Canva is a great tool if you have absolutely zero design experience and aren’t what someone would call “tech savvy.” That said, it’s infinitely better if you know how to creatively overcome the platform’s shortcomings, or, if you’re savvy enough to learn.
Curving text around an image is one of those things. It can be downright frustrating if you are a beginner, but it’s somewhat doable if you can stick with it and learn how to manually get around it. So, let’s get started.
1. Place your image on the page
First, of course, is to place the image you’d like the text to wrap around. While it’s impossible for me to know the type of project you’re working on, and thus, the image you need to wrap text around (and to what extent), I’ll do my best to show you how I’d go about the project using an odd shape.
Just know if your image is a circle, square, or triangle, it’s going to be a lot easier and straightforward to wrap your text around.
Read More: How to Make a Photo Square Without Cropping
For this example, I’m going to use an image of a baseball player batter, and around it, I’m going to wrap the text “play ball.”
2. Add Text to be Rotated
What I mean by this is, when it comes to adding your text around an image like this, some of it will need to truly wrap, and some of it will just have to be rotated. I find it easier to first add the text that just needs to be rotated to face a different direction. It doesn’t need to curve or wrap, per se.
So as you can see here, I have the “straight” pieces of the image, like the player’s leg, back, bat, etc. I’m going to place my text and simply rotate it so it follows the same angles as the image at those specific points.
3. Add Text to Be Curved
Now we are getting to the meat of the tutorial, and we are going to do this in two pieces. Again, let me say this step might look really different for you depending on the image and the text. If you have a circle and one word of text you want to be repeated, it’s a lot easier than if you have a full sentence you’re trying to wrap around a zebra or something.
The reason for that is the way we are going to curve the text was through a method that was intended for words to be wrapped in a circular fashion.
For example, if I simply had a baseball instead of a baseball player, I’d be done in a snap:
(If something like this is all you need, type out your text, go to “Effects” in the top toolbar, and then scroll down and click “curve.” Then, simply adjust the amount of curve you need for the text to wrap perfectly around your object.)
So for me, first, I’m going to look for the areas where “play ball” can, in its entirety, be wrapped around a part of the player. Really, the only place I can do that is the head because it does resemble the shape of the circle and should be pretty easy.
Per the note above, I simply added my text above the player’s ahead, went to “Effects” and then adjusted the curve to 100. I also tilted the text to an angle that matched the ballplayer’s head lifting slightly upward.
Now with that done, I need to take a little more time to figure out how to curve words around the other parts of the player. For instance, down the backside and back of the leg, I can’t simply curve “play ball” because the angle, say, behind his hamstring is of a different length from that of his leg.
So, I can still and will utilize the “Curve” effect, but I need to break up the words “play” and ball” to achieve these different angles.
As you can see here, I have “play” behind his knee at a curve of 100, but the “ball” by his foot is only at a 74. You’ll want to go through your design and see where and how to utilize the curve function to achieve the same.
Unfortunately, you might even need to break things down to single letters, depending on how granular you want to get, and how precise you want your curve to form around the image. This is what I had to do around the bat area above.
Anyway, by now you get the point, so best of luck in your curves! Remember to utilize straight lines where you can, look for circle or half-circle shapes, and be ready for some manual angles for those hard-to-match areas.
