A modern chess set inspired by the fragility of authority.
This project is a personal endeavor born of dissatisfaction with many chess sets on the market. Many sets for display are too ornate for my taste or so abstract that they are hardly playable. The scale is also typically too small for my liking. This set exists to bridge the gap, providing a display-worthy set that feels great in the hand while still featuring identifiable pieces.
Research
I have played chess most of my life, so the research for this project was largely based on my desires and personal experiences. The form is modern, because that is where I am most dissatisfied with the current offerings. The acrylic and glass sets trend towards hyper-minimalism, and are extremely abstract. When I am playing chess, the last thing I want to be thinking about during a stressful game is what the pieces are. For a time, the board just gets more chaotic. If playing a timed match, wasting time identifying pieces is a disadvantage and simply not fun.
To get an idea of historical precedents, I consulted The Illustrated Guide to World Chess Sets by Victor Keats. In the book, a range of sets is shown from various regions over several hundred years. Admittedly, the contemporary section is sparse. The main thing I learned from Chess Sets is that there has historically been an incredible degree of flexibility in sets. The only real constant has been the height hierarchy. With very few exceptions, pieces get larger in this order: pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king. In some examples, the major and minor pieces (all but pawns) will be of equal height, but the pawns remain lower. Rarer still is a king and queen of equivalent stature.
Here are some contemporary examples of modern glass and acrylic chess sets:
Maybe now you can see what I mean. One set gets close, the second to last. The bishop and rook still get a bit lost, though. The green cylinder knight has already defeated me with its mind games.
Ideation
The ideation phase began with what I imagined to be the rook. I figured it was one of the more distinctive pieces that didn’t present some of the modern challenges of the knight.
The rook eventually became the pawn, which was further simplified. The form for the rook initially came from sketch exploration but was loosely based on an armored tower siege device. Ultimately, the form was pulled away from that direction as I didn’t want to theme the set around that aesthetic – I felt it would become too busy. That wasn’t before printing multiple versions of the rook first, though. There ended up being a disconnect between the paper and reality when I saw the rook in 3D.
The scale of the pieces was originally intended to be much larger, but they began to feel too much like toys. I only learned this from physical prototyping. Measurements alone told me I would want the pieces big, printing told me to dial it back. Importantly, the prints also allowed me to test the fit in the hand, which was critical for iteration. Some versions did not feel good to grab from multiple angles.
Design and Fabrication
The design stage and ideation bleed together heavily in this project. Below, you can see the variations of rooks and bishops that were printed.
After a lot of tweaking and reprinting, I eventually settled on the forms below. During the design process, I consistently used transparent materials in CAD to gauge how these forms would translate.
I wanted to explore other material possibilities to deepen the creative process of this project. Through casting techniques, I created a test king out of ceramic, a bishop out of bronze, and some pawns from clear resin. These processes exposed different weaknesses in the design, which I used to improve the set.
The height of the knight was increased to create a smoother height transition between the major and minor pieces. The queen, king, rook, and bishop were all slightly modified. A peer, Jamie Crisp, pointed out that the queen lacks detail compared to the king, who is adorned to symbolize his stature over the other pieces. I used this feedback to add some extra flair to the queen and to redesign the king to match. Subtle changes to the bishop and rook updated the roundness of the slot cutout and internal radius of the square bore, respectively.
Reflection
This project is still a work in progress, but I continue to learn from it. I have used the project as an opportunity to explore casting techniques, which has improved my problem-solving abilities and provided experience in another critical area of product design and development.
Next steps for this project include finalizing a glass mold and doing a final pour in real material.