Every year the Chessmen Museum organises the Chess Game Design Competition. This year’s competition was very exciting: the participating designers received nearly the same amount of votes and for a long time it was a neck-and-neck race. This year´s winners are the youngest ones ever: three eleven-year-old students won the competition with their novel and colourful design.
The chess game design competition is a creative contest for every age. Design your own chess game and win amazing prizes! There are always many designers answering our call-to-action, which this year resulted in five completely different chess game designs. The designs have been on display at the Chessmen Museum since Rotterdam Museum Night 2013 and all of the museum’s visitors have had the opportunity to vote for their favourite design. Our guests were our professional jury. On Sunday, March 8, director of the museum Ridder Dijkshoorn announced the winners.
The designs
The contestants have all worked hard on their designs, but there can only be one winner. A total of 515 votes were cast, an increase of 25% in comparison to the year before. The majority of these votes went to the (literally) most tasteful design.
Healthy vs. Unhealthy is the chess game designed by Wissal Chiguer, Dewi Sterk and Lizelot van den Berg and is the winner of the 2013 edition of the chess game competition. The young ladies from primary school De Pijler in Rotterdam received 135 votes. The colourful game board and the deceivingly real-looking candies, carrots and hamburgers convinced the majority of our voters.
The idea for this design came to the girls when they were on their way to gym class. Clay seemed the obvious choice for the creation of the desired shapes but the chess pieces were very fragile and many of them broke while being painted. The three ladies therefore had to start over many times. The chessboard itself was also a challenge: the pupils cut it out of wood themselves and painted on the squares of the board in great detail.
The final result is truly beautiful. This was also the opinion of the jurors of the Chess Game Competition for Students, organized by the Erasmiaans Gymnasium in 2013. The jury praised the style as well as the theme of the game, in a time when many children suffer from obesity. The girls won second prize in this competition: a day out for their whole fifth grade class.
Runner up in the competition was Ivanka Kovacs with her Scotsmen vs. Englishmen chess game. She received 107 votes and won second prize. The reason Ivanka participated in the contest was the victory of her friend Kiki in a previous edition of the Chess Game Design Competition. In 2012 they decided to partake in the competition together but ended in last place. They felt they had to do better than that and for the 2013 edition of the competition they each submitted their own design. The underdog position of the Scotsmen was what made Ivanka decide to represent the war between the Scottish people and the Englishmen: smart strategies were the way to Scottish victory over the superior English army.
The execution of her design was somewhat laborious though… The little figurines made of wooden skewers were fragile and broke more than once. Ivanka chose these materials anyway because she could give them a second chance on life. The caps of beer bottles and aluminium slabs all end up in the dustbin at her school, just as pieces of wool and cardboard do. The only thing she bought for her project are the 32 beads for the heads of the pieces. During her Media Graphic Design studies complemented with Art & Design at the School of Graphics in Rotterdam, Ivanka learned how to shape artefacts according to a certain concept. “Chess pieces are works of art as well, as long as there is a story and a reason behind them”, she comments on her design.
Third prize winner is Recycling by F.G. Melink, by just one vote: a 106 in total. It was the favourite piece of the environmentally conscious museum visitors and the design ended up in a respectable middle position in the final rankings. Melink constructed his chess pieces from second-hand lids and caps of all shapes and sizes. The coloured caps, with a stout orange king leading the way, fight their battle of chess with the black caps.
Ivanka’s rival ended up in fourth place: the Fantasy chess set made by Kiki van der Heiden received 84 votes. Kiki, winner of a previous edition of the Chess Game Design Competition aimed for first prize again with a creative clay design. The name of the game kind of gives it away: the endearing chess pieces are fantasy figures. The design appealed to a lot of children but Kiki’s bad luck was that the other cheery chess game, Healthy vs. Unhealthy also attracted the attention of many young visitors.
Plee Chess (the Dutch ‘plee’ meaning ‘toilet’, pronounced ‘play’) by Pieter de Koning takes up the final position in the competition with 83 of the votes. It was a surprising result since many visitors were immediately fascinated by this game. The chess game, made of toilet paper rolls, has a comical look to it and the word-play of its name is quite witty. The rolls are skilfully cut off at the top, so that it is immediately clear what piece we are dealing with. In the end this wasn’t enough to convince our visitors and they voted for the other designs. The judges have spoken.
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