This map may help you to travel around my portfolio. It is highly recommended to deviate from the highlighted path. You can cross borders, go back and forth, run round in circles, take pictures, or a nap, do anything you want. Except littering and peeing! Here you’ll find a bigger version. Here, you’ll find the dull version.
In troubled times, the value of money takes a crash dive. Those slick financial penguins haven’t carried it so far yet that we have to push wheelbarrows full of cash to the bakery to buy a pistolet, but I wouldn’t sleep on both ears yet. Just take a look at both World Wars, not that long ago. With the German economy in tatters after World War One, money was virtually worthless. Cities, towns and even businesses had to issue their own currency. The general term of this inflationary currency was ‘Notgeld’, German for “Emergency Money”. It was not legal, but rather a mutually-accepted means of payment in local shops (in order to avoid wheelbarrow tableaus).
But here comes the nice thing – a crisis always has a bright side – Notgeld substantially fired the imagination among the German population. Everything was used to pay with: coins, leather, silk, linen, even aluminium foil, coil, porcelain and playing cards! And the designs were (mostly) created by anonymous commercial artists and local printers. They even wrote mini messages on the notes.
And much more here.
Sources: Designobserver, Wikipedia and flickr
We are Gini Rose, Julia and Suzy. We draw, take pictures, film, and write (in English or Dutch) about everything we are intrigued by. We are never bored. Our hobby is to search for that kind of reality which may be elusive until the right kind of imagination falls upon it. We like to go outside. We also like to party. Want to know more? About is your button. Or click here to read our mighty mission statement. This page is our magazine, or a cabinet of views, viewpoints and new work. Here you'll find the RSS feed to stay updated. For an overview of our portfolio, take a dive into the deepsea..
