Design C - the backside looks like the worst soulless corporate landing page graphics (Corporate Memphis style?).
Design D and E, H are okayish.
Design F has very strange coloring, the watercolor and sketch effect looks nice on screen, but I think more filled and more monochrome notes are more conventional and accepted, also some are bicolor. Not bad, but I'd not like it in everyday use probably.
Design G is somehow not good looking, I cannot phrase it. Both the font, and also the backsides scenes are meg, even the modernist buildings are better on some other series.
Design J : the creepy abstract cartoon people on the backside ruin it. Also somehow not aesthetically pleasing, but the not catastrophic.
Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
An average lifetime of a banknote is 1-2 years for smaller amounts, 2-4 years for bigger ones. It is estimated that 15-25% of all banknotes are replaced every year. From about 30 billion individual banknotes in circulation that makes 4.5B to 7.5B each year.
So why not introduce new designs (and new protections?)
Not sure if it is much better, the images are tiny on that version and the companion text explaining the designs seems to be missin (though that sort of text you can usually do without).
The survey is completely useless. Just let me vote on pairs of designs which I like more, then aggregate the data. It's not that hard to program and a hundred times more accurate and useful.
For me, across all of them only two felt actually decent for a bank note (B & E, I is okay, just not used to bank notes in that orientation, same for J, but that one should be more monochrome). Either they were too vibrant or the design was too busy/had unnecesary elements.
I also feel like the notes that had buildings (like we have now) are just.. better. The initial run of 2002-2013 remains the best aesthetically, imo.
I prefer the Birds & Rivers theme because nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal whereas if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property. I feel this more strongly for statues, but it seems desirable for the Euro or any potential international currency too.
I'm partial for statues, and birds and rivers is a good theme. I feel like if they sticked to the semi-monochrome of the previous notes I'd be more favorable to them aswell. Monochrome might be the wrong word, ESL.
I don't like to have silhouettes instead of people on the back, and that buildings related to the current institutions are featured on so many designs
These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future.
The only thing that should remain stable in Europe are ideas, and the Swiss got it better on their notes
Why is it all either the same people or the same birds?
Was that an explicit part of the brief artists were given?
I feel like the selection of motifs is more interesting and where more of the creative process in defining a representation of Europe lies than just how to draw and layout those motifs.
Offensively dull. One shudders to think about the endless bickering that went in to this.
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.
As an Austrian, it feels a bit annoying that the Germans got their one famous composer - they're kind of our thing! Why not Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert?
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
At least you can be sure that Germans won't "adopt" them, e.g. you can often read "the german architect Hundertwasser" or "the german author Kafka" :-/
On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)
I'm sure most countries will have their pet peeves with this; I've seen a bunch of Polish people being upset about the phrasing of Marie Curie's name already.
The people and birds (and I think the buildings as well) were selected by a committee beforehand, to make sure they represent all of the EU, aren't controversial, yadayada...
Yeah, the motifs was probably part of the brief as picking the symbols to represent the entire EU is incredibly political and its just best to separate that discussion from the deeply subjective "what looks best" discussion.
Yeah, I don't know why the cleaners of the parliament buildings aren't putting forward their own economic proposals either, clearly they have time to sit sometimes, might as well write proposals for new regulation.
You can see all side-by-side here: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/ht...
My takes:
Design C - the backside looks like the worst soulless corporate landing page graphics (Corporate Memphis style?).
Design D and E, H are okayish.
Design F has very strange coloring, the watercolor and sketch effect looks nice on screen, but I think more filled and more monochrome notes are more conventional and accepted, also some are bicolor. Not bad, but I'd not like it in everyday use probably.
Design G is somehow not good looking, I cannot phrase it. Both the font, and also the backsides scenes are meg, even the modernist buildings are better on some other series.
Design J : the creepy abstract cartoon people on the backside ruin it. Also somehow not aesthetically pleasing, but the not catastrophic.
Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
An average lifetime of a banknote is 1-2 years for smaller amounts, 2-4 years for bigger ones. It is estimated that 15-25% of all banknotes are replaced every year. From about 30 billion individual banknotes in circulation that makes 4.5B to 7.5B each year.
So why not introduce new designs (and new protections?)
I found that much nicer than constantly clicking to show the reverse sides, but to each their own!
I also feel like the notes that had buildings (like we have now) are just.. better. The initial run of 2002-2013 remains the best aesthetically, imo.
For reference, the two previous runs at the top of the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes
These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future. The only thing that should remain stable in Europe are ideas, and the Swiss got it better on their notes
That's the only thing I'll miss if Romania ever switches to Euro. Cash you can launder. Literally.
Was that an explicit part of the brief artists were given?
I feel like the selection of motifs is more interesting and where more of the creative process in defining a representation of Europe lies than just how to draw and layout those motifs.
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)
Europe used to be much more of a mess than today's neatly drawn nation states, retroactively assigning origin is a silly endeavour.
I think you just made J.S. Bach roll over in his grave.
And don't forget: Brahms, Handel, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Wagner.
The competition is not so one-sided.
;)