There have been a severalcommentsabout the design of the new US five-dollar bill. In particular, they've criticized the large Helvetica "5" on the back.
I really don’t think it matters what anybody does, America’s money is going to keep looking like crap. Sort of like our passports. Good taste and the US Government are just sort of antithetical.
Sigh... we used to have the best looking money in the world. Next to our original designs, foreign currencies tended to look like play money.
I was pretty upset when I got my new $5 altho am benumbed by previous redesigns as well.
I am also rather amused by the attempts to make life easier for the visually impaired. For example in my subway station there is a tiny little plaque with some braille on it, on one of many many columns on the platform. First of all, by the time you've made it into the station, thru the turnstile and onto the platform, the plaque is pretty useless, innit? Second of all, if you are blind, how in creation are you going to even find this silly little plaque on a random column. But I'm sure it's complying with some law, somewhere.
We could just give up on the worthless penny and stop at the nickel? The other option is to end the use of cash and have a totally electronic system. The street-corner musicians would hate that, as well as the guys in New York who try to sell knock-off Rollex watches out of a briefcase on the streets :-)
Dwiggins' 1932 "Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency" is always worth a read on this topic and should be required reading for anyone having anything to do with currency design. The essay is sarcastic, hilarious (at times rather un-PC), but he makes some great points in addressing the problem "It is not possible to discuss the designs [for the paper currency] without heat. They infuriate you because you cannot get at them. They are beyond the reach of criticism. They are safe—as an idiot is safe anywhere, in any community, savage or civilized. They are made immune by hideous deformity. . ."
My attempts at reprinting the book were stalled with dead-ends in securing rights, but I thought an image of the cover might be appreciated:
If we stopped at the nickel that would give all people the right to round up.
Our money totally depresses me. I agree with Patty that our currency used to be good. But I have to say I loved the Dutch banknotes designed by R.D.E. Oxenaar.
I am completely unimpressed by all the new US notes. Hideous. Most of them look as if they have been dropped in puddles of mud, and the ten looks as though it has dried blood all over it. What I really don't understand, are those little yellow bits on the back -- looks to me like a swarm of bees descending upon our dear capitol buildings.
ALL of that stuff has to do with anti-counterfeiting measures taken by the Bureau of Engraving. If any of you get to Washington or if they ever do a TypeCon here, take the tour of the Bureau and get the tidbits of info.
Would someone explain what “Twitter” is all about? I went to their site but I don’t get it.
Remember how people nobody needed to know about used to constantly blog about every aspect of their lives? Now they do it by constantly sending text messages to the twitter servers, so that everyone can know every detail of everyone else’s daily life as it happens, instead of waiting for it to get blogged every three hours. Then they all post comments about it on Facebook or Myspace or whatever…
I am doing a bit of cleaning up and happened upon an older Avante Garde magazine that hat a dollar bill redesign contest where various artists expressed themselves. Funny how we have the same issues now.
Always loved the cover of Funkadelic's America Eats Its Young as well.
Twitter is a microblog. Polls show that if people had to give up a web log or their Twitter, they would give up their blog. It's a bit like instant messaging in a non-linear format that people don't have to respond to.
I think Twitter is a great way to share bits of things you come across as the day progresses. Granted I've almost totally given up on chat and twitter because they are both distractions.
I don’t get twitter either. So it’s just sound bites that don’t seem to link to the actual pages themselves? What’s the use of that?
Well, it keeps the Web 2.0 bubble going a little longer.
Polls show that if people had to give up a web log or their Twitter, they would give up their blog.
Maybe so, but I’m pretty sure a more useful poll would show that most people can’t really find any use for most of Web 2.0. Anyway, right now I’d much rather just give up the internet and sit under the cherry trees filing away at metal punches.
I liked the currency from the game of "Life" with portraits fake people with names like Ransom A. Treasure and G. I. Luvmoney and Art Linkletter (oops he was real!). That currency was clearly more valuable -- it went up to $100,000!
