A friend of mine, that lives and works in Kazakhstan for the last few years, came to visit the UK. Catching up, we somehow start looking at Kazakhstan money notes. I was intrigued by the graphics on the notes and a few drinks later I had one of each in my hand for a closer study.

A bit of history

After Kazakhstan became independent, they chose to still rely on the Russian ruble. Kazakhstan was not really in the position to introduce their own currency, but also did not like the decisions by the Russian financial authorities. In summer 1992, Russia made the ruble a fully convertible currency. After the ruble became tradable on the international market, it lost a lot of value immediately (falling from 130 to over 450 rubles to the U.S. dollar). This caused a movement of huge amounts of old rubles to post-Soviet countries, particularly Kazakhstan, where the ruble was still the only legal currency. This lead to Kazakhstan’s money to quadrupled in just a few months. In November 1993, Kazakhstan introduced the tenge (Kazakh: теңге, teñge), their own new national currency at a rate of 1 tenge = 500 rubles.

Below is the first version of the tenge:

Latest banknotes

In 2006 the National Bank of Kazakhstan issued a new exotic series of banknotes (200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 and 10 000 tenge) with the same values as the previous ones.

The design on the obverse (front) has a portrait layout with the denomination written in Kazakh. The obverse all have the same design. The only difference are the size, colours, values (…obviously) and shapes and patterns in the background.

The most striking element is the handprint. In the hand is the signature of president Nazarbayev with fragments of the national anthem. Also, clearly noticeable at the first glimpse, is the Astana Bayterek monument/observation tower. Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan and the monument symbolises this status. It is also meant to embody a folktale about a mythical tree of life with a ‘gold egg’ that was laid by the magic bird of happiness, Samruk. Close to the top of the note is the blue and yellow national flag of Kazakhstan. More towards the middle is the Coat of Arms.

The reverse of the notes are all different with the value written in Russian. One striking element they do all have in common is the outline of Kazakhstan’s border. Inside the outline map each note has a different geographical ‘view’ and on the outside a unique architectural structure. The name of issuing in Kazakh, the logo of the issuing bank and inscription in Russian stating that counterfeiting banknotes is against the law can also be seen on the back of all of the notes.

200 Tenge (size 126х64 mm)

Outside the outline map is the Transport and Communication Ministry and a winged snow leopard on the bridge over River Ishim. Inside of the outline map is Ministry of Defence and steppes in the background.

500 Tenge (size 130х67 mm)

Outside the outline map is the Ministry of Finance and Akimat (City Hall) of Astana. The inside of the outline map are filled with gulls over the sea in background.

1000 Tenge (size 134х70 mm)

Outside the outline map is the President Culture Center. The inside of the outline map are with mountains in background.

2000 Tenge (size 139х73 mm)

Outside the outline map is the Abai Opera House. The inside of the outline map are with a mountain and lake in background.

5000 Tenge (size 144х76 mm)

Outside the outline map is the Independence Monument. The look of the monument is of great interest to me. It is in the middle of Almaty’s (the capital of Kazakhstan) main square. It is a six-meter figure of the Golden Man* and a winged snow leopard and features the most important periods of Kazakhstan’s history. On the note next to it is the Kazakhstan Hotel. The inside of the outline map are with mountains in background.

10000 Tenge (size 149х79 mm)

Outside the outline map is the Residence Akorda, the official residence of the President. The inside of the outline map are with canyons in background.

Central Bank of Kazakhstan misspells ‘bank’ on money

The first lot of the 2,000 and 5,000 tenge notes, issued in 2006 and printed, had the word ‘bank’ spelled incorrectly. This mistake was not just a spelling problem, but also a political issue. During Soviet times, Kazakhs were encouraged to speak Russian, which is written in Cyrillic script. Since independence in 1991, the country’s own Kazakh language came to use. The Kazakh word for ‘bank’ is “банкі”. On the new note, the word was written with an alternate Cyrillic form of the letter K – “банқі” – which has a slightly different pronunciation.

During the writing of this post, digging into the tenge, I also looked at actual photographs of the architectural structures on the money. Also looking at the different types of mountains on the 1000, 2000, 5000 and the canyons on the 10000 tenge. Kazakhstan has great travel opportunities for an interesting picturesque experience. Something I need to consider at some point for another blog post!

* The Golden Man is an ancient Sacae warrior’s golden costume discovered in the Issyk burial mound near Almaty in 1970; it is now on display in the Central State Museum in Almaty. The snow leopard, according to ancient Kazakh philosophy, guards the Universe. Together, they symbolize the freedom, peace, stability, grand spirit and spiritual unity inherent in the Kazakh people and Kazakh traditions since ancient times. The base of the tower has a group of allegoric sculptures – Mother Heaven and Mother Earth, and two children riding colts, who symbolize the future of Kazakhstan.

