Marks

The six inner silhouettes are the six sports of the future Championships:

• swimming
• diving
• open water swimming
• water polo
• synchronised swimming
• high diving

The logo was designed back in 2011 when Kazan was bidding to host the 16th FINA World Championships. After including the new FINA discipline – high diving – in the competition programme, the logo was updated and now it features silhouettes of six sports instead of five as planned before.

The watercolour technique was chosen due to it being synonymous with water.

The central component of the advertising campaign that will enable to create a vibrant and fresh promotional image of the upcoming event is its slogan, WATER OF LIFE.

This slogan reflects the mystical powers of water, as in many fairy-tales the Water of Life is able to rejuvenate a person, return his strength and even bring him back to life. This slogan was chosen for a good reason as the benefits of playing water sports were proved both by experts and thousands of aquatic sports enthusiasts.

The male name, Itil, is the medieval name of the Volga River, and it is still used in the Kazakh, Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, Kalmyk and Mongolian languages.
The female name, Alsu, is the common Tatar name meaning ‘pink-coloured water’ or figuratively ‘rosy cheeks’, which is strongly connected with the idea of water, aquatic sports and a healthy lifestyle.

The snow leopard is one of the symbols of the Republic of Tatarstan, among others it appears on the region’s emblem. Uni the winged snow leopard kitten was the mascot of the 27th Summer Universiade 2013 in Kazan, and it may be said without exaggeration that it took the fancy of all guests and participants of the Games. Therefore, the snow leopard is associated with high sports achievements of Tatarstan and its capital city, Kazan.

A nationwide competition was held to choose the best mascot design for the event. Throughout one month all citizens of Russia had been sending in their own visions of a mascot which was to become an embodiment of

• sports,
• youth,
• water sports,
• our country’s rich traditions.

Entries were submitted by representatives of different regions of Russia, among them professional designers, schoolchildren, students and sports enthusiasts. Given that the majority of concepts were identical, the contest organisers decided to make a shortlist of mascot designs and put forward the best graphic representations to the public online vote on the official Kazan 2015 website. More than 3,000 votes have been cast within one week. The snow leopard was chosen as the People's Choice winner. Upon completion of the competition, the initial design was finalised. The mascots’ names were chosen via polling the Directorate employees and Kazan 2013 volunteers. When choosing the mascots’ names, the organisers kept in mind such criteria as uniqueness, clarity of perception, ease of memorisation, national colour and the ways the names are pronounced in different languages, which is particularly important for the international event.