ISA World Congress

Identity and Merch Design for The 15th ISA World Congress for People Who Stutter

This project focuses on planning the overall identity, logo and merchandise for world stuttering congress in Rovaniemi with the Finnish stuttering and international Stuttering association. My role was organizing and making the designing for the event identity and merchandise.

Scope: The importance of stuttering awareness from the stuttering persons perceptive but mostly encouraging peer support. The purpose of this project is to provide a feeling of safety, and belonging to a community for the individual participants.

Design Process

I observed past countries congress events across the years from the ISA website. I used mood boards to get the look and feel for the event and what we wanted to communicate to the community. I interviewed people from the Finnish Stuttering Community who attended past stuttering seminar and congress events. Merchandise development involved verifying case readability and prompt structure for the event pass and posters. For the logo, I used Rovaniemi’s environment such as Nordic lights and reindeer as my inspiration. I wanted to incorporate speech to the logo but not making it the main focus.

The development process from the interviews, I discovered different functionality for the event pass. For example, many mentioned from past events carrying the program flyer was at times frustrating since they quickly forgot about it or had to “dig out” it from somewhere. To reduce waste and frustration I merged the program to the event pass itself thus no extra flyer was needed. Posters were used to convey the program in more detail such as who were the keynote speakers and their backgrounds.

Readability – As flyers were not given and programs tend to be wordy, learning how to measure readability was valuable. Reading metrics include sentence length and word complexity.

Outcomes – The final identity and merchandise designs successfully reflect both the international and local aspects of the event with combining Rovaniemi’s unique northern atmosphere with themes of connection, confidence, and community within the global stuttering network. The logo and visual identity system were approved by the Finnish and International Stuttering Associations, and the materials, including event passes, posters, and merchandise that were prepared for production.

User feedback from early testing showed that integrating the program directly into the event pass improved accessibility, usability, and reduced waste. The posters and merchandise effectively communicate inclusivity and pride in the stuttering community. The designs were finalized in collaboration with the organizing team and are now moving into pilot production in June, with full implementation planned for the August World Congress in Rovaniemi.