Banknotes for a board game, with our architectures

We worked on this interesting activity in collaboration with the Community of Valle Rotaliana-Koningsberg, which is the area where our school is located. The Community asked us to create some banknotes for a board game.

To realize the banknotes we were inspired by the EURO denominations, which depict architectures inspired by the various eras of history. We have seen that each banknote has:

• SPECIFIC DIMENSIONS referring to 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 Euro
• CHARACTERISTIC COLOR
• ARCHITECTURAL STYLE referring to a HISTORICAL PERIOD, from the oldest (5 euros) to the most modern (500 euros)
• ARCHITECTURE on the front and BRIDGES on the back
• coats of arms, decorations, maps, and the EUROPEAN flag

We maintained the colors and the historical periods according to the EURO scheme that we see below, leaving out the 200 and 500 banknotes

The work took place in four steps:

1. collection of photographic images about the architecture of our territory. Students photographed houses, palaces, churches, bridges, monuments of their country and surroundings.
2. historical research about these architectures and subdivision of images by historical periods from the oldest to the most modern.
3. monochrome drawing, depending on the value of the note, and the historical period, made with colored pencils on tracing paper, using photography as a model.ù
4. digital graphic editing for the creation of our banknotes, using the Google Drawings tool shared in the school GSuite.

After photographing the places of interest in the surrounding, the students did historical researches on each monument, building, church, or bridge. After that they divided the architectures by historical period in order to draw each period with a specific color:

• 5 euro GRAY / PURPLE 1000-1400
• 10 euro RED / PINK 1500-1600
• 20 euro BLUE / LIGHT BLUE 1700-1800
• 50 euro ORANGE / YELLOW early 1900
• 100 euro LIGHT AND DARK GREEN 1950-2000

The drawings were made with colored pencils on tracing paper, copying the shapes, lights, and shadows from the photographs.

The drawings have been photographed and digitally “cut out” to be used in the editing of the banknotes on the computer in Google Drawings.

Below are some examples and different versions of the banknotes digitally processed by the students. Our currency was baptized EUROT from the merger of EURO and ROTALIANA, the name of the plain that welcomes our village and neighboring ones.