Might a money makeover reverse the greenback's slide?

"Today, with the dollar weakening and the U.S.'s economic image tarnished, the dollar imagery looks funereal," says Kevin Kelleher, a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. "Are dead presidents and eyeballs floating above pyramids really the best we can do?"

On Slate's Big Money site, Kelleher showcases some of the 50 alternative designs that New York designer Richard Smith has received at www.DollarReDesign.com, Smith's grassroots campaign to makeover America's paper currency in a time of economic doldrums.

Today's U.S. currrency was last significantly changed in the 1920s, when it was trimmed in size by one-third and obscure statesmen were replaced by more familiar ones.

 

Designer Dean Potter of Anchorage offers a convincing rationale: "We're a culture, not a government."

 

Roderick Thompson's bright, fresh design.

Tomas Garcia Moreno's "In Rock We Trust" series.
 

 

Kyle Thompson honours European philosophers who influenced the Founding Fathers, including Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and even Niccolo Machiavelli.

Grace Poser highlights everyday Americans.

 

Christina DiMeo also marks cultural icons, in this case Billie Holiday. 

  

Canadian-born Peter Le, graduate of the Parsons New School and now living in Beijing, is fascinated with the mysterious Masonic imagery on the current U.S. money, and decides to go full-blown with it, noting that George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and other U.S. presidents were freemasons. Gives me the willies, but I love the dynamic colours (and the owl, of course).   

Matthew Schroeder appropriates the entire Great Lakes for the U.S, but that's okay. You're looking at one-fifth of the world's fresh-water supply. (Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake wholly inside U.S. territory.)

 

Michelle Haft celebrates America's vocations.

 

 

  

 

This elegant but striking Richard Smith series symbolizes to me a 21st-century America shorn of iconography associated with the nation's imperialist past, open to new thinking and global ideas. 

Comments

[Johnnyk]

Its interesting to compare the physical appearance of the greenback to other major currencies.
Euros celebrate great achievers beyond political hacks, the notes are handsome, beautifully designed and user-friendly: different colours and different sizes for people with vision difficulties.
By comparison the greenback looks like old and worn out play money. There's no recognition that not everyone has good vision and as above the graphics are tired, uninspired and full of dead politicos, some worthy others simply hacks (Grover Cleveland, anyone?).
The greenback has always had some metaphorical content but maybe now the metaphor has changed.

[David Olive]

Hi JohnnyK
I can't agree more with what you say, and it's why I posted these alternatives. The varying colours of Canadian paper currency always has helped me at a glance know what's in my wallet (that is, whether I can afford what I want to buy!) The Americans, of course, say we have "cartoon" money. If so, it's a lot more functional than theirs, as are euros. Yes, some of the politicos on the higher-value U.S. bills need to go. And so does all that spooky Masonic iconography. I think of all we do up here, including uplifting words on hockey from Roch Carrier and on the importance of culture and the arts from Gabrielle Roy, and I pity the U.S. for not being more imaginative. (My only beef with the latter is the type is so damned tiny.) As the examples show, the Americans have lots to celebrate, and currency is one of the few things that reaches everyone with which to do it. -David