Students Design Neighborhood Currencies
November 16, 2009
Last month, students in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design class were assigned the task of designing their own local currency. Inspired by Ithaca Hours and BerkShares, students pulled a neighborhood out of a hat, and were asked to research their neighborhood to determine what characteristics should be represented on its currency.
The color, shape, and texture of the resulting designs reflect the diversity of the various neighborhoods. Below, a few students talk about the thinking behind their designs. All of the students’ local currencies are currently on display in the department.
Stephanie Aaron: Upper East Side
My local currency is for the Upper East Side, which is home to more museums than any other neighborhood in New York City. The currency’s name is the “Mula,” which is an acronym for, “Museums: our Local Asset.” The currency comes in denominations of five, ten and twenty Mula, and each museum would put its art on a set of the three denominations, yielding upwards of thirty different designs. The design of the Mula is based on the golden section, and the colors used are the three primary and three secondary colors. The three typefaces on the Mula were all created by Hofler Frere-Jones, a New York City firm.
Kristin Graefe: Midtown
This local currency is designed for midtown Manhattan. The back of the notes features the map of midtown Manhattan while the front has one famous building in that part of Midtown on it. By putting all notes together the whole map of Manhattan is shown. Each of the banknotes has its own color and is issued in $100 (Empire State Building), $50 (Grand Central Station), $20 (New York Public Library), $10 (Museum of Modern Art), $5 (St. Patricks Cathedral).
Michael Katayama: Financial District
The Financial District is known for its day traders and office workers. But, I wanted to focus on the people who make the neighborhood their home. There is an increasing number of young couples buying their first homes and starting families.
For the design, I took photos of the neighborhood and found some interesting patterns and landmarks. I tried to find a balance between commerce and family life by using a muted natural color palette and choice of type. The geometric patterns represent the energy of the neighborhood.
Russell Maschmeyer: Little Italy
Little Italy has shrunk over the past 50 years from a rich, wide area of Italian-American heritage and family life to a three block row of tourist-trap restaurants. So my goal in designing a local currency for the all-but-gone neighborhood was to establish a link between using the currency and reversing the trend of encroachment from the surrounding neighborhoods. To create that link I not only designed bills that reflect periods in Italian design and typography, but also turned the bills themselves into a real map of Little Italy, which grows in size as the denomination grows with it. When visitors spend the higher denominations within the community, its directly suggested that they’re acting to tangibly re-grow the boundaries of the neighborhood to the size suggested on the denomination. It’s an economic and cultural battle cry of sorts.
Eric St. Onge: Chelsea
Rather than designing a currency for the large and diverse neighborhood of Chelsea, I decided to focus in and design a currency for one building in that neighborhood: Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market was built as a factory for Nabisco, but it now hosts offices, grocery stores, retail shops, and restaurants. The building’s architecture is inspired by its factory roots, so I thought it would be interesting to design a currency inspired by its former factory products. Each denomination in my currency adopts the form factor of a Nabisco cracker: Nilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Oreo Cookies, Ritz Crackers, and Saltine Crackers. The geometric design from the face of the Oreo Cookie is used to tie all five of the designs together.
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