The Swiss National Bank unveils a new 50 francs bill

Earlier this week, the Swiss National Bank presented the new design for the Swiss franc, which will be introduced in a near future. It’s always interesting to see new money designs, especially as paper currencies are supposed to disappear in a not-so-near future, because this type of graphic design work involves a lot of unusual constraints.

To design a bill, there are political, cultural, or even historical matters to consider. And I’m not even mentionning all the security issues and special printing techniques involved. There is already a small controversy around the new bank note, there is no recognizable person or historical figure on it. In the previous version, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a Swiss Dada artist, was the only woman to be on a Swiss bank note.

As usual, a contest was launched previously for the new Swiss currency, but the winning design didn’t stay as it was proposed by the design agency. Here is what it looked like.

A look at the previous 50 Swiss francs bills

To give you a bit of perspective, here is what the 50 francs bank note looked like in the past.

1907

1911

1938

1956

1976

1984 (never introduced in the market)

1995

2016