Designers of all types of things such as company logos, car colors, clothes and packaging either create trends or follow trends. The same is true for banknotes. Money.co.uk conducted an in depth study of the most common colors and design features used in banknotes.
Color Spectrum
They looked at the design of nearly 1,400 hundred currently circulating banknotes. The most common colors used centered on the colors humans see best green, yellow and blues which are right in the middle of the visible spectrum. By this measure, the Rwanda 5000 franc, which is a deep red is at one end of the spectrum. The Samoa 50 Tala (purple) is at the other end.
Source: Banknote World
Source: Banknote World
Familiar Designs
Not surprising, nearly 1,000 of the banknotes had portraits or vignettes of people and more than half of those are politicians. In addition, about 400 banknotes showed royalty. What surprised me is that there were 140 banknotes that had writers in the designs. I don’t think that anyone will be surprised to learn that Queen Elizabeth is on 45 banknotes in 11 countries. Only 7% of the notes highlighted women.
Source: Banknote World
Buildings, flowers, fish and animals are very common design on banknotes. As a result the eagle is the most common animals used. 41 countries use this proud and majestic bird.
Something worth noting is that nearly 25% of all banknote types are made with polymer substrate. The quantity of total banknotes is probably still less than 10% however it is amazing that polymer has had such strong design penetration.
Source: Banknote World
The study shows that there are common design themes that seem to be universal however the use of polymer and the use of birds and flowers seems to be a strong trend for newer banknotes.
