Styles of numismatic design

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Let's start with text. A design can be of text only, but where the text is used artistically.

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Some designs make pictures out of text.

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In other designs, large text is used boldly and artistically alongside figurative, pictorial elements as a key part of the design.



Text can be placed at various angles, even diagonally, to enhance the design and give it a special effect.

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Room still exists for allegorical designs on coins, but they are often viewed as old-fashioned these days.

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Child-like designs and stick figures have often been used on coins, particularly since the 1990s.

Sometimes these are designs by children, but most often they are not.

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Design depicting children often show them in faux-naif fashion.

This style is often more cartoonish than realistic.

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Here we have deliberately simplistic and stylised designs featuring nature.

This is Argentina's latest design series.

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Some artists produce deliberately outlandish designs. These can have a certain charm.

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French engraver Raymond Joly was famous for his quirky designs.

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Back in the 1920s and 1930s, English artist Percy Metcalfe was equally fond of quirky design.

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Three medieval ornamental Celtic bird designs on Irish coins of the 1970s.

Some designs are taken from distinct historical periods.

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Isle of Man. Again, we see a medieval Celtic art style in the ornate tracery.

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Maori art on New Zealand coins.

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Aboriginal-style art on an Australian dollar.

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Ancient art on a Cypriot coin.




And on a coin of Bahrain.