I just read about this amazing design contest on Yahoo! not too long ago. The Dollar ReDe$ign project was global competition of designers, redesigning the US dollar notes. There were some pretty horrible submissions but among those were some amazing designs.
The First Place was won by a San Francisco based design firm, Dowling Duncan. Their approach to this design was made when they realized that most people handle their money vertically. They cited that most people handed money over vertically and machines accepted money vertically. Hence the vertical design.
They also chose the images on the notes by taking images of American history and culture and correlating it directly with a number. So, $1 = First African American President, $5 = The five largest Native American Tribes, $10 = The First 10 Amendments (Bill of Rights), $20 – 20th Century America, $50 = The 50 States and $100 = The first 100 days of FDR in office, where he passed legislation to help rectify the depression and by which every new president has been judged on how well they have done during the first 100 days of their term.
Other features included changes for the visually impaired. Each note increases in size as they increase in denomination.
Although the Dowling Duncan submission won the contest, my favorite design was submitted by Reid Collier and Evan Cotter of Flashpoint in Richmond, VA.
Their submission kept the traditional etched images on our current bills but updated the design for function. This design would have used Yupo paper, which is a synthetic paper substitute which conserve on waste. It’s green being … green? But not really green in color?! You get what I mean!! Other changes were made for the visually impaired as well, featuring, embossed copy and dimensions would increase in length and thickness of paper as the notes value increased. Security elements would be built into the paper.
