Fugly five
April 8th, 2008 at 5:33 p.m.
The general consensus in the design community is that new U.S. five is ugly. The 2,500 at the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing got together and decided to grace our good bill with a giant purple Helvetica in the corner. And then around the same time the Royal Mint shows off their sexy new coins designed by a first time, 26-year old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. For people uninitiated into the design processes this doesn’t make any sense, but for most of us in the thick of it, it’s pretty clear. Designing by committee failed.
Now I don’t want to be too harsh on the fine folks at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, I’m sure they spent a lot of time working through ideas and it probably took them quite a while to get the design we see today. Obviously I don’t know all that went on, but my guess is the process they went through involved many designers, numerous committees and required the approval of at least four managers. Suggestions were made at each step in the process and eventually designers were left tweaking or just implementing the decisions of others higher up in the approval food chain. It’s been my experience that this process rarely works and this is just one such example.
The other issue where I see things went terribly wrong for our trusty five was with the idea of trying to modify an iconic design. I’m not particularly attached to our old currency but it’s been ubiquitous in my life and it’s a design I’ve come to know and trust. A five, is a five, is a five. Instead of respecting that legacy someone decided, alright, we need new currency for security reasons let’s start from scratch and make something new. No, they decided to go and tack on elements to a design, far after the fact. It’s far more difficult to do this. Adding to an existing design, especially one that isn’t your own, with a large team, is incredibly challenging. Just ask people working on internal teams at large organizations, making changes to a slew of websites.
In the end we’re left with Frankenstein’s monster: one that meets new security needs but is a poor imitation of the original. They should have just started fresh, or even gone with the contest model. Maybe then we would have ended up with something as hot as those Brits.
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Couldn’t agree more. The fact that the new coinage from the UK comes out right at the same time is just salt in the wounds.
It seems like each time we do this with our currency it still doesn’t work from both a design perspective and a security one. We’re still the most counterfeitted and least accessible currency in the world. I’d say let’s lead the charge here, that we have some of the best designers in the world and can make a huge difference.
Except that it’s been done - the charge has been led! Look at switzerland: Their money is gorgeous. Lots of beautiful color - security features that are designed into it, rather than slapped on. They use different sizes for different denominations (accessible!). Or the Aussies, with their plastic currency - it’s crazy durable and so hard to counterfeit!
Anyway, this is a bit of an energizing issue for me, because I feel committee is a terrible way to do it and we’re just letting ourselves get further and further behind here. And I guess I would also really like to have some gorgeous currency in my pocket rather than the crap we have.
@Brian Warren I forgot about those Aussies and their plastic bills! A few of my friends had them when I was living in Japan and I was definitely impressed. I’m all for gorgeous currency just as long as we don’t end up with pockets full of coins like I was stuck with over in Japan.
As a designer, I can just picture being in the conference room with a large group of officials, nodding blankly as they describe how they want “a really big five, no even bigger then that. Right there in the corner. And make it purple!” ‘But wait, there are more eloquent ways to accommodate the blind-‘ “No! We need a really BIG 5! Push the design over a bit if you need to. This is a priority. We have criteria to fulfill.”
the song “make the logo bigger” comes to mind
@katie i believe the meeting was akin to snl’s famous “we need more cow bell!”
hideous. just hideous our money. different sizes only makes sense, and just that detail makes it very difficult to bleach small bills and make them $100s.
i think this is why commercials suck so much; design by committee is pathetic. this is why we hire pr, marketing, and design people! let them do their jobs!
At least the big “5” is helping out the visually impaired….