Michael Tyznik redesigned the U.S. paper money to a much more modern and functional design. Looks a lot like European money, which has great design. Here’s his rationale in the redesign:

Here are the main ideas in this design: Money and the color green are inextricably intertwined in American culture. I think itd be a mistake to remove green as the primary color. Instead, each bill has a brightly-colored holographic strip embedded into it which contains the denomination. The width of this strip also changes with the denomination. This introduces an element which makes each bill extremely easy to identify. There is also braille denoting the bills denomination on the holographic strip.

The redesign is part of a project to “rebrand” the dollar bills. Also check out the redesigns by Richard Smith and Michelle Haft.

Update: Aegir Hallmundur at The Ministry of Type relates the potential new bill designs to European bill designs, in particular the varying bill sizes depending on the denomination of the bill.