50 AMERO Banknote

Description:

In the middle of the 21st century, members of the North American Union signed the Treaty on the Creation of a Monetary Union, also known as the Treaty of Des Moines. In the treaty, the details of the creation of the North American Monetary Union were laid out. Similar to the European Federation’s EURO, the AMERO is the consolidated currency for the six member North American Union.

The 50 AMERO bill represents the latest in currency design and technology, utilizing the tried and true polymer banknote technology that is now commonplace in the world’s financial systems. The 50 AMERO banknote features images of the Sonora Desert and its neighboring mountain range. Each denomination features the prominent nature and natural landmarks of the NAU’s member nations.

Idea:

The AMERO came as a creation for a digital image assignment at UCLA. Two bills were designed and made, a 50 AMERO banknote, and a 20 AMERO banknote.

The idea to create a fictional currency had its roots all the way back to my first design class when I designed the 20 AFRO banknote. Since then, I had always been interested in design and creating patterns and images for official documents. This started in currency but later branch out into other things like passport design. In my eyes, the designs found on money and in other government documents represented a perfect marriage of art and technology. The perfect balance of beauty and utility, or rather, art in the service of utility.

The idea of the AMERO specifically came after doing some self-research into the European Union’s EURO and other proposed supranational currency around the world. I specifically remember the poorly designed AMERO bill that made its rounds on anti-government conspiracy sites and knew I wanted to make better version; something that would reflect the direction currency design was going.

Process:

The designs of the banknotes were done in Adobe Illustrator with the use of various blending modes and layered transparencies to create the anti-counterfeit guilloche patterns. I took inspiration from both the Canadian Dollar banknotes and the EURO to inform the methodology behind my designs. One thing I wanted to highlight in my bills, were the transparent ‘windows’ that are becoming common in modern currency.

The completed designs were first present digitally in class. Later on, as part of my final, I decided to take the bills and bring them into physical reality.

Achieving the final product was initially easier said than done. At first, I had no idea how the transparent window were achieved in modern bills. This lead to further research, from where I learned about polymer technology that is now being used in the currency of some nations. The polymer banknote creation process was fascinating to learn about, but alas, it was be extremely difficult to recreate such texture or material for use in my project. This makes obvious sense though, the whole point of using this material is precisely because it’s difficult to recreate to prevent counterfeiting.

In the end, to achieve a similar effect, I used a combination of materials which included fine cotton paper and a printable transparent substrate know as Pictorico. The opaque sections of the bill were printed on an inkjet printer on the paper and then cut out with a hobby blade. The Pictorico then also went through the printer, inking the ‘window’ onto the material.

Using spray adhesive, I then glued the paper to the Pictorico, creating a paper and plastic sandwich, to achieve the final effect. In the end, I was left was a fairly visually convincing version of the fictional banknote.