RedHotPawn nearly wasn’t RedHotPawn at all. There was only a two and a half month development period in early 2001 before the initial launch, and for the first month it was going to be called “WorldNetPlay” - the intention initially was to support many different game types, not just chess. The domains were registered, the logo was designed by a graphic designer friend....and then we switched the name at the last moment.
The logo and text changed as more time was invested in developing the site – it had launched as a pet project, and the initial interest was a surprise, largely because AOL had decided to place us so highly on their search engine at the time. This gave the momentum to those early months to mature the site.
First logo - February 2001
A later iteration - April 2001
The main pawn was redesigned, and remains today.
A first outing for the new pawn graphic - Summer 2003
The text component kept changing..
The text has changed numerous times though, most recently after a new logo was submitted. (Thanks Jason) But we decided to take the text but keep the existing burning pawn. The intention was to reuse the logo for the blitz site, but this is yet to happen.
The submitted logo we considered using
The current logo
And there we go, everything you wanted to know about the RHP logo but were afraid to ask.
The truth is, I was just testing the blog feature, but thanks for reading anyway 😉
Aaron Zepplin
Suzianne
divegeester
