By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — Students at the School of Visual Art's Communicating Design class have taken on the task of designing local currencies for 18 Manhattan neighborhoods.
Each student pulled a neighborhood out of a hat and went about researching their assigned nabes to determine what characteristics should be represented on its currency.
In the end, they created local currencies for: The Financial District, Little Italy, Times Square, the Meat Packing District, Chinatown, Chelsea, Central Park, the Fashion District, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Stuyvesant Town, Tribeca, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, Columbia University and Alphabet City.
Their work is up on display at the School of Visual Art in Chelsea.
"Obviously this isn't a class about economics so it was more of an interesting design challenge," class instructor Jason Santa Maria said.
"How does typography or color as a system affect the design of what that currency looks like? And how does that impact the person who has to use it?"
Santa Maria said it was important for his students to consider how accessible their currency would be.
"If they're blind, can they understand that one size of the bill might be valued more than the other size?"
Eric St. Onge designed the local currency for Chelsea. Inspired by the Chelsea Market, which was once a factory for Nabisco, he made coins instead of bills with each coin shaped according to the different sizes of Nabisco crackers.
St. Onge described his work on the School of Visual Art Web site:
"The building’s architecture is inspired by its factory roots," he wrote. "Each denomination in my currency adopts the form factor of a Nabisco cracker: Nilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Oreo Cookies, Ritz Crackers, and Saltine Crackers. The geometric design from the face of the Oreo Cookie is used to tie all five of the designs together."
The project was inspired by local currencies like Ithaca Hour and BerkShares; currencies created to spur local commerce, Santa Maria explained.
The local currencies helped to "develop a sense of pride in the community, and a responsibility for your local community," Santa Maria said, and to encourage area residents to "buy locally from manufacturers or farms or anything nearby."
Would neighborhood currencies be viable in Manhattan?
"Maybe," Santa Maria said, pausing for a moment to entertain the idea. "I would say certain neighborhoods could do something like this, the ones that are a little more inclusive."
