The International Reading Association, now known as the International Literacy Association (ILA), is a global advocacy and membership organization with more than 3000,000 educators and experts across 86 countries. With more than 60 years of experience, the ILA sets the standard for literacy education worldwide. While 84% of the world is literate, 800 million individuals still can’t read. This means almost a trillion people are unable to access the world of opportunities which come from one’s ability to read and write.
Ideon was tasked with repositioning ILA as the advocacy champion of a global community of literacy educators and advocates, empowering educators, inspiring students, and encouraging leaders, and connecting them with one another and with the practical resources they need to spread the literacy to every corner of the world.
The new visual identity is rooted in ILA’s deep history and the logo is geometric and compact, and the sans-serif Tungsten typeface recalls twentieth century posters as the flat sides made it easy to space letters. The ILA monogram is elegant and stylized, giving the identity a modern, but decorative in feel. The color palette’s warm Citron yellow was inspired by the new dawn literacy delivers. The leaf pattern that adorns stationery and materials conjures memories of page “leaves” and reading screens that touch/teach millions of lives.
The new identity was designed to appear in print and online, for signage, and across range of journals, magazines and annual conference materials and merchandise. We also created a new game-changing website, literacyworldwide.org as a central meeting point for global literacy champions to access the same resources and teaching materials.
The identity reflects the new welcoming and accessible brand positioning and messaging we created for ILA, and the culture training we delivered so literacy will change people’s lives. The repositioning enabled ILA to harness its rich history and highly regarded academic publications while transforming itself into a modern, human-facing organization with an unmatched commitment to fight global illiteracy.
Ideon is honored to help ILA emerge as a leader in global literacy now and into the future.
Daniel Mangan, Director of Advocacy and Public Affairs at ILA is a fan, explaining "If creating and promoting a strong brand is the way you need to go, you’ll find no better agency to work with than Ideon."
