There are some interesting redesigns on the Dollar Redesign Project Page. I do like the one dollar bill that you referenced. I think it may be my favorite. I also like the dollar design with Washington's portrait and the text of the First and Second Amendments.
Yeah. It definitely looks almost like a designer check
. A big departure from our traditional look, but I think that's due eventually anyways. US money has always lacked flair in it's appearance. Interesting historical tidbit: the reason why our money was green for so long and had the signature "greenback" look to it was that when the US mint initially started printing paper money, that shade of green ink was the absolute cheapest ink you could buy. Ergo, in order to save money in the printing of our, erm, money, we went with that ugly green color.
That said, to some degree I wonder how much paper money is going to matter so much in the coming years anyways. There is already a HUGE (and still growing) trend towards people just using debit cards instead of cash. My pay goes directly into the bank. I only make cash withdrawals as needed, and unless I've got a specific reason it's not uncommon at all for me to be carrying just the debit card with no cash. Don't get me wrong I don't think hard currency is going away anytime soon, just that it's going to become rarer for people to actually be carrying much of it.
