free

Create Social Media Graphics with Canva

September 19, 2018 By Kat

The best tool I’ve discovered for creating social media graphics is Canva.

There’s no need to use Photoshop or other complicated tools.

It’s also FREE!

Canva has tons of templates and layouts that look fantastic and professional.

You just drag/drop your own photos, enter in your own text, and suddenly you have a magical and beautiful social media graphic – without any graphic design experience!

Major props to those who have graphic design experience, I don’t know how you make such beautiful things. The rest of us have to resort to finding tools like this to help us get by!

HOW TO USE CANVA

When you open Canva, you can create a new design.

Depending on what your use case is, you can pick if you’re creating an Instagram post, a Facebook ad, a LinkedIn cover photo, blog header image, infographic, flyer, or a multitude of other options.

It’ll lay out a canvas for you at the appropriate dimensions – so helpful because the variation of image dimensions for each social media platform drives me nuts.

CREATE A NEW DESIGN

I clicked on “Instagram post” so here’s a blank square canvas for me to work with. I can choose from various Canva layouts. There’s a lot of great options for free, while some options cost money.

Once you select a layout, it gets added to your canvas. Then you can start editing the text, photos, and drag/drop to move elements around – change the color / font / etc…

You can upload your own images and drag them onto the canvas. Below is a history of images I’ve uploaded for my past graphics.

You can also search for photos or illustrations that Canva provides. Some are free and some are paid.

Once you finish your design, you can download it in the format you want and use it wherever you need.

ALL YOUR DESIGNS

Canva also keeps a collection of all your past designs. That’s handy when I want to use a similar format / font from something I created before. Make a copy of a design and then edit from there.

EXAMPLE

This is a recent graphic I created for a YouTube video thumbnail.

Side note: I like how preparing my own graphic for the thumbnail makes the video look a lot better (top two video thumbnails), as compared to a random still frame taken from the YouTube video (rest of thumbnails).

To promote the video on my Instagram page, I couldn’t use the above thumbnail because some of the text would get cut off. Hence I copied all the elements over and created a new square Instagram graphic. Download the image and then post it!

By now, you’re probably getting the idea that there’s many use cases for these graphics. If you’re building your own brand, it’s important to have strong visuals. I’m still working on making a cohesive visual brand for myself, but Canva is allowing me to experiment with different styles in an easy way.

For more examples of what I’ve created with Canva, check out my Instagram @kat.kuan.

PREMIUM VERSION

There’s also a paid premium version, which I haven’t tried yet. If you work on a team, then multiple users can collaborate together. You can setup a brand color scheme, logos, fonts, etc.. so that these preset defaults are easily accessible when you’re creating your graphics.

Overall, I highly recommend this tool for beginners. It makes you feel powerful *arm flex* and capable of doing graphic design!

Now go make your social media accounts pretty with Canva!

Where to Get Free Books, Ebooks, Movies & More

June 23, 2018 By Kat

A bunch of years ago, I was working on the Google Play Android app. At that time, it was only for buying apps. We added the ability to buy ebooks, and then to rent movies from the app. Someone asked my coworker, “Oh you’re offering movie rentals. Wouldn’t it be so cool if there was a place where you could rent books?” And my coworker responded, “…You mean libraries?” LOL.

Yup, it’s the best kept secret.

The library.

With so many companies offering digital media and paid subscriptions for access to media, it’s easy to forget that right in our neighborhoods, we have libraries that have tons of books and movies that we can check out… FOR FREE.

For the Bay Area libraries I’ve been to, they’ve been quick to adopt services that allow patrons to borrow items digitally.

There’s the Hoopla app that you can download for free and browse for eBooks, movies, TV shows, music, or audiobooks. This is amazing!! You don’t even need to leave your home.

Or you can check Overdrive to find eBooks or audiobooks, and they can be downloaded to your computer or delivered straight to your Kindle device or phone (Android, iOS, Windows)!

There’s also Flipster for reading magazines digitally, and you can also login to read newspapers like the NYTimes!

If you want a physical book or DVD, going in person is of course an option. I love checking out their new releases section, which often has popular books that are trending. They also have a vast collection of movies and TV DVD sets. They also have old school audiobooks that are a set of CDs, if anyone still uses those. 😉 Actually, I did get those audiobooks to play in my car, which surprisingly has a CD player! The only annoying part is swapping out CDs when each disc is done.

Anyways, if I already know what items I want from the library, before I go in, I’ll take advantage of the library website. I search the catalog, login with my library card, and put things on hold. Then I can just go into the library branch and pick them up. This came in handy especially last year when I was reading tons of picture books during the bookwriting process and writing up favorite children’s books posts.

Gosh, there’s so much free-ness at the library, it’s great.

Actually our tax dollars pay for it, so take advantage of it! Go visit your library wherever you live. If you’re around here, check out the Mountain View Library and sign up for a library card!

Story of My Free Shirts from Google

April 26, 2017 By Kat

When I was a college student, I heard about all these unbelievable perks at the Disneyland of all tech companies: Google. I heard about how they had these big storage cabinets, where someone would stock them up, fling the doors wide open, announce “FREE T-SHIRTS!” and there would be a free-for-all where you could grab as many brightly colored whimsically designed Google logo T-shirts as you wanted.

Fast-forward to my time as an actual employee at Google, and well, it didn’t quite work like that. But at certain points, it did feel like it was raining schwag. The free stuff would just keep coming, which IS as delightful as it sounds! Now I have enough T-shirts and hoodies for a whole “Silicon Valley engineer” wardrobe.

I also have other random things like this Android cookie cutter, which I immediately put to use that holiday season, but have since misplaced. Oops.

