Course Review: Canva Graphic Design For Entrepreneurs

Full Course Title: Canva Graphic Design For Entrepreneurs Design 11 Projects

Platform: Udemy

Description: (From Udemy)

This online course will teach you how to use Canva to create PRACTICAL REAL WORLD projects for your business or brand.

• Do you want to create your own graphics for social media or the internet, but don't know where to begin?
• Have you spent time and energy Googling graphic design application tutorials online only to find out that it never covers exactly what you need?
• Is outsourcing your graphics to a 3rd party a hassle, especially when you have to go back and forth to make changes before the project is completed?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're in the right place! 

We know that it can be frustrating and time consuming to create artwork for your business. You can spend hours or even days trying to find the right tutorial online. Outsourcing the work can be an even bigger challenge just to find the right candidate to do what you need done, and expensive!

That's why we created this course - to teach people just like you how to easily get started with Canva.

Phil Ebiner and Jeremy Deighan have been using A for years to grow their business and have developed a system to allow you to learn just what you need to know, only when you need it. 

Have fun while learning! Learn by actually doing!

After enrolling in this course, you'll be taken through 11 projects you'll need to run your business. Follow along and practice while learning!

Canva for Entrepreneurs will show you the necessary tools as you apply them.

Course Projects You'll Learn How to Create:

1. Social Media Graphic
2. Blog Title
3. Facebook Cover
4. Facebook Post
5. Facebook Ad
6. Twitter Header
7. Twitter Post
8. YouTube Thumbnail
9. YouTube Channel Art
10. Google+ Photo
11. Pinterest Graphic

Whether you just want to enhance your Canva skills for business, or have a specific project you need done right this instant, this course is for you. 

We will guide you every step of the way and are here to make sure you succeed in your ventures. Both instructors are always available to answer any messages, discussions, questions, or feedback that you have.

Get a Certificate of Completion when you finish the course!

What you’ll learn

• Create 11 different and practical projects that can be used to help your business or brand.
• Build specific graphic design elements for social media and the internet by utilizing templates and tools specific to the platform needed.
• Save time and money by easily creating your own artwork, quickly and efficiently.

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

• Students who want to follow along with the projects should have Canva installed.

Who this course is for:

• This course is geared towards entrepreneurs who want complete control over their branding, but don't have time to learn complex graphic design applications.
• Beginner, intermediate, and advanced users of Canva can find tools and tricks to help speed up their workflow when creating graphics for businesses.
• Anyone who is looking for a complete Canva course that explains every tool and facet of the application should not take this course. This is a course that provides practical projects for entrepreneurs in real world settings, so not every tool and function will be explained.

The Instructors: Jeremy Deighan has an extensive background in different forms of art and design and an associates degree in Computer Animation. He has worked with various production houses to create awesome content. Adobe Photoshop has been a staple of his arsenal since he was 16 and uses it faithfully to this day.

He also has a history in live visual arts, specifically lighting design for music events, festivals, theaters, and corporate gigs. His passion for the visual arts has helped him become a master in understanding lighting, color theory, and composition.

Phil Ebiner in 2011, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Film and Television Production at Loyola Marymount University . While there, he was fortunate to make documentaries in Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, and India. After graduating, he worked at Participant Media shooting and editing short-form documentaries for their website TakePart. He followed that stint with a contract at Stanbridge College where he discovered online learning and helped pioneer their online school there. After that, he spent 2 years working at University of California Berkeley with the media team.

My Review: I have not finished working though this course however, I've done enough to know that the course does exactly what it says it will do. It gives you an introduction into how to use Canva to make your own posts for Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I've even used Canva to make a graphic for this blog post (as you can see above). Here are a few examples of what I made so far using the information I learned from the course and Canva.

I've also done a post for Oh Sehun (from EXO) on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

I'm really enjoying this course and the things I'm learning from it. I'm only playing with the Canva set up right now and my stuff looks good (It isn't great yet but I'm sure the more I use it the more my work will look better.) I highly recommend this course if you are looking to make your brand pop or if you are at a loss as to how to make your posts stand out in social media. Or if you just want to spruce up your social platforms.

