Vox-level editing in Canva

Set your palette and fonts

Pick a colour palette before you design. Mine is close to Vox’s, but make your own so your videos look like yours. Use a classic serif such as Georgia Pro as the main font.

Design the title card

Type the title in uppercase, tighten the line spacing and centre it. Add an organic scribble line under the word you want to emphasise.

Press L for a line, set the weight to 9 and the style to dashed, then Alt-drag copies to box in the title. Add a Hand drawn Ford car above and a hand drawn globe below, cropping the dashed lines to leave gaps around them.

Filter the elements tab to animations and add a Green Organic Grid to each corner.

Add texture that only touches your elements

Search Dust texture and set it to the same colour as the background. That way only the elements look textured, not the empty space.

Alt-drag copies until the canvas is covered, select them all with Shift and group them. Move anything that shouldn’t be textured above the group in the Layers panel.

Build the timeline scenes

Copy a dashed line to a new page and stretch it to full height, holding Shift so it stays aligned. Press C for a circle marker with a thick green border.

Add the year in Georgia Pro, a right-aligned title and a cut-out photo with the background removed. If two photos clash, lower the saturation in Adjust until they match.

Make collage scenes

Use an antique wood background with the saturation slightly reduced, a vintage polaroid frame for photos and a Film Texture Overlay Frame around archive footage from the video library.

Put a driver inside a vehicle

Remove the background from an Old Truck photo. Use Magic Grab to lift the person out of Woman driving a truck and size them into the driver’s seat.

Duplicate the truck on top and crop it from the top down so the person sits inside the cab. Add an X Pro Plus filter and a Circular Blur Shadow underneath.

Magic Grab won’t work on a flipped image. Export it as a transparent PNG, re-upload it and the tool works again.

Animate a bar chart by hand

Use L for the axes and grid lines (weight 1) and R for the bars. Add labels, a title and a year.

Duplicate the page for each year and change the bar heights. Add Match & Move transitions of 1.5s, set each page to 2s, and give the year a Typewriter animation with Both selected.

Sync the title to the voiceover word by word

Duplicate the title and cut each copy down to a single word, placed exactly over the original. Right-click, choose Show element timing and make each word appear as it’s spoken. Delete the base text layer.

Draw the timeline with lines and slides

Give the dashed lines a Wipe at the highest speed, each starting as the previous one finishes.

Copy the exit line onto a new page, stretch it to full height and set the page to 0.5s. Duplicate it with Ctrl+D and use Slide transitions at maximum duration for a seamless scrolling timeline.

Spin the wheels and move the scenery

Use Magic Grab with the brush sized to the wheel to cut out each wheel, then add a Rotate effect at the highest speed.

For passing trees and road signs, park them just off-screen, add a custom animation path dragged straight across while holding Shift, choose Steady and turn the speed up. Give the driver a bumpy up-and-down path.

Highlight the article and reveal with a magnifying glass

Layer a Colorful Highlight Marker over the key lines with a left-to-right Wipe, and pan between highlights with Match & Move.

For the reveal, make a black rectangle with a circular gradient that leaves a transparent hole, place a magnifying glass over it and group them. Draw a swirly custom path with a slow Steady movement, then enlarge it past the canvas with a 2s Match & Move.