FIDE, the governing and promoting body of chess, wanted to ensure that the 2021 chess world championship it was organizing had a brand and graphic language that lived up to what this title represents for the chess community.

In addition to the intrinsic tension of this discipline, between exploiting its sporting aspect (to see how many calories a brain spends facing Carlsen) or its more intellectual and sophisticated side; our challenge went even further.

And, after the COVID-19 pandemic, chess had a historic opportunity: the growth in audience with chess streamers could be capitalized on from the world championship and, after the suspension of the previous event, expectations were at their highest.

As could not be otherwise, the key to creating the identity and concept of the world championship was an immersion in chess followers and in the preparation of the grand masters.

We discovered an insight that unites professionals and amateurs and that, despite being known in the community, is rarely portrayed in championships: the study of other games that players perform to prepare themselves.

Each contender notes a move after making it, so the games end up being recorded. For the grand masters and any scholar, this availability of chess material is both glory and defeat, because there lies what has led them to their position in the ELO ranking, but also the key to defeating them.

Because ultimately, in each movement is the secret of a player’s personality, towards a kind of neuronal DNA, a way of reasoning, thinking and reacting. The funny thing is that this insight has been subsequently proven with artificial intelligence.

Given this relationship of each player with their playing styles and the vocation to vindicate chess as a sport, the proposal was obvious:

A claim that is posed as a challenge to this determinism: can the style conventions be challenged like Ian Nepomniachtchi, the candidate for the title, or can one’s own style be modified to make it more consistent like the centaur Magnus Carlssen after a mysterious training stage? Blessing or curse, future movements are indebted to past ones.

In any case, the readings from the intellectual dimension were as obvious as those that could be made from the sporting dimension with a language typical of large brands and events: use of blunt phrases and a copy with a vocation for checkmate.

My participation was not limited to the world championship claim but also to exhaustive collaboration with the design teams in their design strategy.

The language uses sophisticated typography in black and white as a board on which a game of golden strokes takes place: the movements that each player has made to reach the top of world chess.

Without being a big fan of chess, the truth is that the feeling of transcendence of participating in the conceptualization of a chess world championship is undeniable: the history of world champions goes back to the 19th century. A sport that reflects the geopolitical changes of the world and that, on this occasion, celebrated a global world championship by nature: a Norwegian and a Russian competing in the United Arab Emirates.

Undoubtedly, the feeling that all over the world there is someone watching what happens wrapped in something in which I have something to do left me in a draw: it was as intimidating as it was motivating.