Zara, the yellow dots are the EURion Constellation which feature on almost every bank note in current circulation. The idea is that when a colour photocopier senses 5 small yellow circles arranged in a pattern similar to the Orion Constellation, it will refuse to copy.
Interestingly, although they have been around for a while, no country has officially admitted their existence and so they have only recently been discovered. There is also some currency detection software built into more recent scanners and imaging software which is still not understood.
I understand *why* the yellow is there, I am familiar with the the security features of the bills, I was referring to the poor choice of visual design. I have not seen those yellow dots on older bills.
Apologies! I have only recently come across the EURion constellation and still find it interesting that such a thing exists and apparently existed on many bank notes for at least six years before detection. I expect the colour was chosen by which ever of the central European banks first came up with the idea as it does not stand out so much on the old DM and Franc notes (which I think were the first to use it). The most interesting concealment must, however, be on the old £20 British note.
There is also some currency detection software built into more recent scanners and imaging software which is still not understood.
It certainly is effective... when I mocked up the image that started this thread, Photoshop CS2 popped up a rather startling warning dialog. It let me do the edits and save, but apparently printing had been disabled. (I didn't try.)
We played around with the print blocking in PS at my lab one day just to seehow strict it was. All you have to do is type some text and make it transparent (spaces for instance IIRC also worked) and it would consider that sufficient
«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)
If it costs 2c to make a penny, and 10c to make a nickel, someone is ripping you off. There isn't that much more metal in the nickel, and the process is essential the same.
In Canada they have just started talking about getting rid of the penny (the govenment, I have been saying it for 20 years). Here we have $1 and $2 coins in circulation, not bills, so one's pocket is weighed down by all the coins. That is why Canadians appear to walk on an angle. Not to mention the problem with US based cash registers with only four or five coin slots.
Inflation has devalued the dollar to at least 1/10th of its 1950s value. So why not get rid of both the penny and the nickel. Price things with one decimal point after the dollar. And don't worry that prices will only round up. You know that something now priced at $19.99 is going to go to $19.9, not $20.0. Within a year prices will average out, due to competition.
Isn't the point of being a designer to care about how things look both aesthetically and functionally? It's the face of our economic system, and a cultural icon. So yes, we do really care, or at least you SHOULD care.
@ Don McCahill
"If it costs 2c to make a penny, and 10c to make a nickel, someone is ripping you off."
It may sound crazy, but the fact that the currency has to be devided, you have to have pennies and dimes.
That penny or dime will then move from hand to hand for some number of years, thus covering its cost.
It says the giant Helvetica 5 is for people with poor vision. I wonder if there's any way to imitate braille on paper (that would stand wear and tear). Some of the high contrast numbers with ball serifs could get a little difficult to read, I suppose, depending on vision. I guess Gotham, or the likes were still too newfangled for them.
Actually on the German currency there were Braille numbers, slightly elevated so you could feel them. Unfortunately this feature was given up with the Euro.
4 Apr 2008 — 9:02am
I really don’t think it matters what anybody does, America’s money is going to keep looking like crap. Sort of like our passports. Good taste and the US Government are just sort of antithetical.
4 Apr 2008 — 9:04am
too bad american money IS crap, not just the paper it's printed on either... :^(
the govt should do something like the UK mint did: http://www.typographer.org/2008/04/new-uk-coin-designs.html
*edit*
ah, those H&FJ guys thought the same thing!
4 Apr 2008 — 9:08am
Aren't pennies costing two cents to make right now? That's pretty bad too.
I personally would rather see Party LET instead of Comic Sans.
4 Apr 2008 — 9:16am
Sigh... we used to have the best looking money in the world. Next to our original designs, foreign currencies tended to look like play money.
I was pretty upset when I got my new $5 altho am benumbed by previous redesigns as well.
I am also rather amused by the attempts to make life easier for the visually impaired. For example in my subway station there is a tiny little plaque with some braille on it, on one of many many columns on the platform. First of all, by the time you've made it into the station, thru the turnstile and onto the platform, the plaque is pretty useless, innit? Second of all, if you are blind, how in creation are you going to even find this silly little plaque on a random column. But I'm sure it's complying with some law, somewhere.
