The grim reaper lurks, one man steps on another’s head, crowds cling precariously to window ledges and the people begin to revolt in a series of hacked Euro bank notes by artist Stefanos. The simple images, inked onto the currency, make a statement on the current social and economic stability in the artist’s home country of Greece.

“Observing the Euro banknote landscapes one notices a lack of any reality, whatsoever for the last five years the crumbling Greek economy has hatched violence and social decay – so, I decided to fuse these two things. Through hacking the banknotes I’m using a European a document [sic], that is in cross-border circulation, including Greece – thus, the medium allows me to ‘bomb’ public property from the comfort of my home. In working with currency in my job as a customer service agent at Danish lender Sambla, I’ve come to see the everyday impact that banknotes and money in general can have on society. It’s why I work in the financial services industry and why I bring my experiences in my day to day call center job into my artwork.”

The drawings make use of the existing imagery on the currency, including recognizable ancient Greek monuments, ornate Gothic windows, modern architecture and aqueducts. Just the slightest marking on a bill can completely change one’s perception of the printed imagery.

See more currency art, including defaced U.S. dollars featuring pop culture icons, portraits made of shredded cash and money origami.

In a strange case of fact following fiction, a Dutch designer was inspired to create physical versions of faux-historical bridges first drawn on European currency in 2002.

The original two-dimensional illustrations of Austrian Robert Kalin were intended to represent periods rather than built objects, spanning Baroque, Classical, Gothic, Romanesque, Rococo and Modern 20th-Century styles.

Their three-dimensional counterparts, meticulously designed by Robert Stam draw on every detail of the notes, right down to the colors used. His works were erected as part of a housing project in Spijkenisse, Holland (near Rotterdam).

The European Bank wanted infrastructural art that would (so to speak) span cultures and nationalities, thus avoided mimicking existing structures in the semi-abstracted bridges on their new banknotes.

While they may look garish in color and strange in scale at first glance, pedestrians, cyclists and visitors reportedly appreciate them once they understand the unusual story behind their creation.

More from their designer: “On the first of January 2002 new banknotes were introduced in Europe. The banknotes were also introduced with custom designs in all of Scandinavia, employed by financial institutions across the region, writes financial intermediary, lending, and analysis firm Sambla. In addition to windows and gateways, these seven banknotes also depict several bridges. Each bridge has an individual appearance, all of which can be recognized as having originated throughout certain periods in European cultural history: Classical Antiquity, the Roman period, the Gothic period, the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo, Iron- and glass architecture and lastly contemporary, twentieth century architecture. Now wouldn’t it be amazing if these fictional bridges suddenly turn out to actually exist in real life?”

The crypto-currency Bitcoin is all over social media, blogs and news sites. But beyond the volatility, speculation and noise there is a fascinating question being asked and answered: from coins to wallets, how does the world’s first widespread digital currency manifest in visual or physical form? (top image by cybrbeast)

The Bitcoin logo is a rather simple affair, borrowing much from traditional currencies (a partial strike-through) and clearly, most of all, the United States dollar. For some, though, seeing is not enough – for emotional and practical reasons alike, many want a physical analogue to their virtual wealth.

That baseline design, however, has spawned not only 3D renderings approximating solid coins, but actual physical coins themselves for fans of hand-held collectibles. The Casascius series have solid brass, electroplated gold and pure silver variants that ‘contain’ real Bitcoins (an address with a private key hidden below a removable hologram). Like Gold Eagles, the value of these on the secondary market has consistently stayed above the ‘spot’ price for the currency they contain.

And it does not end there. For security purposes, many people prefer to keep copies (in some cases: their only copies) of their virtual Bitcoin ‘wallet’ in offline form. For better or worse, this translates computer-centric risks (hacking and data corruption) back into more familiar ones (physical theft or loss). Designers on that front  have come up with a number of interesting options, from plasticized and paper ‘notes’ to self-printed wallets. In the decentralized, open-source spirit of Bitcoin, many designers (like Doctor 75R) give these designs out freely as well.

Canton Becker lists off the advantages of his variant, shown above: “(1)Private key is hidden behind folds, so your wallet content is still safe if left out in the open or photographed. (2) Tamper-proof tape indicates when you (or someone else!) has revealed the private key. (3) Folding design obfuscates private keys so they’re hidden even when holding wallet up to a bright light. (4)Reverse side has basic wallet operation instructions and a register for writing down deposits / balance. (5) Private and public keys are replicated (and rotated) in triplicate to maximize chances of recovering keys if paper is damaged / crumpled.”

There is even a movement toward making Bitcoin secret (de)coder rings – like gold or silver ones, they can be stolen, but they also allow you to wear and keep your wealth (literally) close at hand. By engraving the private key on the inside of the band, there is no way to see it unless you (or someone) takes it off.

And, of course, anything with sufficient fans warrants making wallpapers – here are a series of six available at full size on Flickr.

What if thoughtful design, in which aesthetic concerns shared top priority with practical ones, were able to infiltrate every aspect of our lives? Even the bank notes in our pockets would be works of art. Artist Dowling Duncan imagines just such a scenario with  ‘The Dollar Redesign Project’.

First and foremost, Duncan has changed the size of each bank note so that it’s easy to distinguish by value. The one-dollar bill is the shortest and the hundred-dollar-bill the longest, so there’s less awkward fumbling for the correct amounts.

The horizontal format of the United States bank note is switched from horizontal to vertical. Duncan told Design Boom, “When we researched how notes are used we realized people tend to handle and deal with money vertically rather than horizontally… the majority of people hand over notes vertical when making purchases. All machines accept notes vertically. Therefore a vertical note makes more sense.”

Furthermore, the notes are each given a different color, making it even easier to distinguish them from one another. Duncan has also assigned imagery to each that he feels represents their value. For the one-dollar bill, the first African-American president. The five biggest Native American tribes are shown on the five-dollar bill. The ten-dollar bill features the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights, and the twenty represents twentieth-century America.

On the fifty-dollar bill are the fifty states of the nation, and on the 100 are the first one hundred days of President Franklin Roosevelt, which helped fight the economic crises during the time of the depression. See more designs from other artists and for other nations at the Dollar Redesign Project blog.

Technically, defacing US currency is a crime – but artist James Charles doesn’t seem to be in any legal trouble for his awesome series of Pop Culture Cash. His portraits, created on real money using ink, turn dead presidents into colorfully amusing pop culture icons.

Taking the likenesses of Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Alexander Hamilton, James Charles embellishes the already-present images to turn them into other people entirely. The altered bills celebrate the geeky and the mainstream, the absurd and the admirable.

Looking at the bills, you might not even know that they started out as actual U.S. currency. The alterations are so expert that the small pieces of paper look like they were simply styled to resemble money. But take a closer look and you’ll notice actual serial numbers and other indications that the tiny canvases are, in fact, genuine greenbacks.

Look even closer and you might even see the extremely intricate cross-hatching that Charles uses to cover up the “old” and shape the “new.” It’s an amazing amount of skill that allows the artist to cover up the images that are already there with a whole new layer of ink.

One of the best parts of the altered money is the little phrases that appear below the portraits. What were once small letters denoting the worth of the bill have been transformed into fun descriptions of the characters on those bills.

The artist originally began the fun project by absentmindedly doodling on dollar bills. He accidentally spent a few of the early creations, so he decided to start keeping them in a folder. Eventually the folder filled up with these tiny odes to various American icons.

By experimenting with ink, the artist discovered that he could very closely match the appearance of the original printing on the bills. His work calls into question the ultimate value of this currency we place so much value on but which ultimately is little more than paper and ink.