How to Animate Text in Canva

Aside from Canva text effects that we’ve discussed in this tutorial “How to Use Canva Text Effects”, another cool Canva feature is animated text effects. This feature gives life to your texts by making words appear on the screen in a particular manner and lets you create videos and GIFs.

For this tutorial, we've created an animated design with a text we're going to use to show the different animations. We've uploaded this Morgenlicht font from Font Bundles to Canva to use for our sample text in this tutorial.

In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to use the different animation styles in Canva and discuss what each one does.

Step 1: Access animation

To access the animation feature, select/ highlight the text you want to animate, click the 3 dots in the toolbar for more options, then click the animate button. From the left panel, it will show you the different animation styles.

There are20 preset animation options that you just have to click to use. The first 13 options: block, typewriter, ascend, bounce, burst, roll, shift, skate, breathe, fade, pan, rise, and tumble are available to both Canva free and Canva pro users.

But the last 7 cooler animations: drift, stomp, tectonic, baseline, pop, neon, and scrapbook with the crown icon are only available to Canva pro accounts.

Step 2: Select and apply preferred animation

Just click the animation style option you like to apply.

Block

This style shows a rectangular block that dashes onto the screen and whiz away uncovering your text.

Typewriter

This animation mimics the way a typewriter types words showing each letter step by step from left to right.

Ascend

This animation shows the text moving up gently into position one word at a time.

Bounce

The bounce animation bounces your text like a ball.

Burst

This style reveals your text one letter at a time with a very subtle burst of each letter.

Roll

This style makes your text roll down one letter at a time like in a slot machine.

Shift

Shift animation is the opposite of the ascend style. Instead of moving up, it shows the text moving down gently into position.

Skate

Like a skating motion, this animation shows your text gliding sideways from right to left.

Breathe

This animation shows a very subtle text size change that the span of text appears to pulsate or breathe.

Fade

This style allows text to gradually appear on the page.

Pan

Pan is also a slide-in animation that uses a bit of a fade-in while sliding in from the left.

Rise

Rise is much like ascend, but the entire text moves up into position rather than one word at a time.

Tumble

Tumble makes your text roll across the screen starting on its head and falls into place right-side up.

Those are all the animations available for Canva free account.

Now let's go through the animations available to Canva pro users.

Drift

Drift makes your text glide in gently from left to right like it is being blown by the wind.

Stomp

Stomp animation shows your magnified text appearing from your point of view and suddenly crashing into the screen.

Tectonic

Tectonic animation makes the texts shift alternately from left to right, right to left motion.

Baseline

Baseline looks a lot like rise, except it’s much quicker.

Pop

With pop, the text suddenly appears by springing up then making a little wiggle.

Neon

Neon style looks like a flickering light struggling to turn on and off.

Scrapbook

With scrapbook, your text suddenly appears slanting in one direction, and then quickly tilting in another.

Step 3: Preview your animation

To see the animation play out, just watch the screen slowly or you can click the play button from the menu bar to be able to see the animations in action.

There you have it!20 cool text animations in Canva to spice up the text in your design.

For more Canva tutorials, check out our Canva Tutorials section at Design School.