There are few acts of graphic design more daunting than that of creating a new face for an entire country’s currency. Even in a world full of digital payment methods, cash still passes through the hands of essentially every citizen, as well as international travelers. Much like the national flag, it’s a visual representation of a country’s identity. And there are not only political factors to take into account when deciding what– or who –should be represented on bills, but security issues and anti-counterfeiting measures to consider.

All of which makes it particularly impressive that Norway’s brand new currency design manages to be not just passably interesting, but beautiful. (“The world’s best money,” even, to quote one of many laudatory headlines.)





In a competition between eight teams, the central bank of Norway, Norges Bank, chose designs by Oslo-based graphic designers The Metric System and architecture and design firm Snøhetta for the front and back of the new banknotes, respectively. Snøhetta’s design, an abstract, pixelated artwork inspired by ocean winds, looks like no other money in the world.

“Where sea meets air or land, interesting things happen,” says Martin Gran, a partner in Snøhetta’s Oslo office who worked on the design, called “The Beauty of Boundaries.” These horizons served as the inspiration for the pixilated pattern that will appear on Norwegian banknotes starting in 2017 (though the exact design may change slightly as the process moves forward).





This was a project particularly driven by rigid constraints. Norges Bank gave each of the design teams a common theme to work with: the sea. Each denomination was also given a sub-theme, such as the ocean as a source of food. Norway is a country defined by a lengthy coastline–one of the longest in the world at 64,000 miles–and it has centuries of cultural and economic ties to the ocean, from the Vikings to the fishing industry to modern-day oil drilling.

Colors were chosen based on the current color scheme of Norway’s bills, so as not to present Norwegians with too much confusion as they switch to the new bills. And the central bank wanted to upgrade the security level of its currency, meaning the designers had to be conscious of how their designs would eventually need to incorporate anti-counterfeiting measures (which according to Gran, they are not allowed to disclose.)

“You have to take into consideration all the security elements. There’s a template for where all the numbers should be,” Gran explains. “You kind of feel it’s a little bit hard to ideate and to be creative when you have such strong guidelines and direction,” he tells Co.Design. And yet, here, constraints proved to be an engine of creativity, forcing the designers to come up with something unique within the confines of numerous fixed parameters.