Currency Symbolism
From the 1980s, I have been hearing about India becoming a super-power and stuff. Then, it used to be “by 2000”. That is, by the year 2000, we will be the super-power because one Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was making plans for that. Later, as 2000 approached and actually went by, it became 2020. Dreams, Abdul Kalam and all that.
From the 1990s there is also talk about some IT Super power thing, whatever it means. Recently someone was saying that we are already one. I was so glad and almost had an orgasmic feeling. Just think about this, we (in the metros) do not have power for 4-5 hours a day to run our lights but still are a super power. Nearing orgasm? Getting close? Good.
One more such thing happened recently - the announcement of a currency symbol for India. Apparently, this was the final thing needed to become an economic super power. Now that we have one, one more orgasm is due.
A competition was announced one year back to design a symbol for Indian Rupee and in June 2010, there was news everywhere that 5 logos had been shortlisted and the Government was going to decide the symbol that day itself.
And then suddenly in July, the final symbol was announced
Did you notice that this is not one of the 5 shortlisted? It does not matter, because this is the least of the controversies - there are a lot more.! The jury apparently spent a whopping 20 SECONDS for each symbol to be evaluated - OMG :)
Well, now that some symbol has been decided, I was looking at the design rationale and found this link with a presentation. (There is actually a PDF with more details but I am not able to locate the link to it).
Some funny things in the rationale:
Apparently the 2 lines on top is something “unique” with Devanagiri and stuff. HaHa, if you see slide No 10, you see that most currencies have 2 lines in their symbol - not on top, that is all.
The 2 lines are somewhere show the tri-color concept… Grr… How, Sir, How?
And then yeah, the 2 lines also show “equality”… Really? 1 Rupee = 2 Yen is not equality. 1 Rupee = 1 Yen is what is equality I thought.
There is a lot of funda thrown in about the design concept, the strokes, reverse effect, slant etc. I am not an expert so let me not comment - but I am confident they are equally funny.
The 2 lines also show that income/expenditure are like 2 parallel lines in life that never meet… (Okay, I made this up - come on, I too can think creatively!)
I have nothing against the person who designed it but only on some of the reasons mentioned — They sound more MBA-ish to me than from a design school - May be they are also same?
BTW, given our inflation rates, in my opinion, the best symbol is what is seen here:
(Courtesy:: Krish Ashok)
