The Dollar Redesign Project

http://richardsmith.posterous.com/dollar-redeign-michael-tyznik

by Caged • 17 years ago

28 34 17 years ago

richardsmith.posterous.com

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Perhaps not hackerish, but beautiful design work. Nicest money I've seen since the Dutch guilder went out of circulation. One small change i'd made (for blind people) is to have the notes slightly different sizes. This is the norm in Europe and it works fine, without hindering ATM machines when depositing cash.

Caged• 17 years ago

Not to derail the thread, but I believe this has as much to do with hacking as most stuff on Hacker News. It's unfortunate the term doesn't extend to Designers going beyond the minimum required by their profession because I believe they have the same curiosity and spirit that drives extraordinary programmers to become "hackers". After all, the guy just redesigned the American currency.

Radix• 17 years ago

I don't like the idea of having money that has different sizes. I would prefer if the colored bar on the left had a different texture and each denominartion had a differently sized block of alternate texture. Then the blind could simply feel what the denomination was. Unless the braille on this actually works, that would be better.

sethg2• 17 years ago

I really like the idea of putting the Bill of Rights on the currency.

"I'd like a small pizza and a medium Coke."

"OK, [kaching] that'll be one search-and-seizure and one free-speech..."

jnorthrop• 17 years ago

When I clicked on the link I was hoping to find a article about cheap design...

Anyway, I like the designs and I really like the idea of using currency as a means of education (e.g. Bill of Rights, and branches of government on the bills.)

One thing I don't get though is this: "One thing I definitely don't want is the government deciding what cultural figures or movements are the most important or 'American.' Instead, I think the most important politicians should be on money." I'm not sure how you determine what political figures are on the bills without influence from the politicians in power.

mdasen• 17 years ago

It should also be noted that Benjamin Franklin was never an American president.

However, if the politicians featured are significantly old enough, they lose a lot of their political nature. Most people don't think about, say, Indian removal when using a $20 bill or suspension of habeas corpus when using a $5 bill. Assuming enough time has passed, the furor over certain decisions disappears because the winning decision becomes part of our culture. Slavery was a heavily divisive topic in the 1800s and Lincoln became a key figure on the anti-slavery side, but with enough time passed everyone (or at least a number dominant to the point that others are considered fringe) has become anti-slave.

sethg2• 17 years ago

Other countries put important scientific and cultural figures on their money. The Bank of England puts Darwin on its £10 note and is going to put Adam Smith on its £20. Why can't we do the same? Along with Ben Franklin we could have Herman Melville, Marian Anderson, Richard Feynman...

mlLK• 17 years ago

When I clicked the link my expectations lead me to believe this was some kind of re-evaluation for monetary exchange. This is a cute idea but I was expecting something bit more ambitious given the title.

sp3323• 17 years ago

These are some pretty nice-looking mockups, but the typography is going to need some work. Unless they count the clashing typefaces as an anti-counterfeiting measure...

ja2ke2• 17 years ago

Current US currency seems to. :( US bills look more and more like the newsletter your dentist puts out with every revision.

davetufts• 17 years ago

I'll paraphrase what I posted there...

Putting quotes from the Bill of Rights is pure propaganda. Money, in the U.S. is not issued by the government and has nothing to do with Presidents, the Constitution, or Bill of Rights.

These are Federal Reserve Notes, issued by the private, for-profit central bank. The only connection with our government are the federal legal tender laws that force citizens to accept these pieces of paper as "legal tender for all debts, public and private"

For a quote -- instead of something from the great Bill of Rights -- I'd love to see Woodrow Wilson's sad lament of his signing of the Federal Reserve Act. It would be much more appropriate.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson

weegee• 17 years ago

Excellent quote, and even more relevant today than ever.

tokipin• 17 years ago

i like the first one. the saturated colors on the other ones really imbalance them

abstractbill2• 17 years ago

I wish US bills were different sizes. If I have a wallet full of UK currency, finding the right note is O(1). If I have US currency, it's O(n).

ComputerGuru• 17 years ago

No it's not. Sort them upon entry into the wallet.

abstractbill2• 17 years ago

You just shifted the overhead from removal to insertion. Having different sized notes removes the overhead entirely.

ja2ke2• 17 years ago

Going borderless like that is extraordinarily striking for US currency, but I bet that would be the first thing to go, as it's expensive to reliably print borderless designs in sheets and then cut them up, unless the designs tile perfectly.

That and other nitpicks aside, if these were our new dollar bills I'd be perfectly happy. They represent a great amount of boldness and brushing away stodginess while still being totally reverent to the heritage they're supposed to represent.

endtime4• 17 years ago

One other nitpick - not having a number in each corner hurts usability. But they do look great.

kirse• 17 years ago

How convenient of him to remove "In God We Trust" from the currency without even so much as a mention.

mahmud4• 17 years ago

Because we don't. Americans might profess faith and appeal to the high heavens, but their actions are very unlike anyone who has faith in a higher power. Really spiritual people that have deep faiths are very non-calculating and resigned to the will of the higher being. Americans are very canny and selfish, very humane and materialistic qualities IMO. If you have paid any attention to the news at the height of the Iraqi civil war and fear of widespread regional conflict; with every news came a marketplace analysis of what the death and injury of people overseas might mean to the stock market. Even now, as America's economy stumbles, no one speaks of the poor, but everyone is busy nursing the wounds afflicted to their retirement funds and speculate what this means to their futures.

People who trust a higher power depend on said power to come to their aid, they don't stow away cash and grab real-estate properties, effectively hedging their bets against "God"'s will or betting on his mercy ;-)

endtime4• 17 years ago

>Americans are very canny and selfish, very humane and materialistic qualities IMO...

Take your "O" somewhere else. This isn't the place for making borderline offensive generalizations about people's cultures.

dchest• 17 years ago

While a lot of people in this discussion seem to like the design, I have to say that I don't like it. It feels unprofessional and looks like design for game money, or... Web 2.0 money? (I'm not talking about cultural thing, purely visual.)

iamwil• 17 years ago

While I understand that this is just an exercise/whatif/fun, it seems that these exercises favor the pretty over the functional. There are some niceties in the design, like the braille. But beyond that, fundamentally, currency should not be easily copied.

There doesn't seem there was much thought about that in the designs, other than the wavy web-like background. I think that would make for a much more interesting (to me at least) case study in design were that the case.

whereareyou• 17 years ago

Looks like Space Cash.

The Dollar Redesign Project

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