Proposal by Jan Robert Dünnweller

Dünnweller is a German illustrator and graphic designer born in Cologne in 1984. Educated in Linz, Istanbul, and Weimar, his work moves between the rigor of design and the associative freedom of illustration. He regularly collaborates with publications as distinguished as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Die Zeit, The Atlantic, and Der Spiegel. He has developed a visual language of clean lines and studied simplicity, capable of condensing complex ideas into clear and ingenious images.

Dünnweller conceives his series through collage. The elements appear scattered at first glance, yet they occupy spaces entirely governed by a visual and informational structure. Many of the illustrations remain deliberately open, their contours never fully closed. Formally, the proposal’s strength—and its weakness—lies in its almost chaotic mixture of registers. Linear portraits coexist with irregular textured marks, geometric patterns, and flat areas of color.

Institutional symbols overlap with barely sketched human scenes. The portraits are rendered with a clean, calligraphic, almost editorial line. He replaces the classical volume of banknote engraving with a more contemporary solution. The denomination operates as a graphic element with a certain autonomy, forceful and immediately recognizable.

The supporting graphic language introduces rough-looking textures—granulated marks, dry brushstrokes, dragged areas, and surfaces reminiscent of artisanal printing processes. These textures form one of the proposal’s visual foundations and prevent it from acquiring an excessively digital coldness. It may be seeking to seduce through naturalness and informality.

The absence of dominant visual references allows the signifying layers to coexist without fully merging. Such fragmentation would make sense if the intention is to present Europe as an overlay of traditions, languages, and experiences, irreducible to a homogeneous identity. The approach would be conceptually sound, although less convincing in visual terms.

The numerals have a forceful presence. They function as a fragile visual anchor against a rather anarchic background. On the obverse, they interfere with the portrait, something that does not occur on the reverse with the collective scenes.

It is precisely on the reverse that the visual language changes scale. The monumentality of the individual figure disappears, giving way to social scenes: people walking, gathering, playing music, occupying squares or shared spaces. The figuration is rapid, silhouetted, and close to the immediacy of a sketch. In this way, the emphasis shifts from the historical individual to culture as a collective practice. Culture appears embodied in bodies, gestures, and encounters, while remaining a form of inheritance.

I will leave color outside this analysis because almost all the proposals rely on chromatic differentiation. Some are more strident than others, brighter or more subdued. Such differentiation is useful when it helps distinguish denominations, although it can become problematic when it alters the emotional character of each banknote too drastically.

The proposal has an identity of its own. It distances itself from the European banknote we already know. Its commitment to texture and hand-drawn imagery brings it closer to the language of the poster, the artist’s notebook, and contemporary cultural graphics. The risk lies there as well. At times, the accumulation of elements may compete with the functional clarity a banknote demands. The effectiveness of the whole will depend on the precision with which it reconciles expressiveness and legibility.

For anyone who may be interested, my score would be 7.6 out of 10.