Empowering Filipinos to create beautiful designs

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos are the world’s heaviest internet users in 2018, according to the Digital 2019 Report of social media firms Hootsuite and We Are Social. With all this time spent online, they are always on the look out for creative ways to present content and wow their followers.

Enter Canva, an online design platform that makes graphic design easy, simple, and accessible for everyone. Since its launch in 2013, Canva has grown to over 20 million users across 190 countries all over the world, with more than 1.8 billion designs created, at 36 designs per second.

“Canva’s presence in the Philippines is testament to the growing demand for a user-friendly design platform that enables Filipino netizens, who love sharing content online, to express themselves through our design templates,” shares Canva Philippines country manager Yani Hornilla-Donato, who first joined the company in 2015 as its first recruiter and has since helped Canva grow its local team and operations.

Yani is responsible for setting the overall direction of Canva in the country and managing a talent pool of over 200 employees working in design, customer happiness, operations, marketing, growth, and engineering, and all working closely with the team at their headquarters in Australia.

“Maintaining a culture we’re proud of and living by the Canva values are very important to us as we scale. Our work culture is built on creating a working environment where the team is encouraged and empowered to express their creativity, do their best work, be supported and accountable for their decisions, and also give back to the community. Having started my journey in Canva as part of the People Group looking after everything from hiring to everything in between, what I love most about working in Canva is the people. Being surrounded by incredibly passionate and talented people with a shared mission is very inspiring. It’s challenging and fun. Teams are given the autonomy to be creative, make decisions, and set crazy, big goals,” Donato says.

Aside from its growing team, Canva has also seen 45 percent year-on-year growth in monthly active users in the Philippines, making it a promising market for the design app globally. “The Filipinos are considered one of the most active internet and social media users globally. Filipinos love to express themselves and share content online and it is a great opportunity for them to use Canva as their go-to platform for their design and template needs,” Donato says.

Canva has also expanded its services to cater to enterprises. She explains, “as we all know, the Philippines is fast becoming a thriving hub for businesses and we, Filipinos, love to collaborate. However, as a franchisee or a company that works with teams from different offices and geographies, collaborating and centralizing processes may be a challenge, resulting in marketing materials being off-brand. With Canva for Enterprise, we are enabling local businesses to ensure brand consistency throughout their teams, helping small Filipino businesses improve the way they collaborate and produce branding materials.”

The company has more amazing projects in store for 2020, including collaborating with its biggest user groups in the Philippines: students, teachers, freelancers, and enterprises. But for now, the Canva team is busy with #CanvaPasko Designed By You, an online contest where winners will see their Christmas card designs go live on a billboard in EDSA.

“Canva believes that every Filipino has a story of love and gratitude to tell this Christmas season. This is our way of empowering the Filipino community with a channel to share their beautiful designs and Christmas messages to their loved ones,” Donato says.