Do you know about the design of the banknotes you use every day? Let’s talk about cash with Julian.

De La Rue is a company founded over 200 years, provide products and services of cash chain to the governments, central banks and commercial organizations around the world from designing the banknotes, integrating, manufacturing to delivering the cash. In the January of 2018, De La Rue had cooperated with MA Fashion Design student of Winchester School of Art by providing special banknotes to design an appealing and shining dress.

We use cash in our daily life but seldom notice the details and the design on the banknotes and where are the ideas from. This time Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton had a chance to invite Julian Payne, the creative director of De La Rue, to talk about cash on the Fashion and Sustainability Forum, on the 7th of March 2018, before the Winchester Fashion Week.

After the forum, one of our student journalists, Hsiu-Jung, had taken a few minutes to interview with Julian to talk more about the cash.

H: De La Rue is a company works with the governments, central banks, and commercial organizations worldwide. So, what is the motivation for De La Rue to cooperate with the Winchester School of Art?

J: For De La Rue, work with Winchester School of Art is really helpful because I own a design studio and they are working with creative people that come through creative education. It is really helpful for cooperation for us and we work on couples of projects already and the dress is the latest and we also design the currency. It is the latest and I hope to continue to cooperate with the Winchester School of Art.

H: Where are the ideas for designing the currency come from? And how long does it take from design, manufacture to deliver the currency?

J: That comes from all over. The designers will go to the country to spend lots of time with the customers to understand the cultures that can be materials, can be history, or architectures. Sometimes, customers have very clear own ideas, so we need these particular motives on their own. The images are all about understanding the cultures of the customers country. For the other aspects, we are looking at what we use during the moment, that is important how the money handles? How it stores in the pocket/wallet? How many cash machines are there in the country? Do you make payment on the machines or payment to be put in the markets or shops? All these cases help you decide how the currency can be designed. And the time depends on different countries because some governments move very quickly, and we should consider the process how they do it, some legal processes need to get difficultly committed and take time to approve to do it. The typical time from ideas to banknotes is 2-3 years.