Chess as a socio-political statement
Chess is known as "the game of kings" because it involves stategy and tough decisions like which pieces to sacrifice to asave your king. It has therefore been used as a symbol of the battle between good and evil on a cosmic (like the star wars themed lego above) or socio-political level. Other chess sets are designed to represent particular cultures (eg the Indian chess set with the elephants below) ot be entertaining representations of pop culture (eg the Simpsons set below).
The chess boards below give you some ideas of the different chess sets around. The images are from Flickr Global Commons. To see a better image, click on the links in the footnote at the bottom of the page.
These pictures show chess boards used to create design features
Chess has also been the source of many artworks. Have a look at these ideas: