something like, "Give me three different layout options for this and let me pick my favorite." Claude will give you as many different variations as you want in one go. So you're not having to just individually go back and forth and back and forth. You can see all the different options in that first go-around and choose the one you like to continue tweaking from there.
And tip number two is to save your work inside of a Claude project. I mentioned Claude projects before when I was talking about that Claude starter pack, how it includes three templates for three of the most common types of Claude projects you might need to use. But if you've never heard of a Claude project before, it's basically a dedicated workspace inside of Claude that's not only there for organizational purposes, but it also has an area where you can provide context that it builds on. You can think of projects kind of like Google Drive if you use Google Drive, where you've got different folders based either on product or project type. You can really do it however you want, but it's not just a simple basic folder. Inside the folder, you can upload files as reference files for Claude to have context and background for that specific project. You can save your chats to a project so Claude's memory can be activated and work on building the memory from the chats you've had that are related to that project. You can upload custom instructions for each different project. So this way you're not having to re-explain yourself to Claude every single time you start a new chat. It's already got the memory from your past conversations. It's got your brand documents that you've uploaded and the custom instructions you've given it. So it'll carry all of that into each new design automatically.
So when you're inside of Claude, you can come over to the left-hand side menu where it says projects. And this is where you'll see all of your projects that you've already created. You can create a new one by clicking on new project. You'll give your project a name. And once you've created your project, you'll see where you can upload your files, you can add custom instructions, and you'll see all of your past chats that are saved to this project. So, if you're coming into Claude to create something new and you know you want to save it to a specific project, you can just come to your projects and actually have the chat right here inside of the project. Or if you've just had a general chat that's not inside of a project and realize kind of afterwards that, oh, I should have probably saved that to this specific project. When you're in that chat, you can do that by coming to the plus button and selecting add to project and just choosing from here which project do you want to save it to. So again, using projects from the very beginning is a really smart way to cut down on the time it takes to revise and go back and forth. And like I mentioned, I've got that free Claude starter pack linked in the description box below. It gives you templates for how to build out three of the most common projects, so you're not having to think of what to upload or what instructions to give it. It's all right there for you, copy-paste style.
So friend, what are you going to use Claude and Canva together to create? I'd love to know. Comment below. Let's chat. And I want to know what you think of this integration. Talk soon, friend. Leave already packing. Come with me. I'm not really asking. We'll get away to a place where we don't.