4 Apr 2008 — 9:25am
Aren’t pennies costing two cents to make right now? That’s pretty bad too.
And we can’t even outsource the labor because our money is worth so much less everywhere else…
4 Apr 2008 — 9:34am
We could just give up on the worthless penny and stop at the nickel? The other option is to end the use of cash and have a totally electronic system. The street-corner musicians would hate that, as well as the guys in New York who try to sell knock-off Rollex watches out of a briefcase on the streets :-)
ChrisL
4 Apr 2008 — 9:47am
Dwiggins' 1932 "Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency" is always worth a read on this topic and should be required reading for anyone having anything to do with currency design. The essay is sarcastic, hilarious (at times rather un-PC), but he makes some great points in addressing the problem "It is not possible to discuss the designs [for the paper currency] without heat. They infuriate you because you cannot get at them. They are beyond the reach of criticism. They are safe—as an idiot is safe anywhere, in any community, savage or civilized. They are made immune by hideous deformity. . ."
My attempts at reprinting the book were stalled with dead-ends in securing rights, but I thought an image of the cover might be appreciated:
4 Apr 2008 — 10:00am
If we stopped at the nickel that would give all people the right to round up.
Our money totally depresses me. I agree with Patty that our currency used to be good. But I have to say I loved the Dutch banknotes designed by R.D.E. Oxenaar.
4 Apr 2008 — 10:07am
We could just give up on the worthless penny and stop at the nickel?
Nickels cost 10 cents to make.
If we stopped at the nickel that would give all people the right to round up.
This ends up happening anyway - people store pennies in jars, leave them lying on the street, etc.
There was an interesting article on this in the New Yorker a few weeks back:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_owen
4 Apr 2008 — 10:10am
Friends of mine in Munich designed their own currency, see here:
http://www.transnationalrepublic.org/centralbank/payola/
They used a real currency press.
4 Apr 2008 — 10:50am
Paul, those are some good looking coins. Thanks for sharing the link.
4 Apr 2008 — 11:01am
I am completely unimpressed by all the new US notes. Hideous. Most of them look as if they have been dropped in puddles of mud, and the ten looks as though it has dried blood all over it. What I really don't understand, are those little yellow bits on the back -- looks to me like a swarm of bees descending upon our dear capitol buildings.
4 Apr 2008 — 11:04am
ALL of that stuff has to do with anti-counterfeiting measures taken by the Bureau of Engraving. If any of you get to Washington or if they ever do a TypeCon here, take the tour of the Bureau and get the tidbits of info.
ChrisL
4 Apr 2008 — 11:50am
A quote from this thread has been ripped from its context and Twitter'd here: http://twitter.com/typophile
Carry on.
4 Apr 2008 — 11:54am
Would someone explain what "Twitter" is all about? I went to their site but I don't get it.
ChrisL
4 Apr 2008 — 12:01pm
Would someone explain what “Twitter” is all about? I went to their site but I don’t get it.
Remember how people nobody needed to know about used to constantly blog about every aspect of their lives? Now they do it by constantly sending text messages to the twitter servers, so that everyone can know every detail of everyone else’s daily life as it happens, instead of waiting for it to get blogged every three hours. Then they all post comments about it on Facebook or Myspace or whatever…
4 Apr 2008 — 12:13pm
ChrisL
4 Apr 2008 — 12:43pm
I am doing a bit of cleaning up and happened upon an older Avante Garde magazine that hat a dollar bill redesign contest where various artists expressed themselves. Funny how we have the same issues now.
Always loved the cover of Funkadelic's America Eats Its Young as well.
http://www.inkblotmagazine.com/rev-archive/funkadelic.htm
4 Apr 2008 — 12:54pm
Twitter is a microblog. Polls show that if people had to give up a web log or their Twitter, they would give up their blog. It's a bit like instant messaging in a non-linear format that people don't have to respond to.
