Illustration Competition: Banknote for Local Currency in Suomenlinna

As part of Suomenlinna Money Lab project we are looking for an illustrator to create a visual thematic for a new local currency called the Kuula (cannonball) for the Finnish island of Suomenlinna.

 

Aim & objective:

The island is unique maritime fortress, designated as a World Heritage site with a fascinating and multi-layered history. Every year it receives 750,000 tourists who come to visit the island via a small ferry from Helsinki. It is also a living island with 800 local residents as well as a naval academy and an open prison.

We are looking for three banknote designs for the one (1), three (3) and nine (9) Kuula banknotes. These bank notes will not be legal tender but rather a complementary local currency that will only be used on this island. We will require a front and back design for each of the banknotes. We imagine that the front of the banknotes will carry a unique illustration, while the back will be standard and carry a numerical representation as well as some explanatory text. There might also be a need for QR code as well as some special security features on this standard side. The physical size and format of the notes should be similar to a normal banknote, to fit into wallets and cash registers.

The visual theme of the banknote should aim to capture the identity of the island as ‘Living Heritage’, which represents the life of people on the island, shaped by the physical and social environment as well as its history. We are looking for a contemporary re-imagining of this living heritage captured in an illustration. The audience for the banknote will be both tourists coming to the island expecting to see the history of the island, as well as the local people who are very familiar with the iconography of the place. The design should try to capture something of both these different understandings of the island. For inspiration we recommend looking at the tourist information website (www.suomenlinna.fi) as well as the residents association website (www.viapori.fi). For money designs we recommend looking at the Euro designs created by Erik Bruun (http://www.admirabledesign.com/Serie-No6).

 

 All artwork received will be placed under Attribution, Noncommercial Creative Commons license (see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) . Only the copyrights of the winner's proposal will have to be transfered entirely to Pixelache. After the competition, all the entries will be given visibility through an exhibition in the context of Suomenlinna Money Lab / Pixelache related events during 2012. They will also be exhibited online on websites, always clearly attibuted to the authors

 

The deadline for emailing entries is the 16th of March 2012 We encourage people who are interested in making a proposal for the competition to get in touch with us now, before the deadline to discuss preliminary ideas and ask for additional information. Contact us at moneylab@pixelache.ac Entries should be emailed to moneylab@pixelache.ac for the 16th March 2012 deadline with the following: - A short text explaining your design themematic - Images of the the front and back sides for each of the three banknote designs - Your contact information Either send the files as an attachment (10meg max) or send a link to a filesharing location on a service (such as Dropbox). Members of the  Jury, led by Christian Nold, are members of Suomenlinna community; Liina Kuittinen, Seppo Lundgren and Aleksi Jaakkola. Apart from sketches sent to Christian Nold beforehand, all works are presented to the Jury anonymously. The prize money will be paid to the winning illustrator on receipt of high-res, print ready artwork which needs to be produced in consultation with the artist Christian Nold.