The color of money

Posted on May 12, 2003 by Gene

The Treasury is ready to revamp our cash again, only a few years after it redesigned our money to thwart counterfeiters. Obviously, that redesign didn’t do the job. This time, they’re adding color to the bills.
As a designer, I have often wondered why our money is so incredibly boring. I suppose that the Treasury wishes to create – or continue – a feeling of stability and blandness, thus ensuring trust in the dollar. But it’s so incredibly easy to counterfeit such a document.
One of the coolest currency designs I’ve seen is by R.D.E. Oxenaar in the Netherlands. It’s easy to tell what denomination you have from the color, and he chose colors very deliberately based upon the fact that it’s difficult to match colors using color copiers and scanners. For instance, when you try to color correct the red on the bank note, the blue becomes wrong. When you compensate for the blue, the green gets messed up. Brilliant! There are also partial images of rabbits and other animals which become whole when held up to the light. My favorite is the now defunct 250 guilder note with a lighthouse. Of course, now all those great European bank notes have been replaced by the Euro – which is OK, with different styles of European architecture on each one. But the Euro coins… ick. There is a plan to embed RFID chips in the Euro, which would make it difficult to copy, but also make it possible to track your cash.
The Canadian currency features raised dots, high-contrast numbers, and an electronic reader for the vision-impaired. Cool. American cash must be impossible to figure out if you’re blind. New Zealand, which uses plasticized cash, has water-themed (and hip surfer) currency designs, with hard to duplicate color combinations.
Ours is just boring. Tune in tomorrow to see what pointless change has been wrought by the Treasury, the people who brought you the Sacajawea dollar coin. How convenient it is to carry 5 or 6 clanking, heavy coins in your pocket instead of a folded piece of paper! Geniuses!