Journal Update.

    If you remember in a previous post I told you about my journey with journalling and keeping a bullet journal. And how I planned on doing things this year. I also talked about my Cultivate What Matters Powersheets and how I planned on using them. Well now I've been using these 4 notebooks for 3 months now and I'm ready to give you a new update on them.

1. The Four Notebook System.

I am no longer using 4 notebooks. That system just was not working for me. I no longer use the notebook reserved for the study programs. It was not something I looked at because due to first getting sick in January and February, then the Corona Virus situation that escalated big time in March, those programs are on hold or canceled and now I just do as I can. The second notebook that I got rid of was the notebook that I was using to add my weekly and monthly tasks too. I kept forgetting to look at it and things started to slip past me. It was a total mess. So now I only use my daily journal which also has my daily tasks in it. And my Powersheets which have the month in view of my tasks and any future tasks get added to it.

2. Daily Journal

    The daily journal which I use both as a bullet journal now for my daily tasks and also as a way to keep record of my day, is still the one I got from Ferris Wheel and which I have reviewed here. I'm still using the one which looks like the Traveller's notebook. Although the notebook itself is of good quality I have to admit I'm not a Traveller's Notebook type of person. I won't be getting that size again.

    The first thing I did this month was figure out the kind of colors I wanted to use so I picked out some stickers and a washi tape that I will be using through out the month of April. You can see both below.

    I also decided that my tracker for last month was perfect so I will be keeping that as well as my Blog idea page, however, I will be adding a section on Books Read on the Blog Idea Page.

March 2020 Blog Idea Page and the Tracker

    This is what my cover page looks like for April. I postcard that I liked on one side and some stickers and washi tape on the other with April 2020 written down. I also added a tab sticker which has a tiny calendar on it but it is not shown in this picture.

April 2020

This is what my Tracker, Blog Idea and Books Read pages look like.

April 1, 2020 Daily Page

Finally this is what my daily pages look like. The date on top, tasks underneath, and then my daily activities that I want to write about.

3. PowerSheets

    One of the main things I love about Powersheets is that every 3 months you get a few pages that make you look at the previous three months and assess where you are at with respect to your goals. This is the time to change your mind or adjust things where they need adjusting.

    This is what I took the time to do during a lull at work at the beginning of April. I looked at my goals, re-evaluated myself and what I can realistically do. My goals stayed the same but they are a little more realistic now.

    These previous pages were all the work I put into re-assessing myself and my goals and I really enjoyed working on them. Next is what needed to be focused on in April and how to work on them.

April Monthly Task list

April's Monthly, Weekly, and Daily Tending list.

For now this is my journalling setup, whether it will be streamlined more in the coming months is yet to be seen. 

ATEEZ: Epilogue - Answer

    On January 6th, 2020 Ateez dropped their "Album Treasure Epilogue - Answer". As I watched their MV for their title song "Answer" I kept getting EXO and X-EXO vibes (I'm not saying they are imitating them I'm saying they gave me the same kind of feelings I got from EXO and X-EXO). I'm not surprised because I think that Ateez are going to be as good as EXO one day. Those boys are that good! I bought both the physical albums and the digital one.

Title Song: Answer

    The album has 5 tracks with the title track being "Answer". The songs are: Answer, Horizon, Star 1117, Precious and Outro! Long Journey. I really can't tell you which one is my favorite because I love all of them but Answer has been played the most according to my iPhone. Now let us look at the Physical Albums of which there are two. I'm not sure if they have names I'm just going to call them red and blue.

I'm going to do something different this time, and I'm going to compare them side to side :-) So here is what their boxes look like. Each one has a clearish sleeve that they come in.

    When you open the boxes the first thing you see is the picture book. The only problem I have with the picture books is that the spines break easily. The quality of pictures is amazing though.

