Your browser is not supported

Our website does not support the browser you are using. For a better browsing experience update to a compatible browser like the latest browsers from Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

The imagery and themes of the Series 7 ‘Brighter Money’ banknotes

This article focuses on the designs of the Series 7 banknotes, and on the themes and their origins.

Matthew Wright

Introduction


The Series 7 banknotes which were introduced from late 2015, represented the first major re-design of New Zealand’s banknotes since the early 1990s. Although the selection of people, places, birds and other pictorial themes remained largely unchanged from the earlier Series 5 and 6 notes, the specific imagery was updated and full advantage taken of modern printing techniques to increase the reproduction fidelity. Some of the new security features, such as the ‘Spark Live’ bird image and the holographic window, are themselves of significant aesthetic appeal.