Working with a teammate, we created a portable chess set aimed at the beginner chess player. The wooden playing pieces are differentiated between players by their base shape - either water or fire. The playing board is made of two pieces of leather which doubles as a pouch for the pieces. The playing pieces disassemble flat and are placed inside the leather board, which can be rolled up for travel.

We designed the shape of each piece in Adobe Illustrator to mimic classic chess pieces, and distilled the movement directions for each piece down to simple arrows. We laser cut the pieces out of wood and engraved the movement direction arrows onto their backsides. We designed the board in InDesign with the rules of chess written on either side so each player can reference them. The rules were laser engraved onto the leather, and the chessboard was painted onto the leather using fabric paint.