
The Dollar Redesign Project - Caged
http://richardsmith.posterous.com/dollar-redeign-michael-tyznik
======
davetufts
I'll paraphrase what I posted there...

Putting quotes from the Bill of Rights is pure propaganda. Money, in the U.S.
is not issued by the government and has nothing to do with Presidents, the
Constitution, or Bill of Rights.

These are Federal Reserve Notes, issued by the private, for-profit central
bank. The only connection with our government are the federal legal tender
laws that force citizens to accept these pieces of paper as "legal tender for
all debts, public and private"

For a quote -- instead of something from the great Bill of Rights -- I'd love
to see Woodrow Wilson's sad lament of his signing of the Federal Reserve Act.
It would be much more appropriate.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great
industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit
is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities
are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one
of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized
world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by
conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and
duress of a small group of dominant men." \-- Woodrow Wilson

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weegee
Excellent quote, and even more relevant today than ever.

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sethg
I _really_ like the idea of putting the Bill of Rights on the currency.

"I'd like a small pizza and a medium Coke."

"OK, _[kaching]_ that'll be one search-and-seizure and one free-speech..."

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ja2ke
Going borderless like that is extraordinarily striking for US currency, but I
bet that would be the first thing to go, as it's expensive to reliably print
borderless designs in sheets and then cut them up, unless the designs tile
perfectly.

That and other nitpicks aside, if these were our new dollar bills I'd be
perfectly happy. They represent a great amount of boldness and brushing away
stodginess while still being totally reverent to the heritage they're supposed
to represent.

~~~
endtime
One other nitpick - not having a number in each corner hurts usability. But
they do look great.

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jnorthrop
When I clicked on the link I was hoping to find a article about cheap
design...

Anyway, I like the designs and I really like the idea of using currency as a
means of education (e.g. Bill of Rights, and branches of government on the
bills.)

One thing I don't get though is this: "One thing I definitely don't want is
the government deciding what cultural figures or movements are the most
important or 'American.' Instead, I think the most important politicians
should be on money." I'm not sure how you determine what political figures are
on the bills without influence from the politicians in power.

~~~
mdasen
It should also be noted that Benjamin Franklin was never an American
president.

However, if the politicians featured are significantly old enough, they lose a
lot of their political nature. Most people don't think about, say, Indian
removal when using a $20 bill or suspension of habeas corpus when using a $5
bill. Assuming enough time has passed, the furor over certain decisions
disappears because the winning decision becomes part of our culture. Slavery
was a heavily divisive topic in the 1800s and Lincoln became a key figure on
the anti-slavery side, but with enough time passed everyone (or at least a
number dominant to the point that others are considered fringe) has become
anti-slave.

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anigbrowl
Perhaps not hackerish, but beautiful design work. Nicest money I've seen since
the Dutch guilder went out of circulation. One small change i'd made (for
blind people) is to have the notes slightly different sizes. This is the norm
in Europe and it works fine, without hindering ATM machines when depositing
cash.

~~~
Radix
I don't like the idea of having money that has different sizes. I would prefer
if the colored bar on the left had a different texture and each denominartion
had a differently sized block of alternate texture. Then the blind could
simply feel what the denomination was. Unless the braille on this actually
works, that would be better.

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abstractbill
I wish US bills were different sizes. If I have a wallet full of UK currency,
finding the right note is O(1). If I have US currency, it's O(n).

~~~
ComputerGuru
No it's not. Sort them upon entry into the wallet.

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abstractbill
You just shifted the overhead from removal to insertion. Having different
sized notes _removes the overhead entirely_.

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sp332
I like your idea, but sorting on insertion is O(log(N)), which is faster than
searching an unordered list and just as fast as having different-sized bills.

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wooster
With different sized bills:

* Sorting is O(N) [see spaghetti sort: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort>]

* Retrieval is O(1).

Further, retrieval is O(1) even in unordered sets, so sorting is irrelevant.

(Also, how is sorting on insertion O(log(N))? For each new bill, finding the
correct spot is log(N), so you're still looking at O(N log(N)).)

~~~
sp332
I only meant for inserting one bill, so N is the number of bills you have
already. Using a binary search on a sorted list, either to find a specific
denomination you want or to find the correct spot for a new bill, is
O(log(N)).

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kirse
How convenient of him to remove "In God We Trust" from the currency without
even so much as a mention.

~~~
mahmud
Because we don't. Americans might profess faith and appeal to the high
heavens, but their actions are very unlike anyone who has _faith_ in a higher
power. Really spiritual people that have deep faiths are very non-calculating
and resigned to the will of the higher being. Americans are very canny and
selfish, very humane and materialistic qualities IMO. If you have paid any
attention to the news at the height of the Iraqi civil war and fear of
widespread regional conflict; with every news came a marketplace analysis of
what the death and injury of people overseas might mean to the stock market.
Even now, as America's economy stumbles, no one speaks of the poor, but
everyone is busy nursing the wounds afflicted to their _retirement_ funds and
speculate what this means to their futures.

