Create your free Figma and Canva accounts and set up a project folder

Before you can design a single logo, you need somewhere to design it and somewhere to keep it. This lesson gets both sorted in under an hour, so that for the rest of the course you open your laptop and get straight to work instead of hunting for files named logo final final 2.png.

Before you follow any steps in this course

Figma and Canva change. Menus move, free-plan limits shrink, and buttons get renamed. That is normal, and it is the single most common reason people get stuck halfway through a tutorial.

So every tool step in this course is checked against the company's own help pages, and the ones that are most likely to change say where they came from and when they were checked.

If your screen does not match these steps, believe your screen. Then go to the source and see what moved:

A renamed button is still the same button. The skill is not memorising the menu — it is knowing where to look when the menu changes.

Words in this lesson

Why these two tools

Figma and Canva are both free, both run in your browser, and together they cover almost everything a small-business branding job needs. You will use them for different jobs, so it helps to know which is which from day one.

Rule of thumb for this course: draw the brand in Figma, deploy the brand in Canva. Your logo, colour palette and guidelines document get built in Figma. Then you use Canva to show the client what their brand looks like on an Instagram post, a business card, or a delivery bike sticker.

Step 1: Create your Figma account

1. Go to figma.com and click Get started.
2. Sign up with a Gmail address you actually check. Avoid your school email — you may lose access after graduation.
3. When Figma asks what you do, choose Design and select the free Starter plan. Do not start a Professional trial; the free plan is enough for this entire course.
4. Verify your email.

Once you are in, download the Figma desktop app too, from figma.com/download/desktop/win (Windows) or figma.com/download/desktop/mac (Mac). It does the same things as Figma in the browser, with one difference that matters here: it can use the fonts installed on your laptop without an extra helper, which you will need when we get to typography.

A note on the free plan: Figma's free Starter plan is limited — 3 files, 3 pages in each file, 1 folder. That's enough for this course if you plan for it, and the "Inside Figma" section below shows exactly how.

Step 2: Create your Canva account

1. Go to canva.com and sign up with the same Gmail you used for Figma. One email for both keeps your logins simple.
2. Choose Personal or Small business when asked — it only changes which templates it suggests.
3. Skip the Canva Pro trial for now. You can always start it later, in the week you actually need background remover for a client shoot.

A note on Canva Education: it is free only for primary and secondary school teachers and the pupils they invite. University students and adult learners don't qualify on their own, so plan on the free plan — wherever Canva keeps something behind a paid plan, this course shows you a free route.

Step 3: Set up your folder system

This is the part most beginners skip, and it is the part that will save you when a client messages you eight months later saying "abeg, send me that logo again, the printer needs it."

We will build this structure in two places: your laptop and Google Drive. Figma gets its own, simpler setup further down, because its free plan only allows one folder.

On your laptop

Create one master folder. Everything branding-related lives inside it.

Branding/
├── 01_course-practice/
├── 02_client-projects/
│   ├── 2025-04_mama-nkechi-foods/
│   │   ├── 01_brief/
│   │   ├── 02_research/
│   │   ├── 03_assets/
│   │   ├── 04_working/
│   │   ├── 05_exports/
│   │   └── 06_handover/
│   └── 2025-05_ikorodu-barbers/
├── 03_portfolio/
└── 04_templates-and-assets/
    ├── fonts/
    ├── mockups/
    └── proposal-template/

The numbers at the front force the folders to sit in the order you actually work in, instead of alphabetical order. Names are lowercase with no spaces — spaces cause broken links when you share files online. Lesson 4 explains what goes in each client folder.

On Google Drive

Recreate the same Branding folder in Drive and drag your finished exports there at the end of each work session. If your laptop is stolen or your hard drive gives up (and in Nigeria's power situation, drives do give up), your client work survives. The free 15GB is plenty for brand files.

Install Google Drive for desktop if your data plan allows it, so syncing happens automatically. If data is tight, do a manual upload once a week instead.

Inside Figma

Figma's free Starter plan gives you a fixed budget, and it is smaller than it used to be. Figma's own help pages describe Starter as:

• a single team with one folder and 3 files
• a maximum of three pages per file, in Starter team files
• 30 days of version history (Professional and above get unlimited)

(Checked against help.figma.com in September 2026. Figma has cut these limits before — which is exactly why this lesson tells you where they came from instead of just asserting them. If your screen says something else, Figma has changed it again: trust your screen and check help.figma.com.)

