OUGD505 STUDIO BRIEF ONE - BANK NOTE RESEARCH

I came across an article showing a collection of the "worlds most beautiful bank notes". These are some of my favourites:

Namibian Dollar

New Zealand Dollar

Bhutanese Ngultrum

Egyptian Pound

Costa Rican Colon

Hong Kong Dollar

Cambodian Riel

Malaysian Ringgit

Cook Islands Dollar

Deutsche Mark (pre Euro)

Burmese Kyat

Polish Zloty

Dutch Guilder (pre Euro)

Italian Lira (pre Euro)

What I found really interesting about these bank notes, were the colours used, as mainly each bank note had a colour theme, where only a few different shades of this colour is used to make up the imagery, sometimes alongside a support colour. This is especially shown in the Malaysian Ringgit as well as the Hong Kong and Namibian Dollars. This use of colour is something to take into consideration when designing the bank notes, as one colour for each note creates a very controlled effect, and is also useful in clearly identifying each bank note. These different tones, or varying opacities of each main colour could also determine a specific production technique which takes advantage of this, such as mono printing, where colours can easily be layered to produce additional shades. However mono printing can sometimes be not all that accurate, as it is a stencil printing technique, one that often favours block shapes rather than intricate detail. This would be something to consider in the designs of the imagery if mono printing was the technique to be used. However mono printing could be used to produce the main colour for the imagery, with screen printing to add the detail, which would resolve this issue.