How to Create Stunning Interactive Content with ThingLink and Canva

Kyla Ball January 26, 2026

ThingLink’s powerful integration with Canva, the global visual communications platform, is now slicker than ever. You can now create and edit your base images with Canva directly in ThingLink’s creation flow. This means you can quickly create or edit interactive content for online education, training, content marketing and communications – all in the same place.

Crucially, from February 2026 you can now edit ANY flat or 360 image from your ThingLink account using your Canva account. Edit your images at any stage, including those which have already been annotated with interactive tags – and even ThingLink scenes within your scenarios.

How do you make interactive content?

Canva launched in 2013, and now has over 260 million monthly active users in 190 countries. They create everything from presentations to infographics, reports, videos, websites and more. Many teachers and visual content professionals already use Canva and ThingLink together to create interactive resources for websites and online learning. But now we’ve made it even easier to combine the two!

Versatile Content Creation Options in ThingLink

ThingLink users have a range of options for creating 2D or 360 images. Firstly, all users can choose a base 2D image from the integrated Unsplash image library, containing 6 million free and royalty-free images. Use of the image library is unlimited for plan types. Secondly, you can use the AI integration to create a 2D or 360 image using a simple text prompt. (AI generation limits depend on your plan type.) Thirdly, you can upload your own image such as a photo, graphic or infographic, from your drive or device.

Your fourth option is to design a new base image within the Canva interface, reducing time and increasing flexibility. As of January 2026, you can also edit the Canva image within the ThingLink editor – making it easier to edit your entire interactive material in one step, meaning there are no additional downloading and uploading steps required. Watch how in the short video below.

Canva Templates for Design Inspiration and Assistance

ThingLink’s integration also makes Canva’s library of design templates available to ThingLink’s 10 million content creators. Simply choose a template and adapt it within your Canva account. When you login to ThingLink, you can choose that new image as your base image to start creating an interactive ThingLink resource.

ThingLink also regularly publishes Canva templates designed to support ThingLink’s most popular use cases. For example, interactive maps, brochures, CVs, infographics and virtual tours. As a result, creators can maximise the Canva platform within ThingLink. 

“We are excited to have Thinglink on board as a partner through the Canva Button integration, as we have so many users in common. We know so many organizations are striving for better ways to drive engagement through visual media which we both support. The ThingLink and Canva partnership helps deliver on that vision and more.”

Laura Haines, the Group Lead for Print and Partnerships at Canva.

Are you engaging?

In addition, ThingLink and Canva users now have an opportunity to get new engagement data for their creations. For example, on an interactive infographic, they can now see which areas of the infographic have been viewed and clicked the most.

“Our focus has always been making it easy for anyone to create visually stunning interactive media, and Canva has the same approach to design.  ThingLink’s editor together with Canva’s design capabilities is an unbeatable combination. It’s definitely the easiest and fastest way to create top quality smart visual media assets for online education, training and communication. This is a must-have tool combination for millions of visual content creators, and we are absolutely thrilled about this partnership”.

Ulla Koivula Engeström, founder & CEO of ThingLink

What are some examples of interactive content?

Types of interactive content that you could create with ThingLink and Canva:

• Infographic
  • Help your learners visualise more technical subjects such as science or math, and link out to data sources, calculators and other resources. Check out how Teach for America used ThingLink and Canva together!
  • Interactive content marketing like this awesome example from Carmanah from our case studies!
• Social media
  • Want to boost your lead generation? Create next level interactive social media posts to help stop your target audience from scrolling past passive content.
• Class calendar or daily agenda
  • Use it to link to lesson plans, activities and video content. Look at how this teacher created her very own choice board to help families access resources at a wide range of levels. You could embed quizzes, assessments, and polls.
• Interactive virtual tour
  • You can upload images of different real-world spaces and link to key information, notes, and artefacts. Get inspired by ICS Budapest’s example. Or you could use this Canva template to get started.
• Interactive resume
  • High school students can create their own portfolios, linking to work and projects they are proud of. Above all, interactive resumes allow colleges or employers to experience a fuller insight into someone’s skills and qualifications. Young people can express their qualifications and strengths in a more  personalised way. Get more tips on how to help students visualise their skills!

What are the benefits of interactive content?

Adding interactive elements to your static content immediately creates engaging content that heightens the user experience for your target audience. It also means that you can see user data and metrics for pieces of content which can feed back into your content marketing strategy. As well as seeing which pieces of content are grabbing your audience’s attention, you can see data for individual hotspots

Using Canva to create your interactive thinglinks means you can:

• Choose from thousands of professional layout templates.

• Browse millions of stock photos and illustrations, including images from Pixabay. 

• Use photo filters, icons, shapes, animations and other content tools to create interactive images, infographics and interactive videos.

• Select from hundreds of fonts. 

• Access inspirational designs by other users.

• Access to the Canva Design School.

• Collaborate with colleagues on your base media designs.

How can you start creating interactive content with Canva and ThingLink?

Read our helpful support article for a full step-by-step guide, or watch the short video above.

FAQs

Can I use the same creation and edit flow for creating videos in Canva for using in ThingLink?

No – this flow currently only works with 2D or 360 images.

What if I don’t have a Canva account?

You can still choose Design with Canva, and you will be prompted to follow some simple steps to set up a new Canva account.

The image I want to use for my ThingLink is part of a multi-page document/video in my Canva account: can I still use it?

Yes, in this case you would be given numbered pages to choose from; simply choose the one you wish to use in ThingLink. You can only choose one page at a time to link from your Canva account to ThingLink.

Is the Canva integration available in all versions of ThingLink?

It’s available on all plans, however currently the integration is only available on the browser version of ThingLink, and not in the iOS and Android apps.