As some of you may know our Finance Ministry had announced a contest for designing a symbol for Rupee. This is to replace the current way of writing 'Rs' by symbols like dollar, pound, euro, etc. currencies have.
Since long, I also had wished that our government changes the symbol and was enthused with this announcement. Hence decided to participate and submitted following symbol. Though I had high hopes, it did not get selected for the final five. Felt a bit sad, am human too. Anyway, I wish all the best the finalists.
Here is the Symbol:
And here is the description as per the contest guidelines:
| Motivation | Due to my work profile, I have to make extensive use of financial and mathematical software programs spreadsheets (MS-Excel and others). I always wished there was a symbol for Indian Rupee, just like US$ or Euro - €, etc., but had to settle with the not-so-intuitive ‘INR’ or just avoid selecting currency symbol all-together. |
| Trigger | The Contest announced by Finance Ministry was the perfect trigger and thought about submitting at-least one design |
| Design Thoughts | Following were the guidelines I set to myself before starting the design, the symbol: - Should adhere to the Contest Guidelines
- Should not be complex
- Should be easy to draw in daily use
- Should avoid use of ‘Dash’ or ‘Strike-Out’ lines which can imply a cutting or a slashing action and I personally felt it should not be used on our currency!
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| Explanation of the Submitted Symbol: |
| Indian History and Culture | The Outer Circle signifies a two fold meaning: - It implies the World, in which our Rupee has to make a mark
- It also implies 0 (Zero or Shunya), one of the most important invention that India has given to the world along with the decimal system; without which the financial, mathematical and all other scientific computations would have been highly difficult to do and incomprehensible to most.
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| Visual Representation in Indian or English Script | The Inner Curve uses both, Devnagari as well as Roman (English) Script for visual depiction of the Rupee word, i.e.: - Part of English Alphabet ‘R’ – which is the start of our currency’s name (Rupee), and,
- ‘Devnagari’ letter for ‘ra’ ‘र’– again part of and start of the name ‘rupaya’
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| Advantages of this symbol | Some advantages of this symbol are: - Very Simple design
- Can be easily accommodated in to computer systems
- Can be easily drawn by people in daily use
- Can be drawn in one single stroke, i.e. without lifting the Pen/Pencil. Other currency symbols ($, €, £, ¥, etc.) need the pen to be lifted two or more times
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I wish all the finalist the very best.
