Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Art of Chess

Former Memphis Chess Club Member, Randy Cope, knows how to express the art of chess.  His inspired, original graphic designs were featured on the covers of the Mid-South Chess Advocate and Tennessee Chess News as well as on eye-catching tournament fliers. 

TD Gary Pylant treasured two of the artistic 1983 TCN covers so much that he saved two issues in hope of having the images printed onto T-Shirts.  Last year I printed out two T-Shirt transfers from those magazine covers making Gary's 27-year-old wish come true.

Today you can find Randy, after having gained many years of experience in the marketing and advertising business, as owner of Cope Design.  I talked with Randy for almost an hour recently, and he said that he was just finishing up a design of chess piece boxes for one of our former city champions, Sid Pickard.  Sid and his wife own and operate Chess Central, a web site for chess equipment based in Charlotte, N.C.  (http://www.chesscentral.com)  Continuing with more of my conversation with Mr. Cope, Randy said that he will look around his files and send me some more artwork to add to this post later.

At the beginning of his chess career in Memphis, Randy Cope's name was mentioned for the first time in the March 1978 issue of the Mid-South Chess Advocate where he played in the city's 7th annual amateur championship.  (https://web.archive.org/web/20170414054955/http://www.memphischess.com/AdvocateMarch1978.html)  Within a couple of  years after joining the Memphis club, he had become the editor of the Mid-South Chess Advocate, and immediately began modernizing the periodical's appearance.  The Advocate previously had not changed formats since its founding in December of 1974.  Below are some of Randy's published graphic designs: