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.
