For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to design coins. As a kid, I had a small collection, encouraged by my great-grandmother, who was born in 1900! I vividly remember being fascinated by some coins she gave me when I was around eight, including what I now know was a 1913 British Penny from her early life. It is an enormous coin by modern standards, based on coins featuring Athena from Greek Antiquity.
Coins aren’t what they were; they no longer have the cultural weight or ubiquity they once did, but I still think it would be fun to design some. So we will see what happens.
To that end, this is my attempt at St George and the Dragon as a coin to submit to The Royal Mint, and others. It's an iconic heraldic motif, the most celebrated of which is probably by Italian Engraver Benedetto Pistrucci, struck by The Royal Mint in 1817. My approach has been to try and give equal weight to the three key elements and fill the space as evenly and naturally as possible. The line art is entirely hand drawn, I used AI as a filter of sorts to render it in metal. I'm using one of my new display typefaces for the lettering, really pleased how the small caps have turned out.
