Sessions need a laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Canva · Foundations
Build a brand kit and a launch campaign, and check every piece against it.
What you’ll end up with
One finished Canva project. A four-page brand board — the logo at its stated size with its rule, every brand colour with its code, both typefaces at their stated sizes, the product photographs cropped to matching tiles — and a square post, a story and a printed flyer built from the copy deck with its mistakes put right, downloaded as the files a printer and a social account need.
10½
hours in all — about 7 guided, 3½ on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Canva. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Canva. There’s no payment and no card required.
From two raw files to a finished brand kit and campaign
01105 min
Get in, and put the logo down
You are signed in on a free account, the project that will hold the brand kit and the campaign exists under the company's name, the supplied pictures are in it, and its first page carries the logo at the size the brand list gives, with the logo's rule typed under it.
02105 min
Colour
The brand's three most important colours are in the free Brand Kit, and the brand board's second page shows every brand colour as a filled swatch labelled with its name and its code.
03100 min
Type
The brand board's third page shows the brand's two typefaces at the sizes the brand list gives — a heading specimen and a body specimen, each in its brand colour — and you can prove both by reading them back from the toolbar.
04110 min
Photography, and the brand board whole
The brand board's fourth page shows the three product photographs cropped into matching square tiles at the width the brand list gives, each captioned with its product's name, and the four pages together are the brand kit.
05115 min
The post and the story
The project holds a square post and a tall story as pages of their own, each built from the copy deck and the brand board — the post's headline cut to the approved line, the story's photograph cropped to fill its shape, the story's web address put right, and each logo at the width the brand list gives.
06100 min
The flyer, the check, and the handover
The project holds the printed flyer with the company's name put right everywhere, every campaign piece has been checked against the brand board and the facts, the post and story are downloaded as images and the flyer as a print PDF, and a view-only link to the project exists for the owner — with you knowing who can open it.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Canva runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Canva.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
Nothing is paid at any point. A free Canva account carries everything this course uses, and the course names the paid features it steps round.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course.
Before you start
The course covers Canva, in your browser.
- A current desktop browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari. Nothing is installed
- A free Canva account, which you sign in with. The first step of session one makes one with you if you have none: it is free and no payment details are asked for
- bramblewick-files.zip, downloaded from the course page and unzipped into one folder you can find again. It holds bramblewick-copy.csv, bramblewick-brand.csv, the logo bramblewick-logo.png and three product photographs
- A spreadsheet program or a text editor to read the two .csv files; any will do, and the course never asks you to change them
- The five Bramblewick start files, bramblewick-s2-start.pdf to bramblewick-s6-start.pdf, downloaded into the same folder — you need one only if you have lost your own project and must start a session over
- tidewell-files.zip and the five Tidewell start files for the second company, downloaded into the same folder and the zip unzipped there. Every one of their names carries the company, so both sets can sit together
- Who can see your work: everything you make stays private to your account unless you share it, and the last session shows you how to share a view-only link and says who can open it before the link exists
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
Take a small business's logo, photographs, colour and font list and copy deck, and turn them into a brand kit anyone could work from and a launch campaign in three formats that obeys it — in a browser, on a free account, with nothing installed — and know how to check every piece against the rules before it goes out.
One Canva project holding a four-page brand board — the logo at its stated size with its rule, every brand colour with its code, the two typefaces at their stated sizes, and the product photographs cropped to matching tiles — and a square post, a story and a printed flyer built from the copy deck with its mistakes put right, downloaded as the files a printer and a social account need.
How a session works
- Open Canva
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Canva and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 10½ hours in all·about 7 guided·about 3½ on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Canva Foundations — build a brand kit and a launch campaign, and check every piece against it
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The brand kit and campaign you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Turning a supplied logo, photographs and a colour and font list into a brand board anyone can work from · Typing colours by their codes, and keeping a brand's three most important colours in the free Brand Kit · Setting type to a stated font and size, and choosing the listed fallback when a font is not free · Placing a logo and photographs at stated sizes, and cropping a picture into a shape rather than stretching it · Building a square post, a story and a flyer in one project from a copy deck · Finding and fixing what a real copy deck arrives with — a name spelt several ways, a web address given two ways, a headline past the brand's limit, a photograph under a name no file carries, a photograph the wrong shape · Checking every piece against the brand's rules before it goes out, and downloading the files a printer and a social account need · Sharing a view-only link, knowing who can open it
What was built
One Canva project holding a four-page brand board — the logo at its stated size with its rule, every brand colour with its code, the two typefaces at their stated sizes, and the product photographs cropped to matching tiles — and a square post, a story and a printed flyer built from the copy deck with its mistakes put right, downloaded as the files a printer and a social account need.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Canva Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the brand kit and campaign you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Canva when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Canva?
Canva is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Bramblewick Candle Co. is a two-person candle workshop about to launch three autumn candles. Its agency has sent a logo, three product photographs, a colour and font list and a copy deck, and has since stopped answering email. The owner wants two things: a brand kit she can hand to anyone who makes something for the business, and a launch campaign in three formats — a square post, a story and a flyer for the shop counter. Nobody has checked the copy deck against the colour and font list, and in places they disagree with each other and with the photographs. You have a browser, a free Canva account and no budget. Every file is invented for this course, and nothing you make can be seen by anyone else unless you choose to share it.
Your job is to build the brand kit and campaign that answers it.
Do I need to know Canva already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 10½ hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 7 hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Canva runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Canva Foundations is Foundations in Canva. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Canva. All the courses →