For this assignment, we were prompted to redesign a currency for a nation/culture of our
choice. Being an avid travel-fiend, I instantly went with one of the countries that is on my bucket list: Indonesia. Indonesia is fascinating to me for a multitude of reasons - the culture, religion, landscape, heritage, etc. It’s a place that is so full of personality and love, and I’m drawn to it.
With redesigning the Indonesian Rupiah, I had to make several adjustments in order to modernize the designs. Going into the sketches, I knew that I wanted layers of images in the designs of the bills. Each denomination would have a different person on the top layer with a background image of some part of the culture. The 1,000 RP bill displays an image of the country’s first president: Sukarno, with a background of one of the most famous temples of Bali. The 2,000 RP bill has a pendet dancer on the front with an image of palm trees in the background. The 5,000 RP bill portrays an image of Johannes van den Bosch, a Dutch member of present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. The background of this denomination is an image of a coral reef. The 10,000 RP bill has an image of a happy buddha with the capital, Jakarta, shown in the background.
To achieve a consistency with these designs, I used the same template for the symbols and text on each bill. Each of the images were modified using the same image trace preset, and the images on each denomination are covered with different colored gradient. Each of the bills has a security seal running vertically up the paper, with a gold butterfly watermark. Each denomination has the butterfly in a different place, working to combat counterfeit.
