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Unpopular opinion: I design my social posts in Figma first and only move to Canva at the end
My coworker Dana pulled me aside after a team meeting two weeks ago and asked why I keep building my Instagram carousels in Figma when our whole marketing team lives in Canva. She said it straight: "You're making extra work for yourself and nobody else can edit your files." At first I got defensive, but then I sat with it and realized she had a point about the handoff problem, though I still don't agree with her main claim. Here's my thing: Canva is faster for templates and text swaps, sure, but every time I try to set up a real grid or get my spacing exact on a 1080x1350 layout, I end up nudging boxes for 20 minutes. In Figma I can build one frame, set up auto layout, and duplicate it 9 times in about 4 minutes flat. Dana's right that my team can't open my Figma files without a paid seat, and that's a real cost, but I still think the answer is exporting a clean PNG set and letting them place text in Canva after, not building the whole thing there. I've done it both ways for 3 months now and my Figma-first carousels get way fewer alignment complaints from our design lead. So am I being stubborn here, or does anyone else build the hard part in one tool and finish in the other? Curious how people split the work.
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betty_fisher53h ago
Oh wow, the thing nobody here is bringing up is version control on the text side! Your setup means every text tweak from a teammate means you re-export and re-upload, which is fine for a 5 slide post but gets messy fast when legal wants a word changed on slide 7 of a 10 slide set. What I'd watch out for is that PNG export trap where the file gets flattened and then nobody can fix a typo without going back to you anyway. The piece Dana might be missing is that Canva does have locked background elements you can set up, so you could export your Figma grid as a background layer and lock it, then let people type on top without breaking your spacing. That gives you the alignment win and gives them the editing freedom in one move. Have you tried that locked background trick yet?
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