    The pictures also reaffirmed my idea that they were giving off vibes of EXO vs. X-EXO but in their own style. The second photo also reminds me of their song "Say My Name" with the whole dark vibe thing going.

    In the photo books there were photo cards and clue cards. The clue cards are a card with jumbled writing that can be relieved by a red film. I have old person eyes so I honestly can't tell you what is written in the clue cards...They've had these in almost all of their Treasure Album series I think.

    In both albums, like in previous albums there are also stickers, which I love using in my journals *smirks*

    Both albums also have medium sized photocards which have the lyrics on the back of each one.

Finally the CDs, which are the point of these albums after all lol.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the Ateez Albums. I enjoyed showing them off.

Udemy As a Learning Tool

          Udemy advertises itself as "The world’s largest selection of courses". I don't know if that is true but they certainly have a large selection of courses on just about anything you can think of. Originally I wanted to review a specific course but in the end I opted for reviewing the site as a whole.

ABOUT UDEMY:

1. Udemy has over 100,000 online video courses with new additions published every month. 
2. Once you make a purchase, you have life time access to it. A lot of times the information on a course you have already bought is added too or even completely changed and the teachers will send out emails letting everyone of the changes. So you could be done with the course but then the teacher will add another module and an email will be sent to you to let you know. You can then go learn that module too without paying extra since you already bought the original course.
3. A 30 day money back guarantee, so if for some reason you are not satisfied with the course you can get your money back. I had that happen to me once where I bought a course and then I bought a related one which turned out to be the same course but an older version. I got my money back right away and the author was notified to take the older course offline.
4. The categories of courses that they have include: Development, business, IT and software, design, marketing, personal development, photography, and music.  
5. Another thing that I noticed about the site is that they are forever running sales. I used to think that that was interesting until I realized that this was a marketing ploy lol...you know how I learned that? By taking a course on business and marketing from Udemy. The truth is that that is the price range for most of the courses on Udemy, 10 - 20 dollars at the most. For what they teach I think it is good value.

          My experience with the site has been very positive as a whole. I've learned (and still learning) things like business, Korean, Latin, Irish history, Chinese, drawing, watercolor painting, and many other things. 

WHAT I'VE LEARNED:

1. Make sure you always check on how many hours the course is, they could have tons of videos but they only amount to 1-2 hours and that means that the course is not in depth. If you are looking for an introduction then that is fine but if you are like me and want to learn the ins and outs of a subject as much as possible then the longer courses are the best. 
2. Make sure that you look at the outline of the course and watch the previews they offer. This allows you to know a few things:
• like whether this course has what you want to study when it comes to subject matter, 
• whether the teaching style is something you can learn from, 
• and whether you can understand the teacher because sometimes the teacher's first language is not English and the accents can be a hurdle for some people.

I hope that what I shared with you has helped you make up your mind on whether to check out Udemy. In case you do want too here is the link: udemy.com        

EXO news

This should have been up yesterday but I got side tracked so without further ado...here it is!

SUHO:

       I’m going to start with what makes me happy. What makes me happy is that finally SM Entertainment decided to recognize that our leader Suho, EXO’s guardian Kim Junmyeon deserves to be recognized as a solo artist too. I swear, a lot of people have slept on Suho. He is a great singer, a good drama actor and an amazing theater actor. He does it all while being the single mom to 8 crazy kids, three of which he has to keep track of from afar (Lay being in China and D.O. and Xuimin being in the military). He does an amazing job. He is a good mommy. 

       Now let us talk about his new mini album Self Portrait.  As usual, there is minimum promotion from SM but EXO-Ls are doing an amazing job of promoting him...like they do for everything EXO related. So here is what we know for sure about the album. There will be two versions of the album. The album has 6 tracks and Suho was involved in every step of the process. The album will be released on March 30. 

          A teaser was released as well as some portrait paintings of Suho. On March 18, the teasers and images for the album will be released starting with a “mood Sampler”. 

