World Chess Armageddon Branding

Chess had a long way to go before hitting the screens. By the time it did, screens were in colour and flat, shrunk down to the size of a hand watch. Any more and chess wouldn't even fit on them. This tempo is something quite natural for the sport, however, where a game can last 20 hours, and a match — for four months. And despite the half-billion potential fans out there (according to FIDE calculations), the entire television history of chess is made up of exceptions that only go to confirm the rule: the game has no place in prime-time live broadcasting.

World Chess, having the claim to fame of bringing the game back into popularity, wouldn't be World Chess if they hadn't decided to destroy this myth. Their counter argument was that chess’s incompatibility with the TV format was a chronological matter, not chronic, and that it needs to debut with the Armageddon style of play. We were asked to provide graphic demonstration of this.

Armageddon is when you're losing ground under your feet, not because death has come for you, but because you have just two seconds for each move and you're in a TV studio with a heart rate monitor on to show the audience exactly how nervous you are. The race against time in this mythical doomsday simulation forms the central motif of the design, and is reflected in the logo, the studio screens, standings, board layouts, portraits of players and the tournament emblems.

Chess took its time hitting the screens, but its appearance was a triumph. For six days in a prime-time slot, 500 000 people tuned in to watch the live games on Match TV. 2.5 times more than when Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana had competed for the world title back in 2018.

#shukadesign 2019