Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Make Some Noise! Petition to Redesign the US Dollar

We want to petition the White House and we want your help.
 
Why?

The more noise we make, the more people will listen and actually take our initiative seriously – and we want to make so much noise that our President will hear us, put real change into action, and turn our dream into reality.

  But we’ll need at least a million names before we can do that and therefore urge you to add your name to the list now http://www.DollarRedesign.com/petition

  Please, share this link with your friends and colleagues. Let everyone you know and who they know, know, how important this cause is.

Thank you,

Richard Smith, Campaign President, Dollar ReDe$ign Project

How do we Fix the World? Redesign the Dollar of course ... hello!

More encouragement from Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, in the July/August – 'How to Fix the World' – print issue of the Atlantic magazine: "The quickest fix for a brand in trouble, some say, is nothing more than a cosmetic makeover. That may be a cliché, but with our financial system in crisis, the time is right to redesign the currency of the United States. Anyone trying to understand our national values would be baffled by the rococo Victoriana and Masonic mumbo jumbo that festoon a dollar bill. Are they an apt metaphor for the labyrinthine workings of the world of credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations? Perhaps. But the result is anachronistic and illegible, as are the $5, $10, and $20 bills, which have hardly been redeemed by the addition of those giant, grimly functional Helvetica numerals intended to simply (in the ugliest possible way) make the bills easier to tell apart. A piece of currency is the ultimate symbol. A more transparent, rational financial system deserves money that looks the part. With the economy bottoming out, it’s time to start from scratch." Also see article below and online here.

Show Me The Money : Michael Bierut, Pentagram (The Atlantic magazine)

World renowned designer and Pentagram partner, Michael Bierut, recently wrote an article for The Atlantic Magazine charting the (design) course of our mighty US dollar bill from its inception through to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project’s proposed redesign. Bierut very politely notes that the introduction of ‘the big purple (Helvetica) numbers that now appear in the corners’ of the current $5 bill ‘is a solution as inelegant and clumsy as a denim patch on a satin dress’ – clearly he’s not impressed. Bierut also walks us through how we stumbled to where we are today and shows some examples of what other countries do for inspiration. Regarding our proposed redesign, Bierut mentions that it seems ‘the time is right for the notion that economic change can start at the grass roots’ – more power to the people! Which reminds me, we never heard back from the President. Read original article here ... 

Dollar ReDe$ign : Grace Poser : We're Sorry ...

“What if each time we opened our wallets we saw our country's regrettable mistakes and felt compelled to apologize? These images are not meant to induce feelings of guilt and sadness but instead, feelings of peace and hope that these mistakes will not be repeated in the future. Every bill has unique design elements which reference the various people and cultures we have wronged throughout history. The core idea for the re-design is: Apologies for Forgiveness, Forgiveness for Peace. The quote on the back of the bill is from Nelson Mandela, it reads: ‘For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others’.”

© Copyright 2009 The ‘Author’. All rights reserved. 
These designs are NOT legal tender. 
Visit: http://www.DollarReDesign.com/submit 
to learn how to submit your ideas.

           

Click here to download:

Dollar_ReDeign_Grace_Poser_Wer.zip (443 KB)

Daniel Bejar : Stretchin' a Dollar

Daniel Bejar's art explores the traces and memories societies leave behind. The piece shown below is "literally, a play on words, one hundred US cents, flattened by freight trains. Each coin that leaves the US mint is given a birth date or production date on it's face and by flattening them, each coin has reached it's demise, collectively taking one dollar out of circulation. The dollar is installed in a horizontal line extending 14.4' on a wall." View more here ...

   

Click here to download:

Daniel_Bejar_Stretchin_a_Dolla.zip (102 KB)

Stretchin' a Dollar
One hundred US cents
flattened by freight trains
1" x 14.4'
2008 © Daniel Bejar

Time to Rise to the July 4th Occasion

Dollar ReDe$ign Update

We’ve had over 100,000 visitors to our site, more than 25 submissions, and we’ve been featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. We’ve written to the President, we’ve called the Treasury Department, we even emailed the Federal Reserve. We’ve been on Fox Business News and Russian TV and everyone across every hemisphere is hot-to-trot about the Dollar ReDe$ign Project. But time is running out.

The Deadline for Submissions is July 4th – how could you forget!

So, if you’ve not already, you should now put pen to paper, stylus to tablet, mouse to mouse-pad and email us your Dollar ReDe$ign ideas ASAP! Remember the winner gets a wonderful t-shirt as a prize. But ultimately we’re all contributing towards the same end goal, and the more noise we make, the more likely our fantasy will become reality.

You can learn how to enter here http://www.DollarReDesign.com

Thank you, we look forward to seeing your ideas.

Richard Smith,
Campaign President

New for Old : Alex Freund

“We need to ditch some of the Presidents and go with some ‘modern’ icons such as computer scientists, modern agriculture, etc.” Alex Freund
© Copyright 2009 The ‘Author’. All rights reserved. 
These designs are NOT legal tender. 
Visit: http://www.DollarReDesign.com/submit 
to learn how to submit your ideas.

Sunday, Sunday, So Euro to Me ...

A leading German finance magazine – published by Finanzen.net – called ‘Euro am Sonntag’ (the Euro on Sunday), just ran a full page article using several of our Dollar ReDe$ign submissions to illustrate their story. The article notes how ‘beautiful’ some of the work is but wonders ‘does it really look like money?’ Hmm ... what should money look like we wonder?

Does the Federal Reserve Need a Makeover Too?

In a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, Derek Thompson reports that apparently 'the Fed is getting a makeover and also seeking image-softening advice from a former Enron lobbyist.' Go figure! Clearly it seems what's good for the goose, in this case, is NOT good for the gander. Or ... perhaps, (we HOPE) this is the beginning of an overall rebranding initiative that eventually will see the mighty mother-of-all-brands – the grand old US of A – and the humble Dollar bill, getting a ‘makeover’ too? You never know – like they say, 'from small beginnings come great things.' We truly HOPE so, we really do. Read original Atlantic story here ...

Nest Egg : Tabitha Vevers (after Larry Summers and John Snow)

© Copyright 2009 The ‘Author’. All rights reserved. 
These designs are NOT legal tender. 
Visit: http://www.DollarReDesign.com/submit 
to learn how to submit your ideas.

     

Click here to download:

Nest_Egg_Tabitha_Vevers_after_.zip (637 KB)

"These 'Nest Egg' paintings were done in response to the dwindling value of the dollar. I wanted to see if there was any “value added” by painting directly on top of actual currency. I also liked the idea of presenting the paintings of the broken empty “nest egg” as collaborations with the various Treasury Secretaries, such as Hank Paulson and Larry Summers, whose signatures are on the currency. The work also raises issues about art & commerce: I was curious whether people would think a painting on a $100 bill was worth more than a painting on a $5 bill, even though their real value as an art object is in the painting and not the paper it is painted on." Visit DNA Gallery later this summer for more details.