Monday, March 16, 2009

Design a Symbol for Rupee

I visited the website of Ministry of Finance to have a look at the Monthly Economic Report, but what i came across was something more interesting!
The Ministry has began a public competition to formulate a design for the Indian Rupee. We do use abbreviations like Rs or INR (Indian Rupee), but unlike major currencies we don't have a symbol.

The contest, open for all resident Indian, closes at 1300 hours on 15th April 2009.. For more details click here.

When i googled more about the competition, I came across mixed views from international community. Some feel it to be obvious indication of emergence of a new player in the global economy, while others blamed the competition format. It's the same route that Russia went down in the 1990s, in its search, so far unsuccessful, for a symbol to represent the rouble.
There were also many doubts raised about the implementation of the symbol. According to one estimate, when the euro was introduced in 1999 it cost Europe's biggest companies more than $50bn to update their computer systems to deal with the changeover.

But I am sure we would work our way out and try to come up with a cheaper technique to upgrading our systems and codes.
One suggestion to all people: focus on graphics and technical application as well. Try to understand and analyze how would it look on the web, keyboards, LED Screens and even on mobile phones.

4 comments:

Varun said...

Wow! Amazing competition. I'll try to do something too :)

Varun said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harsha said...

Sure man, spread the message.
This competition promises good money for just designing a symbol for money ;)

Anonymous said...

Govt.of India , economic affair department ran a competetion to design a symbol for rupee like dollar have $ at its website
http://finmin.nic.in/the_ministry/dept_eco_affairs/currency_coinage/Comp_Design.pdf


here is my entery to the contest..
My simplest yet worthy “peace of art” for Indian Rupee Symbol link..

http://mewool.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/my-simplest-yet-worthy-peace-of-art-for-indian-rupee-symbol/