Money-Minded

When I'm given a lot of leash in assignments, my tendency is to subscribe to one of three approaches: morbidity, humor, or morbid humor (my favorite). I'm not sure which of those this currency redesigning project is falling under.

I began thinking about not just our currency in it's physical sense, but our country's wealth and how it came to be. Conclusively, we are primarily a nation built on the resources and labor of other peoples. I understand that now our pieces of paper are really more of an idea based on "trust" and that the wealth doesn't necessarily exist in the same state it once did, but I don't think I'm going to touch that issue with this. Seems unfruitful.

I'd like to redesign our currency with a particular dark frankness.

Instead of presidents or political leaders or thinkers, there will be images of workers from other countries or images representing the U.S.'s major industries. For example, there will be one bill about the oil industry. The hard part of this is choosing which people and which industries to represent. We've been all over the place this past century. Grief.

This is the first I've done:

It's rather jolly so far, but I'd I'm considering putting the quote by Sam Walton on the front: "I pay low wages. I can take advantage of that. We are going to be successful..." But I feel like I could find something more deeply sinister. In general, I feel it needs more text anyway. On the back, which doesn't exist yet, I'm considering having images of George Pullman to compare the two men and the similarity of their business models.

This project is eating up my time in one yummy chomp. At least I'm enjoying it.