I am creating posters for Elementary School 'Learn Chess' classes. The posters show Chess rules, ideas, etc.
I need the chess board and pieces to be clearly visible with good contrast - the colors of other decorative items are less important.
Here is a sample.

• Each poster will have between 4 and 6 Chess boards with Pieces. The poster is intended for printing at 20"x30" (the largest size at SamsClub photo).
• I have not yet printed a sample. I want to add a few more chess boards/piece color schemes, then get a sample print to see what looks best.
• The pieces are now white and black but I they could be changed to light/dark colors if that improves visibility.
• Chess boards usually have green/cream for the dark/light squares and I'd like to stay with that unless there are contrast problems.

Any ideas/advice for board/piece color schemes greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi.

As I'am not an artist I look at what artists do.
Personally I like the woodgrain textured chessboards.

A good source is the net - I use google to do an image search.
Search for ;
chess
chess pdf
chess poster
Dont limit yourself to 2d;
search for
chess 3d
chess povray (Povray is my favorite 3d program)

Good Luck
RGDS
Ragnar

My two cents:

1. Don't use that glowing shadow.
   The background is now the sky -nothing can cast shadows on emptyness.
   Try some stronger borders instead.
2. Choose colours with a larger lightness contrast between for the checkerboard pattern.
   They almost look identical now.
3. Sample printing is highly recommended.
   Lot of rgb shades are out of the cmyk gamut. Usually colours come out a bit darker and less saturated than on screen.

Might be good to use the green from "grass" at the bottom (in combination with the lighter shade of the same color) since that way the whole poster would have more consistency among colors and could be more "eye-pleasing" rather than one with too many colors and shades. For alternate color schemes, I`d use the red and blue - from the characters at the bottom, again with the same idea of consistency.

Also... I`d try with some other fonts, perhaps sanserif, due to the inscription at the bottom (for which I`d put both together - inscription and the web address - on that "sheet", which these characters are holding). The same would go for the numbers around the board (sanserif) and with some bolder font, you could gain the pretty much same effect if these numbers would be shown with some shadow (not necessarily blurred). Color for numbers might follow either board color scheme or simply "back to black" (but, in this case, without any shadow and perhaps some lighter font type). If you like the idea of blurred shadow under the board, perhaps you could use just the darker shade of the same blue from the background. That way you`ll avoid smudged colors (as Lazur URH mentioned at 3.).

Yet, another two cents... ,)

Thanks for the advice. I hope for more.
I am not a graphics person, and will use these ideas.