          There is also a rumor that his title song is called Saranghja, which is EXO’s motto that Suho came up with. May I just say we love you too Leadernim!!!!!

Baekhyun: 

          While our boy has been busy with SuperM lately, he didn’t forget to drop the fact that he is in the studio recording music. So a Baekhyun comeback is happening y’all!!

Now I’m going to talk about what really makes me angry...

Chen:

          Seriously, Chen has been going through a lot lately but SM has not being doing much to protect him. There is only so much that we, his fans and real EXO-Ls, can do. We’ve fund raised quite a bit to counter EXOLACECAFE nastiness and we’ve been doing our best to report accounts who bully Chen or spread hate about him. This is actually one of the only times I’m glad he doesn’t have a social media presence beaides his Youtube channel. The stuff that people who call themselves EXO-Ls, spew is disgusting. ALL THE MAN DID WAS FALL IN LOVE for heaven’s sake. Our baby is human after all! 

        Even after EXO members through an SM statement told them that they wanted Chen to stay in the group they still are spewing their hate. They really need to get a life and stop their bullying ways. You don’t own the man! You can read about it here: 

SM statement

As I said the statement has not stopped them. They still continued with their hate by protesting in front of SM, which was a failure, and renting a truck to sit in front of SM with their demand which also failed because the truck was parked illegally. But their latest shenanigan is their most horrifying. They leaked his information on line as well as his parents’ information and they organized advertisements to go up on buses in Chen’s own hometown where his parents can see. Thankfully, the adverts were stopped since they did not comply with city regulations...however, how could anyone have this much hate in their heart for someone who just fell in love??

You may read about the shenanigans here:

EXO-L ACE HAS FINALLY GONE TOO FAR

CHEN’S HOMETOWN SHUTS DOWN EXO-L ACE’ATTEMPT TO EMBARRASS CHEN

  

iKon Comback

          This comeback for iKon was really hard on all iKonics thanks to what happened in 2019. On June 12, 2019, B.I announced his departure from the group on his personal Instagram account after news agency Dispatch unearthed messages from three years prior, outlining his attempt to purchase marijuana and LSD  from an undisclosed female dealer. Dealer is now known to be the same one from the scandal with Big Bang’s T.O.P. On February 6th, 2020 iKon dropped their comeback album. So this comeback is the first one without the iKon leader Kim Hanbin (B.I.). I was not very sure about what I wanted to do since (B.I.) was my ultimate bias in the group but I still wanted to support the boys who worked hard. In the end, I just bought the digital album though now I am thinking I might go and get physical ones too. What changed my mind? I can see B.I.’s fingerprint all over the album and why not since he wrote and composed 4 out of the 5 songs. I loved Oh Yeah (the title song if I am not mistaken) and all the other songs in the album. The fifth song, Flower, was written by DK and Bobby and DK also did the composition with some help. I felt like it was an homage to B.I. 

So let us look at the digital cover. 

I love the way it looks and the color red just works with the title of the album. 

The album has 5 songs as I said, with Flower being the only one not written or composed by B.I. 

I knew without looking that Ah Yeah was written by both Bobby and B.I. because of the energy of the song and how catchy it felt.

So have a listen to it: 

The other song (and only song that B.I. didn’t have a hand in) was Flower and you can listen to it here:

My first thought after knowing the B.I. Had a big hand in making this album was I hope they paid him for it...and to this day I have this thought.

On March 8, 2020, Kim Hanbin released a song through his Soundcloud that just broke my heart. The song seems to be aimed at fans who left and fans who stayed and also his ex-members. I have been listening to it on loop for the last two days. I have to admit, I listened to it more than I listened to iKon’s album...

The song is called DEMO.2 and the lyrics were kindly provided then translated by @big_seunghyun on twitter. 

Here are the lyrics in Korean and in English: 

You can find the song here: 

DEMO.2 by Kim Hanbin

Give it a listen. It is really short at only 1 minute and 5 seconds but it is his voice only and it is...amazing. I can now listen to it without crying but I still tear up none the less.