The Checkmate Strategist is a youtube channel about documenting my attempts to learn chess and creating content around that.
Bold and strong type was needed. This was partly because of the strong and bold lines in the chess board, the literal centrepiece of a game.
The logo needed to complement it, the choice of utilising a red background was partly due to the ease of creating strong combinations between red, black and white as a combination. But additionally due to the importance of youtube as a platform, it makes a visual link to he subscribe button (highlighted in the cannel banner).
Above shows the logo and banner working together on the channel. Its a very strong and unified brand in contrast to a lot of other channels.
The Concept
The Slogan
The slogan needed to be a reflection of not only the goal but reflect the idea of a journey of being new and then getting better.
The Logo
The logo initially started within a circle (top left, image on the right). However, I believed the brand needed to link up with the chess board and with a hard, strait line for its borders there could be more potential offline for the design.
As a result the logo became a rectangle with the king in the middle (highly iconic piece).
The Banner
The banner for the channel also utilised a blunt, pointed edge of a square (another link to the chess board) where the logo and the subscribe button sit on the right hand side.
The channel name needed to be repeated, partly due to the lack of the name in the logo but also to reinforce on the channels brand for new viewers.
The slogan was a simple decision in terms of placement, the only difficulty was the weighting of the typeface however I left this open to experimentation.
