“I have to see something a thousand times before I see it once…”
I recently asked a client if they had any topics that they wanted me to create speculative designs for.
Over the last 13 years as a freelancer, I’ve become used to working to direct commissions, and it’s always been the way that I work best. I find that creative inspiration comes easier if I have some boundaries to work with - they force me to think laterally, and to analyse my topic for symbolism and narrative.
Of course, the flip side is that I don’t do much of my own stuff, which can be frustrating. I’m trying to rectify that, and anyone who follows me on Linkedin will have seen an uptick in the amount of random sketches that I’ve been posting.
The client in question had no projects upcoming, so I asked them what gaps they had in their product range, or what topics they might want to explore.
What came back was an observation that coin collectors have fallen out of love with the traditional themes of flora, fauna and historical commemoration, and if I had any new ideas for product ranges that weren’t licensed from exisitng IPs, that would be cool.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and frankly, I’m coming up with more questions than answers.
Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Possibly the last anniversary that will be witnessed by people who were actually there, and most probably the last major one.
Within the next few years, D-Day will pass out of living memory. Weirdly, I always associate that phrase “passed out of living memory” with the lounge of the house where I spent my teenage years, just outside Lincoln.
My sister is 8 years older than me, so when we moved into the house, she had already left home for college, and she never really came back, aside from occasional visits. The lounge was the hub of the house (as the kitchen was tiny), and I have warm memories of it, particularly around Christmas, as both my parents were big on the traditional celebrations. They were not, however, big on photos, so to paraphrase Rose DeWit Bukkater, these events exist now only in my memory.
My wife has 3 sisters, so the memories of their Christmases are shared, and alive. Most of my childhood memories are now mine alone, and when I am gone, they will have passed out of living memory. Obviously, one could argue that D-Day is a touch more important than my mum’s homemade Christmas pork pie, but it’s a phrase that I find impactful and though provoking on many levels.
So I’ve been thinking about D-Day, and about the state of commemorative coins, which of course is tied to the fortunes of coins in general. Talking an ex-colleague the other day about the Mint’s withdrawl from foreign currency manufacture, it was remarked that altering the Mint’s public information to put the manufacture of overseas coins into the past tense was actually quite a sobering activity. Coins are rooted in their history, both from a practical and design point of view, and closing the door on a 700 year old aspect of your business is a big deal.
Looking at the commemorative coins produced for D-Day, I noticed that I was struggling to pick out the new ones from the old ones. Google decided not to help me filter my search by year, so no matter how nicely I asked, I was presented with ALL the D-Day celebration coins, right back to the Royal Mit’s 50p design from 1994.
Royal Mint D-Day landings 50p, 1994
Image: royalmint.com
I can’t seem to find anything commemorative further back than that, so I’m capping my search at the mid-90’s, but that’s still plenty of scope for examination.
What’s apparent is that as the anniversaries of the D-Day landings creep closer to passing from living memory, the designs of commemorative coins haven’t evolved - the narrative illustration is pretty much the same now as it was 25 years ago.
I’ve pulled together a collection of coins below. To be clear, I’m not criticising design, or quality - one of my own designs is in there too. I’m trying to tie together my observations of the D-Day commemorations with my clients comments about the state of comemorative coins.
As you can see, there’s a natural tendency for the designs be illustrative. That’s entirely fair. Commemorative coins are all about narrative (or should be all about narrative). They should tell a story, and more importantly, allow the holder of the coin to also tell that story. In my experience, commemorative coin collectors enjoy 2 main aspects of their hobby - minaturisation, and demonstration of knowledge. There’s something cool about seeing complex objects picked out in tiny detail (I would say that, I’ve been doing it 30 years!), and something cooler about being able to show someone a coin and say “This means X, and did you know that….?”
Once upon a time, the minaturisation process was limited by physical materials - there’s only so much detail that can be rendered in Plaster of Paris before the material breaks down. This meant that there was an inherent relationship between the craft of the modeller and the final minaturised product. Having spent many many years showing coin collectors around the Engraving Dept of the Royal Mint, I can say that this relationship was fundamental to their enjoyment and respect for the hobby.
With the advent of digital sculpting technology and laser engraving, that relationship has changed. Hyper detail is now commonplace, which is great in its own way. There’s a real wow factor to some of the stuff produced by the Germania Mint, for example. However, the process by which that detail is achieved has at once become oblique (try spinning an engaging narrative around the UI of ZBrush), and at the same time democratised - it feels that this hyper detailing is ubiquitous, which lessens it’s worth.
Sculptural process aside, the narrative aspect of these D-Day coins is also interesting. As the commemoration creeps onward, and the veterans pass away, there’s no change in the narrative. No acknowledgement that these teenage soldiers didn’t just belong to the ‘then’, they also belong to the ‘now’, and we’re so focussed on commemorating the ‘then’, that perhaps we foget to commemorate them now - to celebrate their stoicism, selflessness, and resilience in a world where these attributes feel in short supply.
There’s also the issue of capturing the scale of such an event on something as small and constrained as a coin. The sweeping beaches and sea, noise and smoke are very tricky to depict in relief, and so illustrative designs often lose their power.
Back in 2006, in preparation for a series commemorating the 90th anniversary of WW1, I took the Royal Mint design team on a trip around the battlefields of France and Belgium (courtesy of the fantastic Dr Thomson).
Our guide broke the tour down into 3 sections. On our ferry crossing over, he detailed the overall political and military narrative of WW1, giving us a global context, and some idea of how our destinations fitted into the grand story. As we journeyed through France, we were taken to specific spots where detailed personal stories were related, such as Mametz Wood. This was capped off with attending the Last Post at Menin Gate.
Following these emotive, personal stories, Dr Thomson pulled the narrative back out, and took us to Thiepval and Tynecott, where the scale of the human loss was made apparent, and the conflicting importance and insignificance of these personal stories were laid bare. It was a sobering and enlightening trip that added context and personality to our designs. I’ve included a small gallery of our photos here:
The resulting coin series focussed on the human aspect of WW1, rather than the ‘event’, and as a way to sell our designs into the Mint’s marketing team, I produced a short video, which you can see at this link.
It’s a coin series that I’m incredibly proud to have overseen, and still one that I reference when I talk about the importance of narrative in coins - the minaturisation of imagery coupled with a deeper narrative that appeals to the ‘meta-collector’ - the person who wants to know the stories behind the objects.
As I’m writing this post, I’m listening to the soundtrack from Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi epic about the search for a new homeworld as Earth becomes uninhabitable. For me, the film is really about letting go - about the necessity to allow one door to shut in order to open another, and this brings me to the point of this post.
A door is about to shut on D-Day. I am much further from my birth than my birth is from that historic event. The designs of D-Day commemorative coins have not evolved as the narrative of the event has evolved. they are a foot in the door of the past, preventing us from reaching out to open the door to new ideas and designs that might re-energise coin collectors, and remind them of the value inherent in these small objects whose purpose has so fallen out of favour.
I have a nagging feeling that we should stop designing coins for D-Day. I’m uncertain that they bring anything to the party, either in terms of narrative design, or in sculptural interest.
I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, or to start the conversation about what comes next in terms of commemorative coin themes. If you’re up for that conversation, reach out.