Currency Redesign Concept
Project Statement
Money is not often given a second look. After having learned the look and value of each, people exchange bills and coins frequently and without much notice of the designs on them. This interaction results in a person-to-person connection, but rarely a person-to-story connection. Much like "judging a book by its cover," a design can be quickly passed over or discarded all because a design fails to catch the viewer's eye. For this assignment, I had an opportunity to combine images and text in order to quickly communicate concepts and stories in an irresistible fashion.
Target/Intended Audience
The intended audience for my currency is everyone in the United States, which is the country I redesigned for.
Research
The research that I did for this project was looking up what national parks I was interested in focusing on, based on their famous natural formations. I also researched components of currency that we have in the US, as well as in Europe.
Design Process
I began my design process by coming up with 2 ideas for the theme of my currency. One of my initial ideas was Game of Thrones themed, where I would remake the coins from the 7 kingdoms into three different versions of paper currency. My second idea and the idea I went with in the end was to remake American currency and replace the past presidents with national parks. I updated the color scheme so that there are more differences between the different money values. My goal in this redesign was for the currencies to show the beauty of the country rather than past leaders.
Final Solution
In my final redesigns, I chose three parks to dedicate each of the bills to. I included illustrations of 3 different monuments at Yosemite, Teton, and Arches National Parks. I made a 1, 5, and 10 dollar bill in three different colors to differentiate them from one another.
