Paper money was invented in China in 1023, or so the story goes. Yet we have no idea what those early banknotes looked like. Had the emperor at the time possessed the technical means, he would surely have printed his own portrait on them—just as Mao Zedong, a thousand years later, greets consumers with his Mona Lisa–like smile from the front of every Chinese banknote still in circulation in 2008.
That same year, we met the Swiss banknote designer Roger Pfund, who was more than pleased to talk about the design of Chinese paper money: the yuan.
Roger Pfund, the Swiss illustrator and banknote designer whose name seems almost predestined for his profession, delights in the anonymity of cash. No one can trace what he does with his money, he says during a conversation on the heat-soaked terrace of the Hilton Beijing in May 2008. We sit at a table, in front of us one—then two, then three—bottles of perfectly chilled, wonderful white wine. Pfund is in Beijing to open an exhibition of his work. Alongside graphic designs of shares and banknotes, he is presenting a brand-new Fiat, designed by him, which he paints with broad strokes of automotive lacquer. The car is to be auctioned off at a charity event in support of victims of the Sichuan earthquake. He is also meeting officials from the Chinese Ministry of the Interior, who intend to commission him to design China’s new passport.
He has already designed the Swiss passport and, as the designer, his name appears on every Swiss identity document. In a way, every Swiss citizen carries a small piece of Roger Pfund with them as a badge of good design taste—almost like a national badge of good design taste..
A versatile and prolific designer, Pfund and his team took part in the competition to design the Euro. The contest was ultimately won by the Austrian Robert Kalina, whose faceless design followed the brief precisely, depicting bridges and façades in their respective architectural epochs. Pfund makes no secret of his disdain for this approach. Money, he argues, is a medium that bears the weight of the state, and the issuing state must be willing to show its face—literally—through design and representation.
Just as Pfund had adorned the last French 50-franc note with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, he also wanted to portray key European figures on the Euro banknotes. He did not win that battle, but in the years that followed, he succeeded elsewhere: in Argentina. The portrait of Evita Perón that graces the Argentine 100-peso bill is rendered—unmistakably—in Roger Pfund’s design.