Tired of the plain $20? Bring on the color!

[Guest Flyboy]

Straight from MSN.com

 

OR IS COMING, and government money makers are hoping for a warmer reception for the changes. The new $20, with its public unveiling set for the spring, is supposed to be in circulation as early as next fall.

      Jackson is first in line for a makeover. After the new $20 makes its debut, the new $50 (Ulysses S. Grant) and the $100s (Benjamin Franklin) will follow in within 18 months.

      In the works is a five-year effort, costing up to $53 million, to educate people about the changes. An important goal is to help distinguish between genuine greenbacks and bogus bills.

      “If we learned anything from the issuance of the $20 in 1998, it is that things that we get used to here, because we see it and work on it, when it is first in the hands of the public it is seen as dramatic,” said Thomas Ferguson, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. “Suddenly, we are asking them to accept something else.”

      Portrait engraver Thomas Hipschen, who is working on the current redesign, remembers spending countless hours during the last makeover meticulously cutting into steel by hand the portraits of Jackson, Franklin and Grant for the new bills.

      Relieved at first when the work was done, he then worried about the public reaction to the changes.

      “You worry about what the press is going to do,” he said. “I have an old clipping file about all the horrible things they said about the portraits that I engraved. Some fun things, too.”

      Everyone is a critic.

      “Well, you are not going to please everybody. This is a situation where everybody is going to weigh in on it,” Hipschen said. “You really have to have a thick skin, I think. But I don’t really take it to heart that much. When my artist friends come back and say, ‘What were you thinking?’ — that kind of hurts to the quick. But the general population, they are going to get on the bandwagon, one way or the other, and I’m just going to have to live with it.”

     

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

      To give the new bills color, the bureau has had to buy five printing presses, to operate in Washington and at a bureau facility in Fort Worth, Texas. To run the new presses, Ferguson said, some existing workers are getting trained, and a few new people have been hired. The Fort Worth plant is being expanded, providing room for the new presses and space for public tours, he said.  

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Adding color to the notes is a challenge.

“It is new, and anything that is new provides another opportunity to do well — or not,” Ferguson said. “There can be color variations that we wouldn’t get with a single color ink, like when we use black or green. So there are additional inspection requirements.”

      Green and black ink is now used on neutral-colored paper. With the makeover, color tints will be added in the neutral areas of the note. Ferguson would not say which colors will be used, but said they will vary by denomination.

      Money makers want the new notes to have an American look and feel, and not be confused with, for instance, the colorful euro, the paper currency of the European Union.

      “When we look at something as fundamentally revolutionary as adding color, going from a currency system that has been monochromatic certainly for all of our lives, our parents’ lives, ... we want to do it in a responsible way that recognizes that tradition,” Ferguson said. “So that when people around the world see that first new U.S. $20, they will know it as a U.S. $20.”

     

‘CONTINUUM OF DESIGN’  

 

 

 

       Recent changes in paper money design have been driven by the desire to thwart high-tech counterfeiters. Over the years, counterfeiters have graduated from offset printing to increasingly sophisticated color copiers, computer scanners, color ink jet printers and publishing-grade software, all readily available.

      Some anti-counterfeiting features included in the last redesign will be retained, the bureau said. They include watermarks that are visible when held up to a light; embedded security threads that glow a color when exposed to an ultraviolet light; and minute images, visible with a magnifying glass, known as microprinting.  

 

 

 

       The new notes may sport more distinct color-shifting ink. In the last redesign, color-shifting ink that looks green when viewed straight on but black at an angle was used in a spot on some notes.

      Even after the greenbacks’ last makeover, which started with a revamped Franklin on the $100 in 1996 and ended with new $5s and $10s in 2000, some collectors still complained that U.S. currency is boring.

      Ferguson has a different take.

      “Our notes now, in the highest sense of the word, are utilitarian,” he said. “U.S. currency is a continuum of design, versus a revolution of design.”

      Under the redesign, the size of the notes will not change and the same faces will appear on the same bills. But the portraits and buildings may be presented differently.

      Hipschen said if he were king for a day, he would put Duke Ellington on one of the bills, would replace all the portraits with different American figures and would make notes longer as they increase in denomination.

      “We could have gone where no man had gone before,” he joked.

 

 

Discuss... and stuff.

[Guest RobJohnstone]

I can't believe they waste our money, developing new colorful money. WTF is that. Can't we spend sensibly, like lowering taxes instead of doing this. Does anyone else have a problem with this?

 

--Rob

[Guest Dr. Wrestlingphysics]

As someone living in Britain, I always thought it a bit odd that US notes were all the same size and colour, which surely makes things easier for forgers and con-artists, and more difficult for the blind or partialy sighted.

