Research -
To begin my research I looked around online too see what redesign/concepts have all ready been done, these would become visual aids and inspiration for creating my currency/banknote. The idea behind the brief is not too just create a banknote for a the UK it could be for anywhere in the world or even be a fictional place it is totally up to myself to make the design decision. I want to do something that is slightly different to everyone else so rather than picking the average currency like US, UK, or Euro which have been done many times over and over by many people, I was trying to think of countries further east, such as China, Japan etc...One of the reasoning behind this is that I would like too experiment with the easter style of design within this brief as it is very different and the smaller things like letterforms are much more complex and beautiful.
Japan (Yen) -
Yen is pronounced "en" in Japanese. The word literally means "round" in Japanese, as yuán does in Chinese or Korean. Originally, Chinese had traded silver in mass and when Spanish and Mexican silver coins arrived, the Chinese called them (silver round) for their circular shapes, The coins and the name also appeared in Japan. Later, the Chinese replaced 圓 with 元 which has the same pronunciation in Mandarin (but not in Japanese). The Japanese preferred 圓, which remains until now (albeit in its simplified form, 円, since the end of World War II). -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen
Yen, similar to Chinas' Yuan the notes have a very traditional style which keeps in touch with the culture of the country which is what a banknote should do as it is part of the identity of the country trying to so the rest of the world who/what they are. The design consists is traditional Japanese style using shape, this helps form the body of the note making it more visually interesting. The colour is very much two colour making it easy to read and see for everyone. As you can see the notes have changed a lot over the years from something that was decorative and more like a piece of art into something that is more formal easier to read for tourist etc...they have one this by using simple sans serif typography and bold Japanese writing.
China (Renminbi/Yuan) -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi
Renminbi/Yuan has a very traditional style and feel too it, I believe that this would be because of Chinas' very long history. China is also a very traditional country although its has on of the worlds fast GDP's but as well as its growth in people its growth in technology and science is huge, so I feel that this could be related in a banknote, rather than paying homage too the leaders of China. The traditional style is also shown in the typography, a very bold and serif typeface is used alongside the traditional Chinese
writing and symbolism.
South Korea (Won) -
The old "won" was a cognate of the Chinese yuan and Japanese yen. It is derived from the hanja 元 (원), itself a cognate of the Chinese character 圓(yuán) which means "round shape." The won was subdivided into 100 jeon (Hangul: 전; hanja: 錢; RR: jeon; MR: chŏn), itself a cognate of the Chinese character 錢 (qián) which means "money" and also used as a unit of money in the ancient times. The current won (1962 to present) is typically written in hangul only. -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_won
The overall style of the won is appears to be a lot more modern and slick compared wit the other notes from the similar area of the world. It uses simple and easy to read typography (even though it is in Korean) but it is accompanied well by the designs on the notes, these are sublet but a nice touch too the note making them feel part of the country and they really show off what South Korea is, despite of its bad history. I like this note, more compared to the other notes as they are more current but they could still be made better and help show people that South Korea isn't what it used to be like and is a lot more developed and is becoming more cultural and less corruption with in the world of politics.
Concepts/Redesigns -
These are some examples how how currency can be redesigned in many different styles, they can be very playful or more formal but still using great design which makes the notes more interesting to look and this is when they become more of a piece of art as well as a functioning banknote.
Korean Design -
After looking at the different banknotes I decided that I want to recreate/redesign the South Korean currency, reasoning behind this is 1. I don't know much about much about Asian (Korean) design so I want to experiment with that style and the way in which it could be used on a big scale. 2. I want to create a banknote that shows how booming the east has becomes, although they are very proud of their heritage and the traditional way of life in areas, the east is the most fast and radically growing part of the planet I feel this should be show/incorporated in a banknote. It helps create a visual identity for the country, specially as South Korea had such a bad history.
Korean Typography and Alphabet (Hangul) -
The Korean alphabet also know as the Hangul has five main elements, dots, vertical strokes, horizontal strokes, diagonal strokes and circles these create each character/words.
It consists of 51 jamo (letters and digraphs), or phomenic units.
Consonants are linear shapes (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ), vowels are lines (ㅏ, ㅐ, ㅑ, ㅒ, ㅓ, ㅔ, ㅕ, ㅖ, ㅗ, ㅘ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, ㅠ, ㅡ, ㅢ, ㅣ), and a few consonants are doubled (ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ) to create glottalized letters. Each letter is designed for a special purpose. The consonants are designed to symbolise the different position of the mouth and tongue when pronounced, which makes sense I guess.
It took a while for typography to be created from Hangul, one best the it is technical very difficult and time consuming to produce thousands of letter variations and also the political factors mates it more complicated. By the time the people of South Korea cloud start becoming the country we know it as today, it was the late 1990s early 2000s meaning the typography is more current/modern making Hangul a very functional but
beautiful language.
As you can see from the examples below, there is a definite style the runs throughout contemporary design. It is very simple but the overall design is still very eye-catching because of the typesetting and the interesting lettering, this could be a element that could be transferred on too a new banknote for South Korea.
Traditional Printing Methods
For this brief, we had to make sure that we produced the banknote using one or more traditional print methods. After having an induction into all the traditional methods available I wanted to research further into a a couple of the methods too see which would be the most appropriate for the production of a bank note.
Screen Printing - for a detailed design this would be perfect, you are able to come up with as many colour layers as you want, but the more layers the more complicated it gets but this allows you to get a very good quality print, the process is also very straight forward and makes it very easy to print lots of outcomes rather than just one print.
Having not done any screen printing before, I feel that experimenting with the method is the best way for me to go forward win this brief. As I will be able too see how effective the process is and if the design does not work out it is not difficult to clean the screen and start again, although it can take time waiting for screens to dry etc.
After having researched into screen printing and seeing how it will influence my design I have understood the I will have to make sure that the design is no more than 4 colour layers, as I will be difficult enough lining up each layer, so by having more it will make it more difficult to print and get a good result every time.
I have also thought about using other methods like lion-cut and monoprinting but I do not feel that they will be able to give me the clean modern look that I am trying to get when producing a South Korean banknote. As what I have learnt about contemporary Korean design is that it is very clean and I don't think that it would suit a printing style like lino-cut.
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