The New Look of Money

Mike Rankin

2

When the topic of money comes up in design circles, it’s usually in the context of a discussion of freelance rates, or the price of software. But here’s a story about the design of money. Specifically, the new U.S. $100 bill, which was unveiled by the Federal Reserve yesterday.

The new bills, which go into circulation in October, have been a long time coming, with over a decade of R&D work behind the look and security features. In an effort to thwart counterfeiters, the new Benjamins include a host of difficult-to-reproduce features, including 3D effects, watermarks, security threads, and color-shifting inks.

Hopefully all those elements are effective from a law enforcement perspective, because from a pure design perspective the new bill is a crowded mess, with an almost complete lack of whitespace (or maybe greenspace). It’s hard not to read into Franklin’s frowny expression and think he’s wishing someone else could take his place.

Though to be fair, as a printer he’d probably marvel at the technology surrounding his visage.

If you want to get a close-up look at the new design, Newmoney.gov offers an interactive experience where you can explore the look and features of the new $100 bills, as well as those of the $5, $10, $20, and $50 bills. You can control animations that show how the bill’s appearance changes when viewed from any angle, and under different lighting conditions.

By the way, have fun exploring the new bill, but don’t bother trying to bring an image of it into Photoshop for a closer look (or to replace Franklin with your cat’s face), because the app doesn’t like it when you do that.