A banknote is arguably the most widely circulated, heavily scrutinised piece of design a culture produces. For the euro, this means attempting the near-impossible: creating a new cohesive visual language for hundreds of millions of people across 21 countries that have different context and also different ideas of what Europe should be.

Right now, the European Central Bank (ECB) is navigating a central tension of public design: how do you create something that belongs to everyone without flattening what makes them different? The official brief demands something recognisable and trustworthy, accessible yet distinctive, and shared without becoming generic.

Make no mistake, this is one of the world’s most complex identity challenges, and the public is helping the ECB make the final decision on the design of the new notes. Design via democracy: how excellently European.

With consultation closing on September 21, the debate seems to have settled into two camps: birds versus portraits, and a running tally of which member states got a face on the shortlist and which didn’t Both are fair questions. Both are also being asked in the wrong order. Before we argues about who goes o the note, we should agree on what we want the note to do.

Reducing the debate to aesthetics strips the currency design of its immense strategic potential. As one of the most widely distributed ‘own-branded’ objects that Europe will produce this decade – arriving just as the ECB argues the euro deserves a bigger global role – this redesign is a profound exercise in soft power and brand positioning on a continental scale.

This strategic weight of design in currency is nothing new, because money has never been purely functional. Every currency in history was designed to do a specific job beyond signalling value, whether building trust, projecting power, or holding a fragile peace. From the Roman denarius (the standard silver coin of ancient Rome) asserting imperial reach, to post-war currencies forging new national unities, the look and feel of money has always been deeply political.

Because currency is something that is shared by everyone in a society, it carries a heavy burden: it must create consensus and shared ownership. The strongest identity systems do not achieve this by erasing differences. Instead, they create a common foundation where diverse audiences can find their own connection.

Navigating this tension between unity, while a language panel with fifteen scripts, set alphabetically so none outranks another, acknowledges the difference. It is a masterclass in representing a complex population without projecting a single, flattened identity.

That is why, before picking a design, we must first decide what we want the euro to stand for. This fundamental question forces a choice for this design: do we want to create a mirror Europeans recognise themselves in, or a signal the rest of the world reads?

Viewed primarily as a mirror, the design becomes an introspective exercise. Looking inward to reflect shared architectural heritage or natural landscapes, it offers a comforting statement: ‘This is us.’ The risk is that in attempting to reflect everyone, it reflects no one, slipping into a generic, bureaucratic compromise that avoids offending anyone but fails to inspire.

If we treat the banknotes as a potentially powerful signal, the primary audience shifts to the global stage. A signal looks outward, which could project economic vision, ambition, and innovation to international markets. If the ECB wants the euro to have amore powerful global role, its visual identity must project the confidence of a currency ready to lead.

Even major corporate institutions face this hurdle. The risk-averse instinct is always to look inward: audit what you already are, find the common denominator across markets, design something no internal stakeholder objects to. The result is usually an identity that describes a company accurately but doesn’t project vision to those outside of it.

Airbnb, for example, went the other way. It replaced a descriptive wordmark with a symbol built around a single outward claim – belonging – and then designed it to be redrawn by the communities using it, rather than policed from the centre.

The lesson for the ECB is clear. The tempting thing to do is always to design based on looking in. But winning design is something that looks out and communicates something to the world. It asks not ‘who are we?’, but ‘who do we want the world to think we are?’ Can the euro become a symbol of what Europe stands for in the world?

In an increasingly polarised world, institutions are forced to articulate what they stand for. In this context, a banknote is more than a tool for exchange; it is a symbol for what we value and Europe‘s biggest opportunity in decades to physically declare its point of view.

This lens sharpens the choice between routes. The case for rivers and birds is stronger than it first appears. They belong to no member state, cross every border without a passport, and signal the diverse ecosystems of the region – one arena where Europe genuinely leads the world.

This is not a soft option. But it is a statement about what Europe has, not what Europe produces. The portrait route makes the most powerful claim: that Europe is not simply a pleasant place to be, but the place that produced the people who shaped how the rest of the world lives, thinks and sounds.

The cost of choosing the portrait option is controversial ‘fomo’ from those nations who don’t get a representative on the note. But a note designed to offend nobody will also say nothing. A currency asking for a larger role in the world cannot make its opening statement the option chosen because it was uncontroversial.

If the euro is to be a strong outward signal rather than a comforting mirror, it must put people front and centre. That distinction cuts through the noise, taking us from ten pretty options tot he few that actually deliver on strategy.

Ultimately, this is about much more than decorating the wallets of Europeans. It is an opportunity to project what Europe stands for on the world stage.

First published in Creative Review.

To view all the proposed euro designs, visit ecb.europa.eu.