People who trust a higher power depend on said power to come to their aid,
they don't stow away cash and grab real-estate properties, effectively hedging
their bets against "God"'s will or betting on his mercy ;-)

~~~
endtime
>Americans are very canny and selfish, very humane and materialistic qualities
IMO...

Take your "O" somewhere else. This isn't the place for making borderline
offensive generalizations about people's cultures.

~~~
mahmud
I was trying to make a distinction between a _belief_ in God vs having _trust_
in him. Belief is what Americans have in spades. Trust? not so much. I cannot
think of ONE nation-state that has trust in a higher power; perhaps maybe
Bhutan, whose largely agricultural economy has been powered by chanting and
prayer (as it has never developed enough to shift trust to man and his
efforts.)

Appeals to "God" in the official American symbolisms and language are both
throw-backs to history, which should be removed, and hypocrisy, as the system
is run by Man, wholesale.

Maybe _you_ take offense to my opinion, and you're the one who shouldn't be
offended and/or take his thin skin elsewhere? It's sometimes healthier to
detach yourself from the subject of a discussion, if you identify with it, at
least long enough to understand the other :-)

~~~
endtime
This isn't a political or theological forum. If you want to know my personal
opinion, I am an atheist, and I don't really care whether "In God We Trust" is
on the currency or not.

I think my objection to your generalizations about Americans was fully
justified. The US is an extremely diverse country, and trying to paint
Americans as materialistic or less-holy-than-thou is really, well, stupid.

~~~
mahmud
_I think my objection to your generalizations about Americans was fully
justified. The US is an extremely diverse country, and trying to paint
Americans as materialistic or less-holy-than-thou is really, well, stupid._

"Nations" are composed of diverse individuals and groups, but they also have
their unique, combined national _identity_ [1]. I am not making sweeping
generalizations about "Americans", I am taking their self-identification and
their actions at face value and looking to see whether those words and actions
are inline with the profession of "In God We Trust."

Everything, from the declaration of independence, to the conquest of the
South/Western Mexican states, to becoming a sea-faring world power, to
occupation of Philippines to the industrial revolution, mass immigration and
everything. All the "American Dream" mythology, upward mobility, white-picket-
fence and two-car-garage house, competition, excellence in sports, variously
named "Generations" (an age-demographic category that has no other peer in the
world) .. this is not exactly a defeatist nation that believes in
predestination. No where in the this massive running engine that we call
American daily life does God figure in; just look at the morning rush, when
Americans go through the ritual of drive-through breakfast and traffic jams.
That's an all too human pursuit of life, driven by selfish interests. And
there is nothing wrong with it.

But it mocks one's intelligence to see these very people tack random trite
quotes and slogans from their religious past onto their current everyday life.
It would be honest of them to fucking come clean, or sit together in a massive
group-therapy session to reflect on the disparity between their words and
their actions. And I say that as a person who prefers their _actions_ , over
their phony appeal to scripted/printed moral aphorisms. Cut the judeo-
christian faux-altruistic crap already.

\--

[1] ignore for now existence of consensus on national-unity by all the alleged
members/citizens.

~~~
endtime
"My off-topic opinion is appropriate for this technical/entrepreneurial forum
because I believe it to be correct" is not a valid argument.

~~~
mahmud
Don't let a community's rules dampen your curiosity. Philosophy is the sport
of gentlemen and women.

I enjoyed talking to you, even though it felt like a monologue at times.

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sp332
These are some pretty nice-looking mockups, but the typography is going to
need some work. Unless they count the clashing typefaces as an anti-
counterfeiting measure...

~~~
ja2ke
Current US currency seems to. :( US bills look more and more like the
newsletter your dentist puts out with every revision.

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iamwil
While I understand that this is just an exercise/whatif/fun, it seems that
these exercises favor the pretty over the functional. There are some niceties
in the design, like the braille. But beyond that, fundamentally, currency
should not be easily copied.

There doesn't seem there was much thought about that in the designs, other
than the wavy web-like background. I think that would make for a much more
interesting (to me at least) case study in design were that the case.

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dchest
While a lot of people in this discussion seem to like the design, I have to
say that I don't like it. It feels unprofessional and looks like design for
game money, or... Web 2.0 money? (I'm not talking about cultural thing, purely
visual.)

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tokipin
i like the first one. the saturated colors on the other ones really imbalance
them

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whereareyou
Looks like Space Cash.

