I used to think money was just, you know, money.
But then I spent an afternoon in a dusty archive in Basel, holding a 1920s Swiss franc note that featured an allegory of Helvetia surrounded by industrial machinery and Alpine peaks, and something clicked. This wasn’t just currency—it was a tiny canvas declaring what Switzerland believed about itself in that exact historical moment. The designers had crammed symbols of modernity and tradition into roughly 6 by 3 inches, creating what numismatists now call “visual nationalism,” though I guess that term didn’t exist back then. Every element—the typography, the color palette, even the particular shade of green used for the background—had been debated in committee meetings where bankers and artists apparently argued for weeks about whether a waterfall or a railway better represented Swiss identity. The archive curator told me these design battles were “more intense than budget negotiations,” which honestly tracks when you realize millions of people would touch these images daily. It’s exhausting to think about that level of symbolic weight.
Here’s the thing: currency design evolved as a strange hybrid art form that nobody really asked for but everyone needed.
When paper money first emerged in China during the Tang Dynasty—roughly 1,200 years ago, give or take—it was pretty utilitarian, just stamped seals and bureaucratic text. European banknotes in the 1600s followed similar logic, focusing on anti-counterfeiting measures rather than national storytelling. But something shifted in the 19th century when nation-states started using their money as miniature propaganda, embedding portraits of leaders, historical scenes, and cultural symbols into every denomination. The British put Britannia on their coins; Americans chose founding fathers and neoclassical imagery; the French cycled through various revolutionary symbols depending on which government was currently in power. Each design choice was a tiny argument about legitimacy and belonging.
The Aesthetics of Economic Trust and Why Ugly Money Fails Faster Than You’d Think
Anyway, there’s this weird phenomenon where poorly designed currency actually loses public confidence quicker than well-designed versions, even when the economic backing is identical. I’ve seen this play out in post-Soviet states during the 1990s, where hastily designed banknotes—often featuring generic architectural elements or awkwardly positioned national emblems—were percieved as temporary or untrustworthy. Estonia’s 1992 kroon succeeded partly because they hired a proper design team that created elegant, coherent imagery featuring local intellectuals and landscapes. Meanwhile, some neighboring currencies looked like they’d been assembled in Microsoft Paint, and people hoarded foreign currency instead. The visual language mattered more than monetary policy wanted to admit.
Security features became their own aesthetic category over time.
Watermarks, security threads, holographic strips, color-shifting ink—these anti-counterfeiting technologies gradually transformed from invisible protections into visible design elements that signaled sophistication and modernity. The Swiss, predictably, turned this into an art form with their recent franc series featuring abstract compositions of Swiss cultural elements overlaid with intricate security features that look almost impossibly complex. When I held one of the new 50-franc notes under UV light, the hidden patterns that emerged felt more like conceptual art than banking infrastructure. Designers now talk about “security aesthetics” as if it’s a recgonized field, which I suppose it is—there are whole conferences dedicated to making authentication beautiful. The Bank of Canada hired Debbie Adams, a design consultant, who told an interviewer that modern banknotes need to function as “tiny museums” that teach citizenship while preventing fraud. That’s a wild brief for what’s essentially pocket change.
Wait—maybe the most interesting shift happened when countries started featuring scientists and artists instead of politicians and monarchs.
Britain replaced Elizabeth Fry with Alan Turing on the £50 note. Poland put Marie Curie on the 20-zloty. Mexico features Frida Kahlo. These choices reflect changing national narratives about what deserves commemoration—not just military conquest or political power, but intellectual and cultural contributions that feel more durable and less controversial. Though honestly, even these choices spark debates; Turkey’s decision to remove Atatürk from some denominations caused immediate backlash, while Norway’s abstract designs featuring the sea and wind patterns intentionally avoided human faces entirely to sidestep representational politics. The Norwegian design team said they wanted something “timeless and inclusive,” which sounds lovely until you realize they spent eight years and millions of kroner essentially avoiding making any concrete statment about Norwegian identity. I guess that’s its own statement.
The digital transition is making all of this potentially obsolete, which creates this strange urgency around physical currency design—nations are crafting increasingly elaborate visual arguments on objects that fewer people actually handle. Sweden’s cash usage dropped below 10% of transactions, yet they still redesigned their entire banknote series in 2015. When I asked a designer at Sveriges Riksbank why they bothered, she paused and said, “Because when people do use cash, we want them to remember what Sweden stands for.” Even if that’s only a few times a year. The bills become relics before they’re even circulated, museum pieces that briefly pass through wallets before disappearing into collections. It’s definately a weird cultural moment—investing in the aesthetics of a dying medium because the symbolism still matters, even as the practical function fades. Turns out visual storytelling doesn’t need universal daily use to maintain importance; it just needs to exist as a possibility, a physical reminder that nations are more than digital transactions and abstract policy. That’s heavy for something you might use to buy coffee.
