2018-11-02 Fri

Norway released new 50 and 500 kroner banknotes, featuring pixelated images of elements that represent the country beautifully. In 2014, the designs created by architecture studio Snøhetta were selected by the Central Bank of Norway. New 100 and 200 notes from the series were released in 2017. This is the 8th banknote series for the nation and the first one to not depict portraits of people.

50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 kroner banknotes are green, red, blue, orange and purple in colour respectively. Norway has the longest coastline in Europe and the designs perfectly represent this fact. The reverse side of these notes feature images of fish, sailing vessels, waves etc. and are designed by graphics studio Metric Design and illustrator Terje Tønnesen.

Snøhetta's idea was to depict boundaries between sea and land, between land and air and between air and sea. The designs are inspired by ancient mosaic artefacts of coloured glass or stone intertwined by the contemporary aspect of pixels. The elements try to connect the old with new.

The Beaufort scale is an empirical scale which measures wind speeds. Certain elements try to highlight this scale as well. The wind is gentle on the 50 kroner note as it depicts dense cubic configuration with a milder wave pattern. A strong wind is represented on the 500 kroner note as it contains long rectangles with fierce waves.

Apart from the brilliant designs, the notes also comply with the latest security standards. The last note in this series would be the 1000 kroner note which will be released in 2019.

Image Courtesy: Google Images