Musings on state quarters, dollar coin designs
Paul Ciszek
Sacajawea's face survived the translation to a coin design much
better than any of the sunken-cheeked presidents. Is it the artist,
the constraints of striking, or simply the fact that her face is only
slightly turned towards the viewer? The reverse of the Sackie is
much classier, too--the reverse of the presidential dollar looks
like a game token. Better yet was the reverse of the SBA.
The obverses of the state quarters just plain stink compared to the
earlier design.
Vermont's quarter design works better than most. (It shows someone
drawing sap from sugar maples.) The trees against a blank background
translate well, and the details of the human figure are not as important
as the fact that s/he is holding a bucket.
A general trend I have observed is that even people who work with
graphics and artwork are losing sight of the merits of line
art that can be vector-mapped, compressed losslessly, and rendered
easily in a variety of media, vs. greyscale and scanned images.
The tendency is to treat everything as if it were a full-color or
greyscale image, scan it and store it as a JPEG, and reduce or enlarge
with little concern for the original resolution. I wonder if this trend
is reflected in some of the choices for state quarter designs--my own
state, Colorado, being one of the worst offenders as far as trying
to put a photograph or painting on a coin.
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