Currency Design

Currency Design
Designing the Most Desirable Product

I Lead in. Answer the questions.

1) What currency does your country use (currency is a system of money used in a particular country)? Can you describe the banknotes? What images can you see, what colours are used?    

2) What other currencies do you know? Can you describe the  colours used on the banknotes? 

3) Who designs currency?  Do economists, bank managers, politicians or maybe someone else decide how currency would look?

4) What can be important for currency design (size, colours, images)? 

II Look at the images below. Those are the examples of money from different countries and different time periods.  Read the article and check your answers.

A) Norway: Norwegian krone (design concept by Snøhetta Design 2019)

B) Germany: notgeld “emergency money” (printed after World War I)

C) EU: Euro

E) Norway: Norwegian krone (design concept by Snøhetta Design 2019)

F) USA: US dollar (during the American Civil War)

G) Norway: Norwegian krone (current series)

H) Switzerland: Swiss franc (current notes)

I) China: the Ming dynasty’s note (between 1368 and 1399)

J) Currency of Mexico, Colombia, Bermuda, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

III Read the article and complete it with sentences ( A-I ).

It’s hard to imagine the world without any kind of banknotes, or paper money. Currency is one of the most challenging objects to design. 

Ancient Chinese Banknotes

The notion of using paper as money is probably as old as paper itself. This practice appeared in China about 618 AD. In ancient China there were paper letters of credit called   fei-chien or “flying money.” The oldest surviving paper notes appeared during the rule of the Ming Dynasty, between 1368 and 1399. 1)__________ By the 15th century, China had almost given up paper money because of the inflation.

Learn from currency design. Designer tips: accessibility is important

The ancient Chinese had limited design tools and resources but they paid attention to accessibility. 2)____________Designers today also need to keep content easy to understand for all people.

US Dollar

The dollar became the currency of the United States in the early 1860s. The first US dollar banknote looked like a formal certificate. 3)_________ These “greenbacks” started a tradition of printing US banknotes in green. 

Learn from currency design. Designer tips: redesign wisely

The history of US currency shows that redesigning can be more difficult than designing from scratch, especially for widely used objects. It can result in a loss of accessibility (for example, people can easily confuse a $5 bill with a $10 because they are the same size).

Notgeld

The German term notgeld, or “emergency money,” is the paper money that was printed in Germany during the period of hyperinflation following World War I. During this period, over 36,000 types of notes were printed by over 3,500 companies, towns and cities. The design of most notgeld was based on the historical subjects and heraldic images. 4)_______ Some notgeld series had a minimal, modernist aesthetic. They helped people to think of a better future. At that unstable period, notgeld became a means of expression for contemporary artists and designers. 5)__________

 Learn from currency design. Designer tips: loud visuals attract attention 

Designers can achieve a striking, attractive look by modifying colours, contrast and gradients, as well as by using ornate elements. Make sure that your visuals are not over the top (are not used too much) and that they actually attract attention.

Euro

In February 1996, the European Monetary Institute (EMI) announced a competition for the design of the Euro banknotes. 6)__________At the end of a seven-month competition design by Robert Kalina from Austria became a winner. The winning design was based on the “ages and styles of Europe” and featured windows, gateways and bridges, each representing a period of European history.

The design process for Euro notes included surveys to make sure that the currency would represent multinational and multicultural Europe. The Euro’s design is not the most colourful and doesn’t incorporate any extraordinary ideas. It balances the utility of an everyday object and the uniqueness of this social symbol.The size of a wallet is just one of the aspects that central banks and currency designers study when the design banknotes. 7)_______

 Learn from currency design. Designer tips: the universal design approach

 The Euro currency is a good example of universal design. It presents a cultural and political message that is acceptable to all European citizens. The principles of universal design can help you make a design concept more accessible. Here are some guidelines:

·       make the design as appealing to as many users as possible.

·       highlight the most important information, remove unnecessary complexity.

Swiss Franc

Switzerland brings three main images in most people’s minds: cheese, chocolate and banks. Swiss currency celebrates these national symbols. It has been designed with special care and attention to detail, each banknote looks like a piece of art with numbers and labels. The current series of Swiss franc notes is circling around the art, featuring motifs from Swiss artists such as Alberto Giacometti and Le Corbusier. Switzerland has reintroduced a vertical format for banknote design, a format later adopted by other nations, including Mexico, Colombia, Bermuda,Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Learn from currency design. Designer tips: pay attention to orientation

The portrait-oriented Swiss franc banknote revived the fashion for a vertical format 20 years ago. A vertical format is convenient   when people feed notes into payment terminals. 8)________ A banknote with a similar concept was issued in 1981 in Switzerland - the 10 franc note. Central banks pay a lot of attention to orientation because user experience is extremely important. When designing the orientation of your design project, for example a website, consider the devices used will view its content on.