Anyways, back to the free T-shirts. It all began with the Noogler shirt when I first started at Google. Noogler stands for New Googler smashed into 1 word because we’re too lazy to say the 2 words. We also received a propeller cap, which this big guy at home wears now. Maybe I should see if the shirt fits him too.

At the end of my first day of orientation at Google, my mentor picked me up to go to my desk and that was when I found out I was joining the Android Apps team! Woohoo, it was my first choice, so I was on cloud 9. I was going to be working on the Android Market app as a software engineer. (The Android Market is the old school name for the Google Play Store app.) We had an incredibly ambitious plan, and the launch for the Honeycomb release of Android was brutal. So many late hours working, but at least we got these cool sweatshirts with our names hand-stitched on them at the end of it. Although, brown was never really my color.

Next up for the Ice Cream Sandwich release, I worked on the Contacts app – making it all prettyful. I learned the real meaning of pixel PERFECT. I was pushing things on the screen left 2 pixels, then right 4 pixels, up 16 pixels, etc… There was a method to the madness, I think. Our app did get mentioned during the keynote launch of Ice Cream Sandwich. 5 seconds of fame, hurrah!

Ice cream sandwich on a shirt

Ice cream sandwich on a truck

Ice cream sandwich in my hand

Then it was time to get back to work. Spring turned into Summer. Code was written. Summer turned into Fall. More code was written. We also got these jackets to keep us warm… but you know how I feel about the color brown. The jacket nearly envelops me, so I passed it onto my cousin. See! Enough schwag to clothe me and my family!

In the final weeks before JellyBean launch, I got shipped to London to help the Google Search team with their app. When I wasn’t stuffing my face with the amazing snacks in their microkitchen and drinking their freshly squeezed orange juice, I managed to fix a few bugs for the team. 😛 The launch celebration included a big Jellybean statue to display on our front lawn, to go with the other dessert statues. There were also many jellybeans eaten, or rather in my case, many popcorn jellybeans were eaten (my favorite flavor).

My next big project was creating the Google Keep Android app. There were ups and downs, pauses and restarts, redesigns and many rounds of iteration. But persistence paid off and we launched to the public on March 20, 2013. I remember that day like it was my birthday! We celebrated our launch in many ways, which included these extremely warm (and oversized) Google Keep hoodies. Our team also made a trip out to visit our counterparts in Sydney, where I got this Down Under shirt and learned how to do a proper Tim Tam slam. BAM!

From the Honeycomb release, to Ice Cream Sandwich, to JellyBean, and KitKat, it was a privilege to be able to witness the Android platform evolve and mature. I lived and breathed Android, and I loved it. Android stickers, squishables, collectibles, devices, I had it all. I also had friends with iOS devices, but those friendships were hanging by a thread. 😉 Kidding!

Buying ALL the Android KitKat bars at Walgreens

About 3 years into my time at Google, something inside me started to feel restless. I loved the people that I worked with, but I felt like my interests were calling me to a different type of work. I heard about a program to travel to Ghana for 3 weeks with a group of Googlers. It was a much-needed break to step back from the hectic schedule of my day job and figure out what I wanted next.

A team and I got to work with a nonprofit that was sharing lifesaving tips on pregnancy with expectant mothers in rural areas using SMS / voicemail messages. The experience cemented in me the amazing power of mobile phones and how much it could improve people’s lives. I realized that there was so much potential in training developers to build apps for their communities. I knew I wanted to be a part of that.

Upon returning home, I slowly made the transition over to the Developer Relations team to become a Developer Advocate (and collect more free T-shirts of course). Our aim was to train developers around the world on how to build Android apps. We tried to do it in scalable ways by creating videos. I still couldn’t get use to seeing myself on video. *Looks away and closes ears* It’s so weird!! Nevertheless, it felt like a surreal job, like I was getting paid to do something I would volunteer for. It felt like I had hit the career jackpot. We got to meet so many developers, startups, and got access to the coveted Google I/O conference, which was a big ol’ party of all the fun Google things in one place. Sleep was not a priority during those days.

During that time, our training team began to partner with Udacity to create free online courses. Even if you don’t have ANY programming experience, you can take the Android for Beginners course. Later we built out more courses, leading students through building a series of apps with a social impact angle. Along the way, we learned words from the Native American Miwok language (“yoowutis” means “Let’s go!” but I have more to learn..), filmed an earthquake scene with our terrible acting skills, and tried to steal a dog from the Silicon Valley Humane Society (we were building a pet shelter app and needed another subject matter expert).

On another random note, at Google there’s the usual Take Your Kids to Work Day, but ALSO a Take Your Parents to Work Day! Our team showed parents how to start building their own apps, and more importantly, how to do the happy dance after your code works. *Raise the roof*

Alas, another 3 years on the Developer Relations team zoomed by. As we wrapped up the final course, the same feeling of restlessness started to bubble up within me. As bittersweet and hard as it is to leave such a wonderful place, I felt like it was time for me to move on from Google. To find the next thing my mind wanted to learn. To find the next thing that my heart wanted to experience. I have yet to figure this out, but will be documenting the journey on this blog, so feel free to join me for one heck of a ride.

As I step back and look at this giant pile of T-shirts on the floor, I am filled with gratitude mixed with nostalgia. I grew up at Google. It sent me around the world and taught me more than I ever thought I could learn. (It also gave me an incredibly high standard for corporate cafeteria food.) While these T-shirts may get old and tattered, the people and experiences are things that I’ll always hold in my heart.

I’ll close here with a photo of my favorite Google T-shirt. I wear it the most.

And ironically, it’s the only one that I paid for.