These illustrations were initially designed for Victoria and Albert Museum's digital program: Money No Object.
This project tries to illustrate future payment methods from a historical perspective. Normally, money is a medium that represents, retains and measures value, it is usually made by materials which are easy to preserve and standardize but hard to replicate, for example, precious metal.
Gold has been a universal symbol of money and wealth for hundreds of years. Nowadays, we mainly use fiat money, which usually means a special banknote issued by central banks of each economy. Fiat money doesn’t have any value itself, it is a reliable representation of value assured by the central banks. As technologies evolve, high-tech money with better security features may gain more important roles in our lives. Retina or even brain scan could be used as future payment methods. However the essence of money has never really changed, It probably won’t change much in the future either. Money would still represent, measure and retain value. What's more, I believe traditional money will survive as virtual symbols to fulfil our nostalgic needs.