Norwegian Krone

In October 2014, Norges Bank (Norway’s central bank) announced the design themes of its new banknote series. The faces of the new banknotes were designed by the firm Metric System, the back sides were created by Snøhetta Design. Designers incorporated numerous anti-counterfeiting features in their concepts to improve the security level of the Norwegian currency.   Designers could work with only one theme, the sea. 9)_________Norway’s redesigned banknote has a connecting power, it is the bridge between the past and combines classic and pixel-mosaic themes, uses the combination of motifs, communicates the country’s values to its citizens and the world.

Learn from currency design. Designer tips: constraints can help creativity

In the Krone project designers had strong guidelines and direction. But the constraints helped the designers to become creative and explore interesting solutions within given limitations. Designers who split a complicated task into a list of specific challenges can keep their mind open to innovation.

 

A) It means that they designed the notes to be readable to as many people as possible. For example, the Kwan note showed two lines of 10 coins that were in circulation. So people who could not read would understand the banknotes.

B) The banknote was a serious challenge to designers because it had to be a multinational currency. Bills had to be easy to recognize and aesthetically attractive.

C) With beautiful pictures of ships, fish, a lighthouse and people resting by the sea, design gives the new krone bills a classic look. It makes for a surprisingly companion to abstract, pixelated patterns representing the sea and wind.

D) Banknote designers sometimes make one face of the note horizontal, optimized for the wallet, and the other vertical, for quick use with a banknote terminal.

E) In 2004, 94% of respondents called the height of the €20 banknote (72 millimeters) “exactly right.”

F) The back of the bill was printed in green because the colour was associated with stability and growth.

G) This money offered a way for a defeated country to look back into its glorious past.

H) Many of the designs came from various artistic movements including Expressionism, Dadaism, New Objectivity and Modernism.

I) The Ming dynasty’s 200 Kwan note is nearly the size of a legal document. It was made from recycled grey mulberry bark paper.

IV  Match the words with their meanings.

growth; imagine; challenging; from scratch; constraint; utility; survey;

pattern; competition; anti-counterfeiting; convenient; incorporate; accessibility; confuse

A.   to have a mental picture or idea of something

B.   testing someone’s abilities, demanding

C.   the quality of being easy to understand

D.   the process of development

E.    from the beginning

F.    to mix up things or ideas

G.   an organized event in which people try to win a prize

H.   examinations of opinions made by asking people questions

I.      usefulness of something

J.     easy to use

K.   include

L.    used to prevent  imitating something valuable

M.  regularly repeated decorative design

N.   something that controls and limits

  

V Match the words from two columns to make collocations used in the text. Use six collocations in your sentences.

1.	paper	A.	attention to
2.	letters	B.	object
3.	legal	C.	level
4.	give	D.	of the note
5.	limited	E.	up
6.	pay	F.	guidelines and direction
7.	in	G.	back into
8.	easy	H.	symbol
9.	formal	I.	artists and designers
10.	started	J.	of expression
11.	widely	K.	format
12.	be based	L.	symbol
13.	to look	M.	used object
14.	glorious	N.	look
15.	a means	O.	to recognize
16.	contemporary	P.	past
17.	artistic	Q.	currency
18.	attractive	R.	design
19.	ornate	S.	design tools and resources
20.	attract	T.	attention
21.	multinational	U.	certificate
22.	easy	V.	movement
23.	multinational	W.	on
24.	incorporate	X.	money
25.	everyday	Y.	element
26.	social	Z.	to detail
27.	universal	AA.	of credit
28.	national	BB.	of art
29.	attention	CC.	circulation
30.	a piece	DD.	and multicultural Europe
31.	vertical	EE.	to understand
32.	face	FF.	a tradition
33.	security	GG.	document
34.	strong	HH.	any extraordinary ideas

VI Answer the questions.

1) What are the oldest surviving banknotes in the world? What were the banknotes made from? How big were they?

2) How did Chinese designers make sure people who could not read understood the banknotes?

3) Why was green colour used for US dollars design?

4) What problems did designers have when they redesigned US dollars?

5) What emotions did people associate with notgeld  or “emergency money”?

6) What artistic trends were associated with the design of  notgeld?

7) Why was the task to design EU currency challenging? What nation or country did the new EU currency have to represent?

8) What design was selected for EU currency?

9) Why is size of banknotes important for currency design?

10) What national symbols does Swiss currency represent?

11) Why is vertical format in currency design popular?

12) What images and styles does Norwegian currency design combine? What was the main theme for currency designers?

VII OVER TO YOU. A) Find information about the design of your national currency: When was the design developed? Who created the design? What images or symbols were chosen for design? What national symbols or values does currency represent? What colours are used and why? What banknote has the best design in your opinion (prove your point of view focusing on accessibility of design, size, colours, etc.)?

B) Create your concept for the design of a new banknote for your national currency. Get ready to explain your choice of symbols, images, colours or patterns.