The best (faked? you tell me) corporate Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/WaMuWhooHoo
4 Apr 2008 — 1:09pm
I don't get twitter either. So it's just sound bites that don't seem to link to the actual pages themselves? What's the use of that?
4 Apr 2008 — 1:20pm
I'd rather listen to a bird.
4 Apr 2008 — 1:28pm
I think Twitter is a great way to share bits of things you come across as the day progresses. Granted I've almost totally given up on chat and twitter because they are both distractions.
4 Apr 2008 — 1:50pm
"Aren’t pennies costing two cents to make right now? That’s pretty bad too."
It will raise up after the Smart Monkey is gone...
4 Apr 2008 — 2:03pm
It will raise up after the Smart Monkey is gone...
That is our hope anyway.
4 Apr 2008 — 2:07pm
It will raise up after the Smart Monkey is gone...
No, it will not. The damage is already done, and I suspect it will take years for it to repair. I don't think we've hit bottom yet, either.
4 Apr 2008 — 2:26pm
I'm just going to convert to a better designed, and more valuable currency:
4 Apr 2008 — 3:11pm
I don’t get twitter either. So it’s just sound bites that don’t seem to link to the actual pages themselves? What’s the use of that?
Well, it keeps the Web 2.0 bubble going a little longer.
Polls show that if people had to give up a web log or their Twitter, they would give up their blog.
Maybe so, but I’m pretty sure a more useful poll would show that most people can’t really find any use for most of Web 2.0. Anyway, right now I’d much rather just give up the internet and sit under the cherry trees filing away at metal punches.
4 Apr 2008 — 3:13pm
I liked the currency from the game of "Life" with portraits fake people with names like Ransom A. Treasure and G. I. Luvmoney and Art Linkletter (oops he was real!). That currency was clearly more valuable -- it went up to $100,000!
4 Apr 2008 — 3:23pm
So it’s just sound bites that don’t seem to link to the actual pages themselves? What’s the use of that?
Micro-blogging isn't meant to link to anything.
Maybe so, but I’m pretty sure a more useful poll would show that most people can’t really find any use for most of Web 2.0.
I would put money on a user poll that suggests exactly the opposite of that statement. The web has never been more useful than it is now.
4 Apr 2008 — 3:25pm
Zara, the yellow dots are the EURion Constellation which feature on almost every bank note in current circulation. The idea is that when a colour photocopier senses 5 small yellow circles arranged in a pattern similar to the Orion Constellation, it will refuse to copy.
Interestingly, although they have been around for a while, no country has officially admitted their existence and so they have only recently been discovered. There is also some currency detection software built into more recent scanners and imaging software which is still not understood.
-Jacob
4 Apr 2008 — 3:32pm
I understand *why* the yellow is there, I am familiar with the the security features of the bills, I was referring to the poor choice of visual design. I have not seen those yellow dots on older bills.
4 Apr 2008 — 5:40pm
Zara:
Apologies! I have only recently come across the EURion constellation and still find it interesting that such a thing exists and apparently existed on many bank notes for at least six years before detection. I expect the colour was chosen by which ever of the central European banks first came up with the idea as it does not stand out so much on the old DM and Franc notes (which I think were the first to use it). The most interesting concealment must, however, be on the old £20 British note.
-Jacob
4 Apr 2008 — 6:25pm
Jacob - no need to apologize :) Thanks for the info!
4 Apr 2008 — 7:07pm
There is also some currency detection software built into more recent scanners and imaging software which is still not understood.
It certainly is effective... when I mocked up the image that started this thread, Photoshop CS2 popped up a rather startling warning dialog. It let me do the edits and save, but apparently printing had been disabled. (I didn't try.)
5 Apr 2008 — 7:50am
I guess a better epithet is required to illustrate the longitude and wheight
of so infamous personages (not those in the links):
Emperor Palpatine &
Lord Vader
Yes, it will take sometime for a recovery, and it will require a Hero or Heroine!
to fix it.
Reality surpass fiction.