Here, they recently brought out a new set of notes, and no-one was bothered as it happens fairly regularly and is seen by the public as a necessitly to keep ahead of counterfeiters.

[Guest CanadianChris]

Why would you want to keep such drab and unimaginative money? I mean...it's all green.

 

Now Australia...THERE'S some cool money.

[Guest J*ingus]

Different colors I could understand, but why different sizes? You'd need differently sized wallets, money drawers, etc, and it would be a big hassle.

[Guest Youth N Asia]

So we're spending money to make our money look stupider?

 

Makes little sense to me. Who cares if out money is boring...it serves one purpose.

[Guest The Metal Maniac]

Bah. Our ten dollar bills are purple, for fuck's sake. The damn things look like Monopoly money.

[Guest treble charged]

I like being able to look into my wallet and see quickly what bills I have in there, without having to closely inspect it. Different sizes is kind of stupid, though.

[Guest Slapnuts00]

I guess it will be nice to quickly identify our bills but I always thought American money looked more professional and serious. It looks like money where a lot of other countries bills look like play monopoly money.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

The article doesn't say anything about changing size, does it?

 

I'm all for some color addition though - American money is so ugly and boring, and if it was even half as colorful or pretty as some European money I'd probably be enticed to hold onto it a little longer

[Guest EricMM]

Money is like the dirtiest thing ever.

 

I don't care what color a bill is, after 10 years, it's gonna be pretty drab.

 

It's pretty funny, that you don't know WHERE that $1 you got from the CVS register has been. At all. Doubley true for quarters and dimes...

[Guest Retro Rob]

I think it is a waste of money to produce "better looking" money because some collectors think the current currency is boring. Honestly, does it matter what the money looks like? Why waste $53 million on this shit? If it's not broken, don't fix it.

[Guest redbaron51]

bah, you guys will forget about it, just like you forgot about the one dollar coin.

[Guest JHawk]

There's a one dollar coin?

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

We should use those gigantic stone rings like that one Pacific island.

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

I think they should dump paper money all together and either use coins or plastic currency.

 

Do away with pennies, nickels and dimes, and just have quarters, dollar coins, 5 dollar coins and 10 dollar coins. The 20, 50 and 100 would be plastic currency.

 

Coins are fairly counterfeit proof and plastic notes would also be hard to counterfeit if they had holograms and embeded smart chips on them.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Counterfeiting a gigantic stone ring would be hard, too. Especially if they put that sort of smart technology on them. I think it would almost be worth carrying them around for the sheer novelty of a big friggin' rock with a hologram and microchip on it.

[Guest ElectricRaccoon]

Bah. Our ten dollar bills are purple, for fuck's sake. The damn things look like Monopoly money.

I always thought the new tens looked more like a gift certificate for a car wash.

[Guest redbaron51]

i like the colourful Canadian money.

 

Too bad its worth jack shit in USA

[Guest Samurai_Goat]

Why don't we just give all our money to kindergardners? Let them color it! It's cheaper, and more fun!

 

(Authors note: 200 posts, babycakes!)

[Guest Mad Dog]

I'm not really for just coins. That's going to be a bitch to haul around.

 

Our current $20 are hard to counteerfiet with the green line that you can see under ultra violent light.

[Guest TJH]

I'm not being merely patriotic here, but Australian currency is the best in the world from both an aesthetic and fraud-proof point of view. Pity 1 Aussie dollar only buys 54 US cents...

 

 

[Guest Incandenza]

I'm not being merely patriotic here, but Australian currency is the best in the world from both an aesthetic and fraud-proof point of view. Pity 1 Aussie dollar only buys 54 US cents...

 

 

Your currency is ghey.

 

I like the stones idea, but I suggest we use what they did in ancient times: SALT.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Are you willing to haul around a 500 pound barrel of salt to buy a loaf of bread?

 

I'd carry a 30 pound stone disc, but not all that salt.

 

How about we split the difference and go with seashells as the new official wampum?

[Guest RevEvil]

There's a one dollar coin?

In the seventies, silver dollars with Eisenhower's image were produced. I have several of these.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Not to mention the Sacajawea dollars in circulation today..

[Guest J*ingus]

And the Susan B. Anthony dollars. They've experimented plenty with dollar coins, but the public has made it pretty clear that they're not interested in them.

[Guest DARRYLXWF]

Australian currency is the coolest looking...it might not be worth much, but it looks cool, and that's all we can ask for.

[Guest bob_barron]

Now that I've been in Canada for four months I've come to love dollar coins- I wish they would become popular here

[Ultimo Dugas 0]

I'd love to be able to buy something with a purple bill. I don't care how foolish or Monopoly-esque it is.

 

I can guarantee you that there will be new ghetto catchphrases for colorful money, thats for sure.