How to design a Lent/Easter poster using Canva

If you’re yet to start on your church’s Lent and Easter service promotion, or need ideas for giving them some extra polish, we’re here to help! We have put together a wide selection of templates and resources to make the creative process quick and simple. In this blog we outline how you can easily access these and make a graphic from scratch on Canva, using our Draw Near branding.

1. Download our Draw Near resources

To start things off, go to AChurchNearYou.com into your browser and log in. Click on Resource Hub and then Lent and Easter 2026 where you will be able to download our Draw Near logos, icons and brand guidelines. (You don’t need to be an editor of a church to access the Resource Hub, you just need to create an account)

Then head over to Canva.com to login or create an account. 

Note: If your church doesn’t have a non-profit/Pro account already, you can apply for one to access a wider range of content on Canva, for free. More information can be found on this blog page.

2. Create your design

On the top left corner of the Canva homepage, you will see a purple ‘Create’ button. Click on it and you will then be able to choose the size of the graphic that you would like to make on the left-hand side. You can select ‘print’ for items like flyers and brochures, or ‘social media’ for Facebook or Instagram posts. 

We’re going to be working on an A4 flyer/poster for this example. You can simply search for ‘flyer’ or input 210x297mm into the custom size box.

3. Name your design

When your blank canvas has loaded, it’s best practice to name it by clicking into the text box on the purple bar at the top of Canva. You can call it something like ‘Palm Sunday Poster’. 

Note: Canva will save your design and changes automatically as you go along.

4. Add text

To place your text, you can click on ‘Text’ in the left-hand panel and select ‘heading’, ‘subheading’ or ‘body’ and write your information in. Or you can simply copy and paste it directly from another document onto the page. To give yourself better design flexibility, I would recommend putting different sections of information into separate text boxes.

If you want to undo anything, there is a white arrow pointing towards the left on the top bar of Canva that you can select. Or you can easily delete something by clicking on it and pressing backspace on your keyboard. This applies to any other elements too.

5. Text layout

Now that all the text is on your artboard, it’s time to arrange where you’d like it to go. You can do this by clicking on the text and dragging it around the page. To centre it when moving, you will see two solid vertical and horizontal pink lines appear that will indicate when it is in the centre of your canvas. 

To give your design some hierarchy, I’d suggest making your header larger than the rest of the text. You can do this by selecting the text, then going to the toolbar that appears above the canvas and adjusting the size. Here you can adjust the font, size, colour, alignment, line spacing, and so on.

6. Add colour

To make the design a bit more exciting, let’s add some colour! If you have access to Canva Pro features, navigate to ‘Brand’ on the left-hand side and select ‘Create new Brand Kit’.  By doing this you will be able to upload the downloaded logos, fonts, icons and colour codes (found in the brand guidelines) to your brand kit for easy designing. If you need more information on how to do this, you can watch this short tutorial.

Once these have all been added to your brand kit, you can use the Draw Near colours and fonts in your design. You can adjust the background colour by clicking on the white space and selecting the round rainbow symbol that appears on the top toolbar. Here you can then select the colours from your brand kit or click on the + icon under ‘Document colours’ and paste in the colour code beginning with ‘#’ from your downloaded brand guidelines. You can then do the same with the colour of the text.

Tip: Make sure you can read the text clearly on the background colour so that your post is accessible and easy to read. 

7. Add in the Draw Near icons

To add a few more visuals to your design, you can copy and paste the graphics from the ‘Draw Near - Icons’ Canva template linked on the Resource Hub, or drag and drop them from your computer folder if you downloaded them earlier. If you upload the icons with ‘.svg’ at the end of their name, you will be able to change the colours on some of the icons.

To include any other graphics, imagery or shapes, just click on the ‘Elements’ tab on the left-hand panel and use the search bar.

To adjust the size of a graphic, simply pull the corners or edges, and rotate it by clicking on the icon to the edge of your image with two arrows in a circle, and moving it around.

To put the graphic in front or behind another element, you can do this by right clicking on it and selecting layer.

8. Final touches

With the design now starting to take shape, it’s time to make some final tweaks. Here you can add in more icons, your logo and maybe some effects to your text (you can do this by navigating to the top toolbar and then clicking ‘Effects’). If you would like to move certain elements together, rather than dragging them separately, hold down the shift key on your keyboard and click on each element. Then select ‘group’ which you will see on a small toolbar just above or below your selection. Now all these items will move and resize as one element. You can ungroup these again at any time.

9. Download your design

To download your poster, click on the ‘Share’ button on the top right-hand corner of Canva, press ‘Download’, select ‘PDF Print’ from the drop-down menu, and then the colour profile that best describes how you would like to use your design. I’m selecting CMYK as I would like to print my poster. Finally, click the purple ‘Download’ button. You will then be able to save this to your computer.

That’s it! You have now created a professional Lent and Easter poster that is ready to share with your community, inviting them to all the brilliant services you have coming up (see a preview of what it could like below). Congratulations!

If you need any further help with learning how to use Canva, we host regular webinars that are free to sign up to and attend. You can find out more information here, and you can watch our bitesize Canva training on YouTube here. 

 - Diana Marais, Junior Content Producer