---
title: 'How to Create Print on Demand Designs with No Experience - Canva AI + Printify (Beginner''s Guide)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=mQQ_Lqt8gmE'
video_id: 'mQQ_Lqt8gmE'
date: 2026-08-17
duration_sec: 1113
channel: 'PaidFromSurveys'
---

# How to Create Print on Demand Designs with No Experience - Canva AI + Printify (Beginner's Guide)

> Source: [How to Create Print on Demand Designs with No Experience - Canva AI + Printify (Beginner's Guide)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mQQ_Lqt8gmE)

## Summary

This video demonstrates how to create print-on-demand designs without any design skills, using free AI tools in Canva and the Printify platform. The creator walks through the entire process from generating a design with Canva's Dreamlab AI to uploading it to Printify and publishing a product, while also sharing tips on niche selection and design best practices.

### Key Points

- **No design skills needed** [00:00] — You don't need design skills or special software to start a print-on-demand business. Free tools in Canva can generate designs in seconds.
- **How print on demand works** [00:28] — Platforms like Printify handle production and shipping. You create designs, add them to products, and when a customer orders, Printify prints and ships it. You never hold stock.
- **Importance of choosing a niche** [01:40] — A niche is a specific audience (e.g., dog owners, nurses). Specific designs outperform generic ones because buyers on Etsy search for specific gifts or identity-related items.
- **Using Canva AI to create designs** [03:08] — Canva offers an AI image generator, but the more advanced 'Dreamlab' gives better results. You can find it in the site menu under 'More'.
- **Writing effective prompts** [04:01] — A prompt is a description of what you want. Be specific: describe style, subject, mood, and background. Example: 'cute cartoon golden retriever wearing sunglasses, minimalist style, bold outlines, white background, suitable for a t-shirt print.'
- **Using AI for ideas and prompts** [05:04] — Use ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok to help generate ideas or write prompts. A pro tip: use speech-to-text to speak your thoughts instead of typing.
- **Generating and selecting designs** [06:07] — Submit the prompt and wait about 30 seconds. You get four options. If none are right, adjust the prompt and try again. Often two or three attempts are needed.
- **Editing and background removal** [07:28] — You can edit the design in Canva, add text, and use the background remover. Background removal is a premium feature in Canva, but free tools like remove.bg work too.
- **Downloading the design** [08:28] — Download the design as a PNG with a transparent background for best results when uploading to Printify.
- **Uploading to Printify** [09:01] — Log into Printify, create a new product, choose a product (e.g., t-shirt), and upload the design. You can adjust size, position, and add text within Printify.
- **Quality and mockups** [11:30] — Download in the highest quality possible. Printify automatically generates professional mockups (folded, on people) that you can use in your store.
- **Listing and pricing** [13:19] — Write a description, set your price based on market research. The difference between production cost and retail price is your profit. Publish and connect to your store.
- **Design tips for sales** [14:32] — Simplicity often outperforms complex designs. Text-based designs are often better, especially for gifts, and are more searchable on Etsy. Research what's already selling in your niche.
- **Use AI speed to your advantage** [16:19] — Generate 5-10 variations quickly and list them all. See what gets views and sales, then make more of that.
- **Setting expectations** [16:35] — First designs won't be your best. Sales take time; the first weeks or months may be quiet. Use traffic methods to drive visibility.

