Canva Pro

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. That address takes you straight 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.

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.

There is nothing to request and no signup step. Every enrolled student is set up automatically. Log in at canva.emerson.edu with your Emerson email address, authenticate via Duo, and you will be placed in the Emerson Students space. To confirm, click your profile picture at the bottom left and check that the team shown is Emerson Students.

If you have a Canva account on a personal email address, that account and its designs stay separate from Emerson's instance. You can keep using both.

Finding designs you made before

If you already had your own Canva account on your Emerson email address, that is now your Emerson account. Nothing was deleted. Designs stay with the space they were created in, though, so work you did before will not appear in the Emerson Students space. You reach it by switching spaces inside Canva.

1. Sign in at canva.emerson.edu.
2. Click your profile picture in the bottom left corner, then click Switch teams.
3. Choose the entry that is not Emerson Students. That is your earlier space, and your old projects are in it.

You can work in either space. If you want an older design alongside your Emerson work, open it from your earlier space, click the three dots on its thumbnail in Projects, and choose Copy to another team, then pick Emerson Students. Note that Pro features come from the Emerson Students space, so a design you keep in the older space will not have them.

Student organization and club accounts

Canva Pro is licensed to individual students, so a shared club account on an address such as yourclub@emerson.edu cannot be given Pro through Emerson's license.

You do not need a shared account to work together. Every Emerson student already has Pro on their own account, so the simplest approach is for each officer to sign in as themselves and share a folder among them. In the club's existing Canva account, gather the designs into a folder, click the three dots on that folder, choose Share, and share it with each officer's Emerson address set to Can edit. Everyone then works from their own account, nobody has to pass a password around, and you adjust the sharing when officers change over.

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 maureen_mello@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 maureen_mello@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.

Cancelling a Canva subscription only stops the billing. It does not delete your account or your designs, and it is separate from your Emerson access.

Moving Content From a Canva Team You Already Had

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.
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.

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.

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 maureen_mello@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

Your Emerson Canva account exists only as long as your Emerson account does. Access ends as soon as you are no longer marked as enrolled or employed. Removal is automatic and can happen within an hour of that point, so do not count on a grace period. 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 final term or last day.

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, this is much faster. In Projects, select the designs you want by clicking and dragging across them or using the checkbox on each thumbnail, then choose Download from the bar at the bottom of the screen. You can also open a single design and use Share, then Download, saving it as a PDF, PNG, JPG, or MP4. 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.

Questions and Support

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