by In 2018, the World Chess Championship caused a stir and set the internet on fire with its stylized logo inspired by the Kama Sutra. You read that right, professional chess just got sexy. But the initial complaints missed a big mistake, can you spot it?
In short, the rebranding of the World Chess Championship was for the 2018 competition which took place in London and was created by the Shuka Design studio. We’ve had some terrible logo redesigns recently, including the new Kia logo committing the ultimate design crime, but is this obscene chess logo any worse? Clearly no one is reading our Top 20 Tips for Great Logo Design.
In 2018 there was genuine outrage over WCC’s sexy new logo, The Times called it ‘pawnographic’ (opens in a new tab)‘ and many took to social media to vent their anger and mock the new direction of the WCC logo. Some commented that it is a literal image of ‘checkmate’ people. Below are some of the comments from 2018.
Wow. Was this the logo of the World Chess Championship? What the royal fork. pic.twitter.com/WLCe6Ey6l4December 4, 2018
Uh… this logo for the 2018 World Chess Championship isn’t so much evocative of chess as it is… the… uh… kama sutra? pic.twitter.com/OLXsYOeYhuOctober 20, 2018
At that point, World boss ChessIlya Merenzon stepped back a bit and told Chess.com (opens in a new tab) this logo rebrand was actually one of many and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It was a trick. This came at a time when chess in general was trying to find a new, younger image: two years later, The Queen’s Gambit broke records on Netflix.
Behind the sexualized aspect of the logo, many chess fans were just as offended, and indeed more so, but a blatant mistake. You have already seen it? The 2018 logo has a chessboard with 6×6 squares instead of 8×8 – they got the size of the board wrong.
This was not the first time the WCC had tried something new. In 2012, design studio Pentagram was brought in to create a new logo, one with a graphic approach and subtle optical illusion. The black and white chessboard becomes an isometric design that “belies the intelligence and complexity of the game,” according to the Pentagram website. Scroll down and see this ‘move’ logo.
In 2023, the Shuka Design logo was removed, but the bold Pentagram optical illusion design continues to be used by the World Chess Championship (now simply World Chess (opens in a new tab)) and has informed much of the current branding, including stripped-down new takes on the hexagonal board, as well as cheeky pixel art logos evoking video games.
The lesson here is to not be afraid to take risks and try new things, so to speak. We’ve got a ton of logo design tutorials to read if you’re interested in taking your brand in a new direction. Take a look at our guides to the five logo design apps for beginners and this tip on how to create a powerful logo shape.
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