Canva Pro

Canva is now available at Emerson. All Emerson students have free access to Canva Pro through Emerson's Canva instance. For faculty and staff, paid Canva Enterprise licenses are managed by Marketing & Communications and are currently limited to Marketing & Communications and their communication partners across campus. Everyone logs in at canva.emerson.edu with their Emerson email address and authenticates via Duo.

About Canva at Emerson

Canva is a web-based design platform for creating graphics, presentations, social posts, documents, and other visual content. Emerson's Canva instance contains two separate spaces: a Students space and a Staff & Faculty space. The Staff & Faculty space is managed by Marketing & Communications and provides shared brand templates, logos, fonts, and colors so that communication roles across campus can produce on-brand materials.

Logging In

Log in to Canva at canva.emerson.edu. You will be taken to Emerson's single sign-on, where you sign in with your Emerson email address and authenticate via Duo. You do not need a separate Canva password.

Do not use the "Continue with Google" button. If you have ever created a Canva account with a Google login, that button signs you into the old account instead of your Emerson one, even when you started at the right address. The result looks like an access problem: Canva reports that you are not a member of the team and tells you to contact your administrator. Start at canva.emerson.edu and sign in with your Emerson email address.

Tip: Bookmark canva.emerson.edu and start there each time. Going to the address directly is the most reliable way to reach Emerson's instance rather than a personal Canva account.

Note: If you see a message that you are not assigned to a role, your account has not been added to an Emerson Canva space yet. Students should contact the IT Help Desk. Faculty and staff should request a license from marcom@emerson.edu.

Students

Canva Pro is available at no cost to all Emerson students. Canva Pro includes premium templates, photos, videos, audio, fonts, and design tools beyond what the free version of Canva offers.

To get started, log in at canva.emerson.edu with your Emerson email address and authenticate via Duo. You will be placed in the Emerson Students space automatically.

If you already have a personal Canva account on your Emerson email address, that account and its designs remain separate from Emerson's instance. You can copy designs from your personal account into your Emerson account, or continue using both.

Note: Access to Emerson's Canva instance is tied to your Emerson account. When you leave the College and your Emerson account is disabled, your access ends and the designs in that account are deleted. Follow Copying Designs Out of Emerson's Canva before that happens.

Faculty and Staff

Paid Canva Enterprise licenses are assigned by Marketing & Communications. The initial group is Marketing & Communications staff and their partners in communication roles across campus.

Requesting a license

If you work in a communication role and need a Canva Enterprise license, email marcom@emerson.edu with a short description of how you plan to use it. Licenses are limited, so they are assigned based on need.

Already using a free or personal paid account

If you use a free Canva account, or you pay for Canva Pro yourself, nothing changes. You can keep logging in at canva.com as you do today. Your account and designs stay separate from Emerson's instance.

Paying with Emerson funds

If you pay for a Canva account using Emerson funds, such as a purchasing card or an expense reimbursement, please contact marcom@emerson.edu so we can bring you into Emerson's instance. Moving into the Enterprise license consolidates this spend and removes the need for a separate subscription.

Note: Contact Marketing & Communications before you cancel an existing paid Canva subscription. Joining Emerson's instance does not move your existing designs, and there are better and worse ways to bring them across. See Moving Content From a Canva Team You Already Had.

Moving Content From a Canva Team You Already Had

Who this applies to: faculty and staff who used a separate Canva team, free or paid, before being added to Emerson's instance. If Canva is new to you, skip this section.

Joining the Emerson Staff & Faculty space does not move any of your existing content. Designs and folders stay with the team that owns them, so your earlier material is still where it was. Your account can belong to more than one team, and you switch between them inside Canva.

Reaching your earlier team

  1. Sign out of Canva completely, or open a private browsing window. In Google Chrome, click the three dots in the top right corner and choose New Incognito Window.
  2. Go to canva.emerson.edu and sign in with your Emerson email address. Do not use the Continue with Google button.
  3. You will land in the Emerson Staff & Faculty space. This is expected, even if it looks empty.
  4. Click your profile picture in the bottom left corner, then click Switch teams.
  5. Choose your earlier team from the list. Your projects and folders are there.

If you see "Login unavailable": the message says that access to accounts via single sign-on is restricted to members of the team, and asks you to contact your administrator. In almost every case this means you are signed in to a different Canva account, usually because you used Continue with Google. Check the name on the account: click your profile picture and look at the top of the menu. If it is not the name and picture you expect, sign out entirely and sign back in with your Emerson email address.

