One Hundred Yagoo Banknote

Description:

Continuing with my previous work on currency design, this piece is the second in a series featuring the people of Hololive Production. This addition is a standard, first series note featuring the Virtual YouTuber, Amane Kanata.

Idea:

The idea of creating this new series of banknotes came from an interest in trying to integrate faces and portraits into currency design. Moreover, I’ve been seeking to further my abilities in graphic design, with a further focus on small details like the usage of small images and icons in the bill. A substantial amount of time had also passed since I last tackled a banknote design, getting into Hololive and Vtubers recently provided a very fun and interesting outlet to try making money designs again. The system of denominations will range from One Yagoo to 500 Yagoo. The idea is that each rise in value denomination correlates to a subsequent generation of Hololive talent. Future series would then feature the following member of each generation. The exception to this is the Series 1S commemorative banknotes, which would feature others in Hololive, like the first One Yagoo Note.

Process:

For this bill, I focused first on the portrait for the bill by taking a pre-existing photo of Kanata, and translating it to a style that resembled engraved printing found in real banknotes. Through the help of some tutorials, this process was done in Photoshop and the results had me quite happy. From there, I moved the image to Illustrator and began building up the note piece by piece, with inspiration coming from modern polymer bills used in numerous countries.

Like with some of the other designs I’ve done, I was interested in creating a design that could viewed at both a horizontal and vertical position. Even more so in this note, I feature more vertically integrated text and images, as well as making the portrait vertical as well.

In the details of the design, I was able to imbue references and jokes that were prevalent in the online communities of Hololive. Some of these references came in the form of watermarks or other “security features” in the bill. The more industrious and clever-minded might be able to figure out what some of them might mean.