Designing the Edgeton Chess Set

It was Christmas holiday season, and that meant it was time for a quick project. Inspiration came from my better half, as she said that there must be a chess set in every home.

Inspiration for the design

I am huge fan of the Staunton chess set design, as to my taste it is the most elegant and timeless design. Rounded, simple, and yet with a lot of character. It is a “jag!” (English slang for Jaguar car) of all the chess sets. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article for more information about Staunton chess set.

FIDE piece-design facts

FIDE is the international chess federation, and apparently they have a set of rules for chess piece design.

• pieces should be distinguishable
• pieces should be recognizable immediately from ~2 m viewing distance
• King top should be not the same as the Queen top
• Bishop top should be not the same as Pawn top
• White/black pieces must remain distinguishable even for colour-blind players

There are even rules towards the height and hierarchy.

King > Queen > Bishop > Knight > Rook > Pawn

• King - 95 mm
• Queen - 85 mm
• Bishop - 70 mm
• Knight - 60 mm
• Rook - 55 mm
• Pawn - 50 mm

Allowed height tolerance: +/- 10%

Another notable rule, is that FIDE does not prescribe an exact shape for each piece. It prescribes recognisability.

Welcome to the Edgeton chess set

I slightly increased the height of the pieces. On top of that, the diameter varies from 29 mm to 40 mm, and the position of the first outer ring differs, depending on the piece value.

• King - 100 mm, diameter 40 mm
• Queen - 90 mm, diameter 40 mm
• Bishop - 80 mm, diameter 32 mm
• Knight - 75 mm, diameter 32 mm
• Rook - 55 mm, diameter 36 mm
• Pawn - 50 mm, diameter 29 mm

Afterwords

When working with distinctive shapes, I draw parallels with the UI button design. In UI design, important distinction should be communicated through multiple visual cues - such as shape, color, text, size, and underline. In chess piece design similar principles apply. There are multiple visual cues that help distinguish the pieces.

For example, bishop and rook are looking almost the same from the top view, but the slice and additional sphere on the top makes them distinguishable. The same goes for the king and queen, just by the feel of the top, you can distinguish them.