Girl About Globe | No more getting horizontal?

Linda Kennedy

New bank notes were unveiled in Hong Kong recently, with the designs in vertical layout for the first time. 

Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland will launch bills with a vertical design in 2019. (This is good. They’re re-thinking a standard border arrangement. Brexit may require such an attitude.)

And Canada printed a vertically-oriented bank note earlier this year, featuring civil rights icon Viola Desmond.

It’s a cash revolution. Well, a cash 90 degree turn. I’m almost expecting the USA to make the $20 note vertical and polymer: ‘Stiff and up standing’ – Trump’s phallic financial response to the attempt to have women on US bank notes. Maybe he’d consent to a six-foot tall supermodel on a vertical bank note. Or tweet:

@realDonaldTrump:

‘If vertical bank notes need tall images – women in high heels! I’m a genius FEMINIST!!’

Some places would do well with vertical money: Nepal, as they could feature Mount Everest. Dubai, seeing as the Burj Khalifa is simply made for vertical notes. And in Macau, an image of The Parisian could certainly fill a vertical bill.

But there could be consequences. If the Bank of England, the main issuer of sterling, went vertical, the British ten pound note would likely carry a full-length image of writer Jane Austen. An ankle on sterling? Makes it a sexy currency for the first time in ages. Winston Churchill would spill over the edges of a vertical version of the five pound note, undermining his reputation for being a man on whom you can rely to respect a border. And it’s a mighty burden for icons of the future: if you’ve any hope of getting on a bank note, you have to watch your weight. Being honoured in portrait layout is unforgiving.

Practical issues. Will vertical notes fold differently? Roll differently? Will your wads change shape prompting people to ask ‘is that a y-axis in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’

And you never know about political risks. The prospect might encourage the Netherlands to leave the EU. Free from the Euro, they could print vertical notes on which to honour their tall population. A true people’s currency. 

Secular society could even be at peril. Cathedrals are steeply deeply vertical, and their note appeal might augur a religious revival. 

The reasons behind the move to a new orientation need pinning down. Perhaps social media plays a part. Is vertical video format turning Instagram itself into an influencer?

Or is this a last push by banknote designers to remain relevant? In China, mobile payments dominate. In other countries, debit and credit cards are becoming preferred to physical money. New note designs may be a bid to create financial stationery, a strategy based on the fact that some people favour books over reading online because of the book cover, or albums over downloaded music, in part because of the sleeve design. Could a pretty banknote charm people away from cards and apps? If not, the design battles of the future may be over your credit card.

The Ulster Bank designers said they were challenging convention. In Hong Kong, no mention of rebellion from the authorities; instead, it maintained vertical design enabled ‘aesthetic presentation of the subject’.

Cantonese opera is the subject of one HK note; tea-gathering’ is another. To those, I would add baijiu-drinking. Featuring it would challenge the convention of what’s celebrated in Chinese culture and, moreover, require one solitary landscape design among the new notes. No one drinking baijiu stays vertical for long. That note would keep horizontal on the table.  Just while we see how the land lies.