Unused designs of common sides

[Illioplius]

Hi all.

You might consider this interesting: http://coinz.eu/eur/1_eur/index_eur_en.php

What do you think about these designs? Would you like to see one of them at the euro coins? Or do you think current design is better?

[augsburger]

To be honest I think the current design is better than all of those. I look at them and see them for the first time they are not bad, but a lot of them remind of say Brazilian coins or other coins. I think the map of Europe is the best thing to have on the Euro coins. People don't want to have something from one country and not another on the coins, so the likes of Leonardo's man picture is completely out, and having generic bridges like on the Euro banknotes I don't like at all.

[paisepagal]

The 1st row looks almot sovietique
The 3rd row looks somehow nordic (norwegian and swedish)
The 5th row reminds me of pre-euro Belgium coins looking at the style of the font.
The 7th row seems to hark back to old Austrian coins

Whats common though is that all of them look too busy and none of them consistently convey the "european idea" .... the map of the current coins may be a bit boring. however they strike a right balance IMO.

[Illioplius]

One should bear in mind that the current design wasn't the one that won the competition. To be honest, I can't understand how could won that design that have actually won. It depicted just then-member states of the EU and everybody knew that the EU will enlarge. So, in my opinion, the original designs of common sides is a nice example of not thinking to the future. After several years, the design had to be changed which itself is an evidence of its inappropriateness. Not mentioning that the current design doesn't depict Iceland that someday might become a member.

Also, the designs of 1-cent, 2-cent and 5-cent coins weren't changed, so the "original" European Union is still higlighted, irrespective of the members that joined later...

Regarding the designs which didn't won the competition, I like the first row and the last row. They have big enough numerals to be distinguished easily and they all depict something interesting, not just a map. All other designs are (1) boring, or (2) culturally biased, or (3) they have too small numerals at some of the coins.

[chrisild]

The job of the designers for the common sides was to come up with something that would be appealing and hopefully familiar for most people in the euro area. When you keep in mind that, for the euro notes, depicting existing bridges and arches was out of the question because it would have lead to debates about what place from which country should or should not be on which denomination, the idea to use a map as the dominant element on the coins is fine.

Those other designs have been shown in the "Euro Coins Genesis" exhibition, in Cyprus 2006 for example. Roughly at the same time they were part of an exhibition in Austria (folder, PDF) that also showed designs from the "first round" of the competition, where artists had been invited to design both sides. Basically I like the concept with one country specific and one common design.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a map that gets "updated" from time to time. Many countries issue new coins - and that also means new or updated designs - every couple of years, so why not do it here too? Iceland is not depicted, right. So what? The map on the second coin series shows a geographic map, and it would have been difficult to somehow squeeze Iceland in there. Sure, if the country was an EU member state, it would have to be depicted somehow. But despite the fact that the membership negotiations are (formally) still going on, the country will not be in the EU in the foreseeable future, much less have the euro.

So I like Luc Luycx's designs, with one exception: He uses twelve stars anyway on each piece, so why not arrange them like the Stars of Europe? Then we would have had the entire other side for a denomination specific and country specific look. (Think €2 commems.) Ah well. Of those posted here, I also like the designs in the first row because of the architectural elements - links to the euro notes so to say. For similar reasons the third row is good too in my opinion; we could have left the Vitruvian Man out as that is not "generic" but "specific". The others, hmm.

Christian