Copying a group of designs at once

This is the fastest way to bring across more than a few designs. Canva copies one folder at a time, with everything inside it, so gather what you want into a folder first.

  1. Switch to your earlier team and go to Projects.
  2. Select the designs you want to bring across. Click and drag across them, or use the checkbox on each thumbnail. There is no limit on how many you can select.
  3. With the designs selected, choose Move from the bar at the bottom of the screen, then create a new folder and give it a name such as Migration.
  4. Hover over the new folder, click the three dots on it, and choose Copy to another team.
  5. Choose Emerson Staff/Faculty as the destination and confirm.
  6. Switch back to the Emerson space and go to Projects. The folder is there with all of its designs inside it.
  7. Open the folder, click Share, and share the folder with the colleagues who need it. Everything inside the folder comes with it, so you only do this once.

Note: Copied content arrives private to you. Nobody else can see it until you share it, which is why the folder step matters. Sharing one folder is far quicker than sharing designs individually.

Copying a single design

For one or two designs, skip the folder and copy them directly.

  1. In your earlier team, hover over the design, click the three dots on its thumbnail, and choose Copy to another team. Do not use Make a copy, which duplicates the design where it already is.
  2. Choose Emerson Staff/Faculty as the destination.
  3. Switch back to the Emerson space and go to Projects. The copy is under Your projects, marked Private. Move it into a shared folder if colleagues need it.

If you have years of material

Contact marcom@emerson.edu before you start. An established departmental team can sometimes be brought into Emerson's Canva organization as its own space, which preserves the content in place and avoids copying it at all.

Canceling the earlier subscription

Keep the earlier subscription active until your content is where you want it and you have checked it on the Emerson side. If it does lapse, the designs are not deleted and you can still open and copy them, but premium features, Brand Kits, and team collaboration stop working in that team.

Copying Designs Out of Emerson's Canva

Who this applies to: students who are graduating, withdrawing, or otherwise leaving the College, and faculty and staff who are departing. Anyone who is staying at Emerson does not need to do any of this.

Your Emerson Canva account exists only as long as your Emerson account does. When your Emerson account is disabled, your Canva account is removed and the designs stored in it are deleted and unrecoverable. Copy anything you want to keep into a personal Canva account before your access ends.

Note: You cannot change the email address on your Emerson Canva account. Your name and email address come from Emerson's single sign-on, so Canva shows a message that your account is managed by your organization. Copying designs into a separate personal account is the way to keep your work.

Set up a personal Canva account

If you do not already have one, create a Canva account on a personal email address. Go to canva.com, sign out of Emerson's instance if you are signed in, and sign up with a personal address. A free Canva account is enough to receive your designs. Do not use your Emerson email address for this account.

Copy a design and keep it editable

Repeat these steps for each design you want to keep. Canva does not offer a way to move an entire account at once.

  1. Log in at canva.emerson.edu and go to Projects.
  2. Hover over the design, click the three dots on its thumbnail, and choose Share.
  3. Enter your personal email address, set the permission to Can edit, and click Share.
  4. Log out of Emerson's Canva and log in to your personal account.
  5. Open the shared design from the notification email, or from the bell icon in Canva.
  6. In the editor menu bar, click File, then Make a copy.

The copy is saved to your personal account and you own it. The original stays in your Emerson account until that account is removed.

Download flat copies

If you only need finished files rather than editable designs, open each design, click Share, then Download, and save it as a PDF, PNG, JPG, or MP4. This is much faster than copying designs one at a time, but the downloaded files cannot be edited in Canva afterward.

Photos, videos, and other uploads

Images and video you placed inside a design come across when you make a copy. Files sitting in your Uploads that are not used in any design do not. If you want to keep those, download them from the Uploads panel before your access ends, or place them into a design first.

Note: Emerson's brand templates, logos, fonts, and colors are licensed to the College. Do not carry Emerson brand assets into a personal account or use them in personal or commercial work after you leave. Copy your own designs and replace any Emerson branding in them.

Questions and Support

For faculty and staff license requests and questions about brand templates and the Staff & Faculty space, contact marcom@emerson.edu. For help signing in with your Emerson email or with Duo, and for student access questions, contact the IT Help Desk.

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