Taihlaura Denman-Francis is a Managing Marketing Consultant at Kingthing. In this role, Taihlaura enjoys the thrill of dreaming up big ideas for her clients. She has an undeniable passion for all things in the digital space, and her favourite things are strategic planning, marketing tactics, social media management and digital advertising. Taihlaura is also a Launceston Tamar Valley Tourism Association (LTVTA) committee member, where she’s been able to use her marketing prowess to provide more avenues for tourism operators in the area to discuss, share and learn.

Taihlaura delivered an insightful workshop at this year’s Tourism Conference, titled ‘Designing effectively on Canva’ and in today’s episode, she sits down with Tom Wootton to chat all about it. 

For those who are not aware of Canva, it is a simple to use, cloud-based design platform which can assist you to design anything you can possibly think of – social media tiles, letters, invites, logos, business cards, email signatures etc. Instead of using an app such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva is an online tool which you can access via the internet. There is a free version or a pro version for the cheap price of $164.99 per year (which is cheaper than Netflix!).

Taihlaura explains some simple yet important design techniques and things to avoid doing, such as ‘font frenzy’, the use of negative space in your design, not over-crowding content and keeping the use of colour to a minimum.

We’ve all heard, ‘less is more’ but Taihlaura explains how important this truly is when designing effective marketing material. Tourism products and experiences are often communicated visually, which means investing time and energy into a platform like Canva can go a long way to creating high-quality material that makes you stand out from the crowd. Digital marketing doesn’t have to be daunting – just jump onto Canva and give it a go!

Today’s episode is brought to you by our partner, the Department of State Growth. The Department of State Growth brings together four interrelated divisions developing a strategic approach that drives economic growth, and supports the community, industry, and business in the creation of jobs and opportunities for Tasmanians. Thanks to the Department of State Growth for their generous support of TICT and for helping to make this episode of Talking Tourism possible.