## Transcript

If you have ever felt like starting a print  on demand business but felt like you could   not because you're not a designer, then this video  is for you because you do not need design skills   or any special software to do this. There are, for  example, free tools inside Canva that can generate  
designs for you in just seconds. And in this  video, I will show you exactly how to use them to   create real designs for real products on Printify,  even if you have never made a design in your life.  
So before we get into the designs, let me just  quickly explain how all this fits together.   Because to sell print on demand products, you  need a platform that handles the production   and the shipping side for you. So you don't have  to worry about that. And you can use a platform  
like, for example, Printify for this where you just  create the designs. Then you can add them to your   products inside Printify and when someone then  places an order on Printify then they take care  
of the printing and sending it to the customers.  You don't actually have to ever hold any stock   or deal with the shipping yourself. Printify  is free to sign up for and it also connects   to stores like for example Etsy where customers  can actually find and buy your products. Later,  
we'll also go over exactly how to use the designs  to create these products there. But I also do have   a separate video that I previously made that walks  you through the full store setup from scratch and   how to publish your first product. So, I will  leave a link to that in the description and also  
in the top corner if you want to follow that first  because in this video here, we are focusing on the   part that stops most people before they even get  started and that is creating the actually design.   So, let's get into that. Now, before we open  Canva and go into how to use the AI to create  
design sale, I just want to cover one thing that  can make a big difference to whether your products   will end up potentially actually selling, and  that is your niche or your niche, depending   on how you pronounce it. A niche basically just  means a specific audience. So, instead of making  
designs for everyone, you make designs for a  particular group of people. That can be for   example dog owners, primary school teachers,  nurses, people who love hiking, fans of a   specific hobby or profession. It can basically be  any topic as long as it is specific. The reason  
this matters is that people on, for example, Etsy,  they are not just browsing randomly. Usually,   they're searching for something specific. Usually,  it's a gift for someone they know or something   that represents who they are. So, a t-shirt  that says something funny and specific about,  
for example, being a nurse, that will in most  cases outperform a generic design that could   just apply to anyone. The other reason to pick a  niche carefully before you start designing is that  
it makes the whole process a lot easier because  once you know who you are actually designing for,   you also know exactly what to ask the AI to  create. But you don't need to overthink this.   Just pick something you know a little about and  find interesting because that makes it easier to  
come up with ideas and just start with one niche.  You can always expand later when you see what gets   traction and get a sense of how everything works.  But let's now open Canva and start designing. So  
let me now go over how you can use Canva to start creating designs. And I'll just use   the dog owner niche as an example in this section  here. Not that it's actually a niche that I would  
personally be in. It's a great niche. It's just  not really for me, but it's just to show you an   example. And Canva is also free to sign up for.  And uh once you're inside, you can find this AI  
image generator. And uh you can just find it  in the site menu over here. But it also has a   more advanced generator called dreamlab. So if you  click here more, you can see this is the Dreamlab.   And that is what I will be using because in my  experience that gives a lot better results. Now to  
get AI to actually make the designs for you, you  of course need to tell it what to create. And this   is where most people get stuck actually writing  the prompt as it's called for AI. But basically,  
a prompt is just a description of what you want  the AI to generate. And the more specific you are,   usually the better the results. So, for example,  a vague prompt like just designs for dog t-shirts   or dog designs, that will give you something  very generic. Instead, if you, for example,  
describe the style, the subject, the mood, and  how you want it to look on a product, then it can   give a lot better results. For this example,  I'm going to use this one here. It's just a   cute cartoon golden retriever wearing sunglasses,  minimalist style, bold outlines, white background,  
suitable for a t-shirt print. So, again, the  more specific, the better results. And I'm,   for example, telling it the breed, the style,  the mood, and even that I want it on a white   background. And this part actually matters because  it makes it easier to work with when you later are  
going to upload it to Printify. You can make it  even more detailed if you want to. And if you have   a hard time even coming up with ideas, then you  can also use AI, for example, Claude or Grok or   ChatGPT to explain a little bit more about what  you're looking for. And then that can help you  
come up with ideas also. and even to go out and do  research for you. And a little pro tip is that you   can use speech to text. That's something I've  started using a lot. So if you just have like   headphones, then you can just, for example, if  you want to first get some ideas from chatbt or  
you can ask ChatGPT to help you write a prompt. So  you can just record your voice. Most computers uh   they have free tools available where you can just  install it. You just click a shortcut and then you   can just speak to it. It's a lot easier. It's  a lot faster. You just speak out your thoughts  
instead of having to sit and write something for  half an hour. And then you just say like, "Okay,   based on all these thoughts, can you come up with  some ideas or can you help me write a prompt that   I can use for Canva AI to create designs for  this?" And then of course when it comes up with  
ideas, always adjust it. Make it your own because  if not, it can also become very generic. But this   can be a great way to get started. Even if  you feel like you don't have many ideas,   then just speak your thoughts and let AI help you  clean it up. And once you done this, you just need  
