chess.rodeo Logo Lab

Went through 30+ typefaces from six foundries to figure out how exactly to set "chess.rodeo." Landed on Euclid Flex with stylistic set ss01 — its squared-off shapes read both as chessboard squares and as a rodeo champion's belt buckle.

Why

The logo of chess.rodeo, my chess service, was plain text in the default UI typeface. I wanted it to hint at both chess and rodeo, a fast, untamed game.

I built a lab page where every variant sits side by side, so I could compare them live: "C with a small r inside" monograms, "Chess rodeo" wordmarks, knight-as-r variants like "Chess ♞odeo" and "C♞". Each variant is set in the same 30+ typefaces.

What went into the comparison

The backbone is Swiss Typefaces, my favorite foundry for UI work:

• Suisse — Intl, Cond, Neue, Screen, Works. The whole family, from classic Helvetica-like Intl to the screen-tuned Screen cut.
• Euclid — Circular A/B (like Circular Mono), Flex (the hero), Square (already in chess.rodeo's UI), Triangle.
• SangBleu — Kingdom and Empire, two serifs.

Then some experimental picks to see the full range:

• New Paris from the Paris foundry Production Type — the King Size and Air cuts.
• TheW NYC — a magazine typeface with a Clan sub-series (ODB, GZA, RZA — yes, Wu-Tang references). Just to play with.
• Raskal Oner — Cyrillic graffiti script. To see if "rodeo" reads better hand-written.
• BRRR — a stylistic set called "Skrrt," rap ad-libs as typography.
• Only Extended in three cuts (Regular, Thin, Hairline) — a wide grotesque.
• I Can See You All — one all-caps cut.

And Chessvetica by Fay Does Design — a typeface with chess piece glyphs. It supplies the knight in the "Chess ♞odeo" variants.

Full lab

All 30+ variants are right below — scroll and toggle the knight (filled ↔ outlined):

What got cut and why

Raskal and BRRR were the first to go: too loud. People expect serious type from a chess project, even a fast online tool, and with graffiti and hip-hop ad-libs the logo lost its link to the game.

TheW Clan (ODB/GZA/RZA) was fun, but not mine. It is the aesthetic of 90s New York and Wu-Tang, which has nothing to do with chess.rodeo.

Suisse Neue / Works / Screen — reliable workhorses, but a logo set in them doesn't stand out.

SangBleu Kingdom and Empire — the serifs looked beautiful, but the logo read as neither chess nor rodeo.

Euclid Circular A/B — too soft: round shapes don't fit a chessboard.

What stuck

Euclid Flex with stylistic set ss01.

Why:

• Squared proportions. Digits and most lowercase glyphs in Flex fit an almost square bounding box, so every letter looks like a chessboard cell. No decorative tricks were needed.
• Stylistic set ss01 swaps several glyphs (a, g, l, the dot on i) for more geometric versions. Without ss01, Flex looks like a regular grotesque; with it, you recognize the typeface.
• Double reading: the squares are both chessboard cells (8×8) and the silver belt buckles rodeo champions wear. That's the coincidence I was looking for.
• Scales. The shapes hold in a 16px favicon and on a 1500px social banner.

One unplanned bonus: Flex pairs with Euclid Square, which already runs in chess.rodeo's UI, so the logo and the interface share one family.

Five months later

I wrote this page in May 2026. In October I'm adding what grew out of that choice.

How the logo changed. In January it was a purple EB Garamond serif on a dark background, by April a blue Euclid Flex, and now it is a black mark with a red dot.

The mark. "chess.rodeo" is set in Euclid Flex Display with ss01, so the choice from the lab held. The dot between the words is not a circle: it is a traced period from DM Serif Display Italic, shifted 0.03 em to the right. Without the shift it looks closer to the "s" than to the "r", because the "s" ends in a curve while the "r" starts with a full-height vertical stem.

Rules. The minimum size is 18 px, and 14 px is allowed only inside a line of text. On the narrow side rail the mark shortens to "c.r". The clear space around it equals the height of the letter "e", and nothing goes inside it. There are four registers: primary, inverse for the dark theme, mono for print, and a version on the accent color. And three don'ts: the dot must not become a circle, the words must not be spread apart, and the mark has one accent.

An easter egg. On the home page you can click the "r" in "rodeo". It hops off the edge of the screen in knight moves, neighs in the interface language, and comes back.

Speed. The big mark on the home page is made of baked SVG outlines. It paints together with the HTML and doesn't wait for the font to load.

Typefaces. All of the service's typography grew out of the mark: Euclid Flex Display for headings, Euclid Square for body text, JetBrains Mono for numbers and eyebrows. Chessvetica, which supplied the knight in the lab, stayed on as the typeface for chess glyphs.

Color. The light theme became the main one: a paper background, black text and a single accent, a brick red that matches the dot in the mark.

Rodeo. What remains of the rodeo is a rider. While a page waits for data, a horseman made of dots gallops through Muybridge's frames; when there is nothing to wait for, he stands still.

The service itself is on the chess.rodeo page.