That is nine pages in total. Enough for this whole course if you plan for it, painful if you don't — so plan for it now.

Before you panic about three files: those three are your team files. Drafts are separate, and Figma's help says plainly that "you can continue working in drafts for free". Since October 2025 drafts live inside a team rather than in a tab of their own, so you'll find a Drafts section in your team's sidebar. If you run out of team files, keep working in a draft and move it into the team when it's the one you're presenting.

The 30-day version history is the limit that actually bites on client work. If a client asks for "the version from last month" and last month was more than 30 days ago, it is gone. Export a dated PDF at the end of every round — that habit costs a minute and saves an argument.

One file per client. Three pages, named for stages:

File: Mama Nkechi Foods ├── Page: Explore (brief, moodboard, every logo attempt) ├── Page: Approved (chosen logo, colour, type) └── Page: Exports (what the client receives)

The brand guidelines document lives on the Exports page too: when you build it in Module 7, each page of the guide is a frame on that page, and you export them together as one PDF. Logo files export straight from the Approved page.

When a client project is finished, export every page as PDF and PNG into that client's folder on your computer, then delete the Figma file. The work is safe and you get a slot back. Your Figma files are a workbench, not a warehouse.

If Figma asks you to upgrade, you have hit one of those three limits. Nothing in this course needs a paid plan. Go and free a slot instead.

Inside Canva

Canva lets you create folders on the free plan. Go to Projects → All projects → Add new → New folder, and make two: Client Deliverables and My Portfolio. Drop every design you make into one of them immediately, before you close the tab. Canva's "Recent designs" list gets messy within two weeks.

Step 4: Name files like a professional

Adopt one naming pattern now and never think about it again:

client-name_asset-type_version

Examples:

mama-nkechi_logo-primary_v03.svg
mama-nkechi_logo-icon-white_v03.png
mama-nkechi_brand-guidelines_v01.pdf
ikorodu-barbers_colour-palette_v02.png

The date goes on the client folder, year first — 2025-04_mama-nkechi-foods — and full dates are written 2025-04-12. It looks strange at first, but it makes folders sort themselves chronologically, and it removes the confusion between the Nigerian 12/04 and the American 04/12.

Never use the word "final". Use version numbers with a leading zero — v01, v02. Clients always ask for one more change.

Step 5: A five-minute test run

Prove the whole setup works before you move on:

1. In Figma, create a new design file called Practice — Figma Basics. You'll keep using this one practice file in the next lessons, so it takes only one of your three file slots.
2. Press R and draw a rectangle. Fill it with any colour.
3. Select it, then in the right panel click Export, choose PNG, and click Export.
4. Save it to Branding/01_course-practice/ on your laptop as test-rectangle_v01.png.
5. Upload that file to the matching folder in Google Drive.
6. In Canva, create a blank Instagram post, upload the PNG, and place it on the canvas.
7. Move the Canva design into your My Portfolio folder.

If all seven steps worked, your pipeline is live: design in Figma, back up to Drive, present in Canva.

Common mistakes

The short version

• Two free tools cover almost everything: Figma for identity work, Canva for templates the client can edit.
• Figma's Starter plan gives one folder, 3 files, 3 pages per file and 30 days of version history — plan your files around it.
• Drafts are free and separate from the three team files, so they're your escape hatch.
• Canva allows folders on the free plan. Make them on day one.
• Name files so the name explains itself: client, asset, version, date. Lowercase, hyphens, no spaces.
• Set up the folder structure in both places — your laptop and Drive — before you design anything.
• Tool steps in this course are sourced and dated. If your screen differs, trust your screen.

Try it yourself

Set up both accounts and the full folder structure, then pick a real small business near you — the barber down the street, your aunty's frozen foods shop, the printing shop by the junction. Create a client folder for them using the exact structure above, and inside 01_Brief, write a plain text file with three lines: the business name, what they sell, and who buys from them. That folder becomes your first project when we start briefs in the next module.

When you are done, screenshot your Figma file showing its three pages — Explore, Approved and Exports — and post it in the class group so we can check your setup.

You'll know you've got it when you can open any file from six months ago and know from its name alone who it was for, what it is, and which version the client approved.