to then click and submit it. And then just wait.  And that took maybe not even 30 seconds. And then   you can see here are the ideas, the suggestions.  And usually you will get four options to choose  
from. And in most cases, some will just be better  than others. There might be some you don't like,   and that's of course completely normal. If none  of them are quite right, you can just adjust the   prompt and you can try to generate again. And  usually, you know, I often try two or three  
times just to see if some of them are better  than others. And just to show you also, I said   that Canva AI also has this general or regular  image generator and I'm using the Streamlab,  
and I said this was better. So, I just want to  show you, I tried to do the same here with this   regular AI image generator. And you can see it's  definitely not that great in my opinion compared  
to this. So I just wanted to show you that so you  have a sense of uh why I'm saying that I prefer   this Dreamlab instead. But for this particular  one, I uh actually think uh you know this one  
here, let's just use that. I think it's quite  clean and it could look good when it's printed   also and it would look good whether it would be  on a t-shirt or a mug or whatever other project   I might want to create. But also if you then want  to make adjustments, you can click here to edit it  
inside Canva. So just open it there and you can  make whatever changes you want. You can also add   text above if you want that as a part of it or  make any changes you might want to about text.  
You can also add that inside Printify later. So  that's also something you can just consider. And   one extra thing is you can see here there is  something called background remover and that's   definitely something I recommend because if you  upload it and if it's for example not a white  
product you want to upload it to then you would  need it with transparent background but also to   download it with transparent background and to  remove it here. I do believe that is a premium   feature so that's only if you have Canva Pro and  not for the free version but then there is other  
tools for example this one called just remove.bg  BG, you can just then download the design and have   that one remove the background if you want to  stick to the completely free options. But here   I will just remove the background there and then  once you are happy with the design, you would just  
need to download it. And I would click download.  And this is again here where I would need to make   sure to then have it with transparent background  at least. That gives better options there if   uh you want to change the color and in general it  just makes it look better in my experience. there  
uh you can choose different file types for  something like this. I would uh usually choose   the PNG and then I would just download it. And  that is it. Now you have a design and are ready to   go and upload it inside Printify. So I now logged  into my Printify account and we can now take the  
design that we just created with AI inside Canva  and you can see I don't have any design skills   or anything like that. But this was just a quick  example. It literally took a few seconds to create   something that looks quite decent. So, if you  put more effort, more thought into it. You can,  
of course, also create something that's even  better. And I also just want to give a special   shout out to Printify for sponsoring this video  here. And it is a platform that makes it very easy   uh to get started with print demand if that's  what you are interested in. So, once you have  
the design, you just need to come here and then  create a new product. So you can just go through   the catalog and find whatever product you want  to use here and there are many different types of   products there. Uh so in this case here uh I would  just go for a regular t-shirt but no matter what  
product you choose the process of uploading design  and all this here that will be the same and once   you choose a product here you can go over here  and read uh you know what it would cost. This is   the cost of printing and it actually we'll go over  more how um you then set your price later because  
the great thing is here this is not something  you pay until someone is actually ordering it.   So that's the great thing about print on demand  in general. You can also read all the details here   about the product and make sure that you have  found the right one and then you can click to  
start designing it and then you just get a blank  product here. In this case a t-shirt and you can   see you could both do the front side and the back  side. some products also if it's a hoodie you can   sometimes also do on the sleeves and all these  different things so you can just uh you know  
be as creative as you want to but we'll talk more  about why sometimes simplicity is better a little   bit later here but if you then want to upload  your own design here you just go to upload and   then your device there and then you can open the  design that you just created and then you can see  
here then I can just drag here to make it bigger  and it shows these lines that it has to be within   in those lines to make sure it's actually printed.  And over here you can also adjust different things  
uh the width and the height and all that  or delete it again if you want to. You can   also change the background color here of uh the  t-shirt. You can select these variants here and   uh you can see for example red. And this is what  I mean about this transparent background because  
if I didn't have a transparent background then  now there would be a white box around it. But   because it's transparent it will actually just be  placed on the t-shirt like this. And this looks uh   quite cool in my opinion, but for now, we'll just  keep it on a white t-shirt here. And of course,  
when you download it, make sure you do it in as  high quality as possible. Principers do say that   it will uh enhance the resolution uh because it  needs to be good enough quality to actually print.  
So, just download it in as high a quality as  possible. And in here, that's what I said earlier,   you can actually add text yourself. So if you want  to add text or if you want to add other graphics   or anything like that, you can do that inside  Printify itself also. And once you're happy  
with it, you can click up here to preview the  product and you get these mockup views there.   I think that is actually pretty cool. You see that  you have it on a t-shirt folded even on a t-shirt  
folded there among other clothes there. It looks  really good even people wearing the t-shirt. So   you can use this to showcase a new product. And  you can see again how easy it is to now with AI  
