CAMP CANVA: Super charge your journalism

Published September 30, 2025
Updated November 3, 2025

The National Press Club Journalism Institute and Canva, the online design and publishing platform with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere, partnered in October 2025 to offer 31 days of training for journalists. 

CAMP CANVA, a self-paced email learning series, provided practical tools to fuel impactful, visual storytelling using Canva’s suite of tools.

Learning archive: Revisit all 31 CAMP CANVA lessons here.

Let’s get familiar with Canva:

During CAMP CANVA, we introduced several ready-made templates for journalists to use to streamline their reporting and workflow:

Here are some of the favorite tools we highlighted during CAMP CANVA that journalists are using to charge up their storytelling and audience reach:

  • Brand Kit: A brand kit is a standard set of logos, colors, fonts, and imagery that comprise your organization’s style and feel. Rather than creating new versions of each design and waiting for approval from your top editors, using Canva’s Brand Kit allows you to have elements ready to import into any design. During CAMP CANVA we learned the importance of consistency in branding.
  • Canva Sheets is a visual-first spreadsheet software that can uncover data insights in a snap, assist in designing sustainable workflows, and tell unforgettable visual stories. It’s efficient and seamlessly connects to the Canva ecosystem. During CAMP CANVA, we explored using Sheets for story planning and tracking and data analysis and visualization.
  • Canva Translate is an AI translator tool that lets Canva Pro users translate their designs into more than 100 languages with just a few clicks. During CAMP CANVA, we saw how journalists and editors can use this tool to translate important infographics for local-language reach.
  • Canva’s video editing timeline: Video editing in Canva starts with a paired-down timeline beneath the video frame. During CAMP CANVA, we learned the basics of creating, uploading, and editing video easily and efficiently in Canva.
  • Canva Websites: Design and launch a professional, one-of-a-kind website in minutes with Canva’s free website builder. Use free customizable templates, easy drag-and-drop tools, and unlimited content to create a single-page site that’s mobile friendly.
  • Canva Whiteboards: Whether you’re planning a big project or mapping out sourcing for a story, collaboration can be key to thorough thinking — or identifying gaps. Canva Whiteboards offer an interactive, visual way for you to brainstorm, plan, and improve your storytelling from the start.
  • Magic Charts: Use Magic Charts in Canva Sheets and instantly transform data into visualizations. Magic Charts updates in real-time, staying in sync with your spreadsheet data.
  • Magic Insights analyzes your Canva Sheets data and generates charts, summaries, and formulas automatically. It helps you quickly interpret data without manual calculations or formatting.
  • Magic Write is an AI text generator that helps you get out a first draft, fast. Simply start with a prompt and watch as copy, blog outlines, lists, bio captions, content ideas, brainstorms, and more appear in seconds.
  • Online screen recorder: Create a presentation, demo, or explainer video on Canva and while you’re at it, record your talking head narration, too. Record yourself and your screen with the free screen recorder, then add the video to your design — all in one platform.
  • Get familiar with Canva Whiteboards: Complete this five-minute activity to test drive the collaborative features. Hint: Zoom in on each exercise using the slide at the bottom of your browser window.
  • Inspired to find Whiteboards to use in your news gathering or production process? Explore Whiteboard templates:
    • Create a new Whiteboard:
    • Select +Create
    • Type or Select “Whiteboard”
    • Select “Design” in the top left corner
    • Search using keywords
  • Build your own custom site using Canva Websites. Follow these five steps and design your new portfolio site in minutes.
  • Create your own infographic by following instructions from our CAMP CANVA infographic exercise. Try using Magic Insights to dive deeper into your data or Magic Charts to create a custom data visualization.  
  • Build your own brand kit. Start by compiling your brand assets like logos and color palette. Not sure where to start? Canva has guides for designing and selecting logos, color palettes, and signature fonts. 
    Record a 30-second intro video to test out some of the features we covered during CAMP CANVA. Add manual or auto-generated captions or search through Canva’s audio menu for background music to add some extra color. Play around with video editing extras like the background remover or fades and transitions.
  • Record a 30-second intro video to test out some of the features we covered during CAMP CANVA. Add manual or auto-generated captions or search through Canva’s audio menu for background music to add some extra color. Play around with video editing extras like the background remover or fades and transitions.

Workshop: Design Fundamentals

As part of CAMP CANVA, the Institute held a virtual workshop covering:

  • the fundamentals of solid graphic design;
  • tips for conceptualizing and producing graphics quickly;
  • hands-on, step-by-step examples; and
  • a look at specific Canva tools that can help maximize your work’s impact.

Case study: Audience engagement

Bethany Atkinson is the brand and product designer for Deep South Today, where her team’s audience engagement takes on many forms — from town hall listening sessions to social media and newsletter campaigns. During CAMP CANVA, Atkinson walked us through the marketing strategy for Mississippi Today’s “Brain Drain” project.

Case study: Creating video

As digital editor with Bloomberg Industry Group, Abigail Monsour regularly creates and produces social video for TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Monsour joined us during CAMP CANVA to demonstrate how she utilizes Canva’s video editing platform to produce social videos.