Chess, the king’s game, is a tough sell in 2017. How do you get people hard about pawns and bishops and black-and-white squares in the age of eSports, and Game of Thrones, and VR snuff films?
You go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and you draw yourself an image that’s going to get those millennials fizzing. You make chess sexy again.
Organisers of the World Chess Championship know the score. Seeing the logo for next year’s contest, it’s hard to imagine the artist didn’t intentionally make it look like two curvaceous chess masters locked in a scissory trib. Because literally nobody plays chess like this unless they’re fucking at the exact same time:
It is, indubitably, a masterpiece.
But not quite everyone’s impressed with the – wait for it – ‘pawnographic’ nature of the image.
Grandmaster and pioneer of women’s chess Susan Polgar wants everyone to please think of the children, while British Grandmaster Nigel Short reckons the organisers were “perhaps suggesting that they are giving the chess world a good fucking.”
You said it, Nigel.
On the other hand, chess expert David Kramaley admits that “it has grown on me,” and Malcolm Pein, international director of the English Chess Federation said: “I rather like it… It reminds me of the logo created when I was involved in using chess to market a Viagra competitor – I kid you not – it was called Uprima.”
But let’s get our heads out of the gutter for a second here – because there’s a bigger problem with this logo that’s really got hardcore chess enthusiasts hot under the collar. Outrageously, the board featured in the graphic is only six squares by six, rather than the standard eight-by-eight. According to some chess purists, that error alone makes this image inexcusably offensive.
World Chess organisers, however, are standing behind their design proudly.
“We’ve been busy for over a year working with artists and designers to develop a perfect key visual,” said a spokesman. “This is the image that will be associated with the 2018 Match and which will find its way onto mugs, posters, outdoor displays, venue design, media, broadcasting graphics and more.”
Excellent.
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Source: The Telegraph
Feature image: World Chess
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