5 Apr 2008 — 8:11am
Holding Out for a Hero must be huge in Zimbabwe.
5 Apr 2008 — 3:03pm
Well, with all due respect you have some ugly money.
Héctor
5 Apr 2008 — 4:42pm
"Well, with all due respect you have some ugly money"
LOL!!! That is OK, Héctor, I have some even uglier bills to pay with that money so maybe it suits the task :-)
ChrisL
5 Apr 2008 — 10:37pm
Ok, maybe someone at some place needs to take a look a this: http://www.cnbc.com/id/23826876
LOL Chris, money has always been an ugly issue.
Héctor
6 Apr 2008 — 4:19am
[addendum]
Right on the money:
http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney/main.cfm/currency
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2314secr.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
6 Apr 2008 — 11:00am
We played around with the print blocking in PS at my lab one day just to seehow strict it was. All you have to do is type some text and make it transparent (spaces for instance IIRC also worked) and it would consider that sufficient
«El futuro es una línea tan fina que apenas nos damos cuenta de pintarla nosotros mismos». (La Luz Oscura, por Javier Guerrero)
6 Apr 2008 — 3:19pm
A lo mejor a Usted le gustaría leer este artículo. Puede que ya lo conozca, y así es, puede encontrar a otros que le interese a Usted.
http://www.typotheque.com/articles/falta_de_diseno_exceso_de_diseno_y_vo...
"Disfruta mientras puedes" - Anónimo
7 Apr 2008 — 6:55am
If it costs 2c to make a penny, and 10c to make a nickel, someone is ripping you off. There isn't that much more metal in the nickel, and the process is essential the same.
In Canada they have just started talking about getting rid of the penny (the govenment, I have been saying it for 20 years). Here we have $1 and $2 coins in circulation, not bills, so one's pocket is weighed down by all the coins. That is why Canadians appear to walk on an angle. Not to mention the problem with US based cash registers with only four or five coin slots.
Inflation has devalued the dollar to at least 1/10th of its 1950s value. So why not get rid of both the penny and the nickel. Price things with one decimal point after the dollar. And don't worry that prices will only round up. You know that something now priced at $19.99 is going to go to $19.9, not $20.0. Within a year prices will average out, due to competition.
7 Apr 2008 — 10:58am
Do we really care what currency looks like? Pretty soon it will all currency will be electronic through thumb prints and/or retinal scans.
If that does not happen, I would prefer the US to keep the currency green and plain. It's only money :-)
7 Apr 2008 — 1:32pm
Isn't the point of being a designer to care about how things look both aesthetically and functionally? It's the face of our economic system, and a cultural icon. So yes, we do really care, or at least you SHOULD care.
7 Apr 2008 — 6:16pm
@ Don McCahill
"If it costs 2c to make a penny, and 10c to make a nickel, someone is ripping you off."
It may sound crazy, but the fact that the currency has to be devided, you have to have pennies and dimes.
That penny or dime will then move from hand to hand for some number of years, thus covering its cost.
7 Apr 2008 — 6:19pm
so what do all you guys make of the relatively new EURO notes?
7 Apr 2008 — 10:25pm
I didn't see anyone actually post the image of the real dollar bill:
http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney/images/features/thumbnails/lowvision_5.jpg
Yikes. Very interesting. I haven't gotten one of these bills yet… But i really can't figure out the advantage to it, or how it would stop forgeries…
8 Apr 2008 — 5:30am
But i really can’t figure out the advantage to it, or how it would stop forgeries...
That same site you listed says a lot:
http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney/main.cfm/currency/new5
It says the giant Helvetica 5 is for people with poor vision. I wonder if there's any way to imitate braille on paper (that would stand wear and tear). Some of the high contrast numbers with ball serifs could get a little difficult to read, I suppose, depending on vision. I guess Gotham, or the likes were still too newfangled for them.
8 Apr 2008 — 6:06am
Actually on the German currency there were Braille numbers, slightly elevated so you could feel them. Unfortunately this feature was given up with the Euro.