Overview
Canva is a design tool that runs in your browser. You build presentations, posters, social graphics, documents, and short videos by dragging elements onto a template — no design background needed. Magic Studio, Canva's set of AI tools, can draft text, suggest layouts, generate images, and turn data into charts.
Students use Canva at no cost under CMC's institutional license. Faculty and staff seats are limited — the license covers a fixed number, and a fee may apply depending on availability. Check with the Help Desk before you build a project or course around it.
Everyone signs in with their CMC credentials through single sign-on (SSO); there is no personal Canva subscription to set up. A licensed account includes the full feature set, the CMC Brand Kit, and every Magic Studio tool.
Because Canva is web-based, there is nothing to install and no device limit — your designs stay in your Canva workspace and open from any computer.
Getting Started
Sign in at canva.com
Go to canva.com and choose Sign in. Enter your CMC email address and finish the standard CMC login — do not create a personal Canva account. Students are set up automatically; faculty and staff should confirm a seat with the Help Desk first.
Open the CMC Brand Kit
Select Brand Kit in the left sidebar for CMC's official colors, fonts, and logos, so your design matches institutional identity standards.
Pick a template
Search the template library by format — presentation, poster, social post, document, video — or start from a blank design. Magic Studio can generate a first draft from a text prompt.
Export or share
Download as PNG, JPG, PDF, or MP4, or share a link so colleagues can comment and edit with you.
Key Features
Magic Studio AI
Magic Write drafts and rewrites text, Magic Design suggests layouts, Text to Image creates visuals from a description, and Magic Charts turns numbers into graphics.
CMC Brand Kit
CMC's colors, fonts, and logos are built in, so departmental and event materials stay on brand without hunting for the right file.
Real-time collaboration
Several people can edit or comment on the same design at once — useful for departmental projects, event promotion, and group assignments.
Templates and exports
Thousands of templates across print, screen, and video formats, exporting to PNG, JPG, PDF, or MP4 for slides, print jobs, and the web.
Integrations
Designs export to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and publish directly to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Canva also connects to Canvas LMS, so instructors can assign design work and students can submit finished designs inside a course.
Digital Accessibility
Canva's Design Accessibility Checker flags common problems — low color contrast, missing alt text, unclear reading order — and you can add alt text to any image or element. Exported PDFs carry tagged content for screen readers.
The checker does not catch everything — it covers visual issues only, and reading order, heading structure, and caption accuracy still need a human. The bigger trap is the export: alt text survives a PDF, PPTX, or share link, and is discarded by PNG, JPG, and MP4, which are the formats most people reach for. The Canva accessibility guide walks through all of it; the Digital Accessibility guides cover the other formats.
Need Canva Help or a Design Workshop?
ITS runs periodic Canva workshops and one-on-one sessions. Contact us to check faculty and staff seat availability, or to ask about access and training.
Contact the Help Desk →