make something like this. So you can get a really  good sense of how the product would actually look   like. And this is what people would also see in  the store and look at these to decide whether they   want it or not. And Printify, they just generate  these automatically. So you don't need to do  
any extra work to get these professional looking  product photos. You can also download, of course,   some of these photos there if you want to and  share somewhere else if you want to showcase your   product somewhere else. And you can also click  here there are more if you don't like those ones.  
You can get different people uh different views  and all this here. And then you can just save the   product. And then you can choose the exact mockups  that you want to showcase. And uh in this case,  
these are the four. So I'll just stick to those  for for the purpose of this video here. Of course,   you think is the absolute best. And then you  can go through the listing details there and  
uh write a good description and uh it's already  all this is pre-filled out. So there's certain   things that about the quality of and all that they  just fill in here. So that's really cool. And then   you can add add your own description there.  Um and uh you can also then go down here
to the pricing. And of course you did need to do  a little bit of market research. Look at what you   think people would potentially pay. And then you  can see here this is a production cost and this is   the profit you would then make and you can then  set the price depending on what you think would  
be fair and possible to sell. So the difference  between the production cost and the retail price   that's the price that you would charge that is  the profit that you would get per in this case   t-shirt you would sell. And when everything looks  good, you can just publish the product and then  
you can connect it to your store and then your AI  generated design is a real product available for   people to buy. And if you haven't set up your  prints by account or connected it to Etsy yet,  
then I have that covered step by step in my other  video that I mentioned earlier also. I'll leave   a link in the top corner here and also below so  you can check that out if you want to know more   details about that. So now you know how to create  a design and get it listed. But I want to share  
a few things that separate designs that just are  there with no sales from ones that in many cases   actually end up getting bought. Because there  is a difference and it's not always just about  
how good the design looks. The first thing is  simplicity. Because print on demand products,   they do not have to be art canvases. Sometimes  a clean, simple design that is easy to read at  
a glance will very often outperform something very  complex and detailed. So think about how a t-shirt   looks when someone is wearing it across the room  or how a mock for example looks in a photo on a  
shelf. And if the design is too busy, it in many  cases just becomes noise. And the second thing is   that textbased designs often outperform imageheavy  ones, especially in gift focused niches. For  
example, sometimes just a simple text like proud  dog mom or a funny phrase about a specific job   or hobby that can be enough on its own. And  these are super fast to create and they're  
easy to read and they are very searchable on, for  example, Etsy because the words on the product,   they also match what people are actually typing  in the search bar. The third thing is to look at   what is already selling before you commit to a  design. So go to Etsy and other online stores,  
search for your niche and filter by most relevant  or bestseller. Look at what the top results have   in common. The style, the colors, the type of  message. And it's important to say here, you   are not just copying them. You are understanding  what the audience actually wants to buy. Then you  
use that as input for your Canva prompts. And you  can also use chat or claude or grow to do research   about this. And the last thing, use the speed of  AI to your advantage. So instead of spending hours  
perfecting one designs, then you can generate  five or maybe even 10 variations quickly and   then list them all and then you'll find out much  faster what resonates with your audience and what   does not because the one that get views and sales  that tells you what to make more of. So before  
we wrap up, I want to make it clear what you can  expect when you are starting out because I think   it's important to go in with the right mindset. So  the reality is just that your first designs will   probably not be your best ones and that is normal.  The more you use the AI tools and the better you  
get at writing prompts, the better your results  will be. And the more you pay attention to what's   selling your niche, the more targeted your designs  will become over time. And in terms of sales,   do not expect things to happen overnight. the  first few weeks or in some cases even the first  
few months, they are usually very quiet while  your listings are still new and you have not   built up any visibility yet. And this is why  the traffic methods matter. And if you have not   watched the first video in this series yet, then  I go through several free ways to drive traffic  
to a brand new store with no ad budget. And the  link, as mentioned, is in the description and the   top corner. Because print on demand is a genuine  way to potentially earn extra cash on the side.   It's not something that will replace your income  quickly and results will also vary depending on  
your needs and of course your effort. But the  barrier to getting started is definitely very   low and it has never been lower in my experience.  Free AI tools have changed what is possible even   if you have zero design experience. And if you  want to get started, I have left links to both  
Printify and Canva in the description below. And  Printify is free to sign up for. So you can then   just go there, sign up and start exploring the  product catalog straight away. And I would also   love to know which niche are you thinking of going  after. Just please share it in the comments. I  
read all the comments there and I reply to every  single comment. So if you have any questions,   just ask in the comments. And also, if this video  helped you, make sure to hit the like button and   don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel  and hit the notification bell so you won't miss  
out next time I release a video with tips and  tricks about different ways to make money online.