The new Adobe Creative Suite 5 was launched 12 April 2010! I am still working in CS3 everyday. I have done a few things in CS4, but not enough to have a real opinion. From what I have come across on the internet, people are not sure if it is worth the upgrade. Looking at new features in a few applications of CS5 and the new additions, Adobes’ Business Catalyst and Flash Catalyst, it is pretty exciting stuff to me. Adobe has also introduced CS Live. It is a collection of online services that work within the CS5 applications. This is a feature I have been after for while. It makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues and clients on projects.

From a design point of view

Adobe kept the dominating colours that was implemented with CS3. With CS5 the Desktop Brand team at Adobe decided to concentrate more on the splash screen. It is based on the isometric grid similar to Otl Aicher’s work for the 1972 Munich Olympics. The five pieces give the shapes exactly the right amount of complexity and it ties in nicely with the fifth CS release. Read the in depth discussion about the design process at idsgn.

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium

In a nutshell I will point out a few new features in Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium that consist of the following:
(Including Bridge CS5, Device Central CS5 and integrates with CS Live online services)

• Photoshop CS5 Extended
• Illustrator CS5
• InDesign CS5
• Flash Catalyst CS5
• Flash Professional CS5
• Dreamweaver CS5
• Fireworks CS5
• Acrobat 9 Pro

Photoshop CS5 Extended

Painting
Adobe has created a new painting engine in Photoshop. By clicking on the paintbrush and selecting the mixer brush, it will show a preview of an actual brush on the screen. ‘Pick’ up the new art brush from the walk-on tablet and a 3D preview appear by rotating the barrel of the brush. With previous versions, pushing colours was the only options. Now colours can be blended too. Paint directly over an photograph or just create original art.

Puppet Warp
This feature accurately warp images with exact precision. Say, you have an object with a transparent background, by selecting >Edit>Puppet Warp a mash will appear over the object. The mash can be turned on and off. By adding control points/pins to specific points on the object to lock areas down, you can achieve more control with accuracy. Different modes are available for this feature, for example normal and distort.

HDR Pro
Use it to merge together multiple images. It can merge together different exposures from the Merge to HDR Pro dialogue. In a drop down menu there are different toning presets. A new unique feature added on to it, is Remove ghosts feature. It isolates a preferred single master frame within the HDR image.

Refine Mask
The ability to make a very accurate mask a lot easier. It first makes a quick mask selection. It don’t necessarily has to select for example hair’s fine detail. In the masking panel under Refine Mask panel are the new controls to paint in the areas of transition. Radius and edge detection is the key to get the better selection for the mask. With a brush, go over the edges and defined details will emerge. By exporting the new mask it will create a new layer leaving the original untouched.

Content Aware Fill
This new feature works nicely with the Refine Mask feature for photo manipulation. If you have removed an object to a new layer and want to rid of it in the background of the original layer/image, this feature comes in handy. In the Fill dialogue, under the drop-down menu is the Content Aware option. With one click it removes the object from the background. It basically examines the area around a selection and replaces it based on what it decides is a good match.

Illustrator

Perspective Drawing
The new perspective drawing tools create a perspective grid that can be changed and manipulated to hearts end. By using any of the drawing tools and by selecting a pane, the artwork will go on the grid in perspective. With short cuts it is easy to change panels. Objects from other files can be applied.

Variable Stroke Width Tool
By using the Width tool, you can place plots anywhere on a stroke and change the width of the stroke. If there is a stroke that you are particular proud of and want to use again, just save it as a profile.

Shape Builder Tool
This tool detects various pieces/objects that is grouped together. By dragging the cursor from the one object to the other it creates one single shape. Hold down shift key to combine multiple objects.

Drawing Mode: Draw Inside
This feature constrain drawing within an object. Even if you draw outside of the lines, it will constrain (and mask for that matter) the drawing to the outline of the object. With this mode you can even paste grouped objects in live text.

Indesign

The new additions to Indesign that I mention here are all specifically ones that I have been waiting for. And talking to a few other Indesign everyday users, they agree.

Multiple Page Sizes
It is basically what the heading says. Now the pages can also change the orientation. This will work especially well with setting up a page foldout.

Spanning and Splitting for Columns
Normally I would have to create a separate text box for a heading to span over columns, which result in to many text boxes all over the page. Now by just selecting the header and choosing the ‘span’ command with different options to the amount of columns.

Splitting works well with a list of bullet points that can easily fit in two columns within a column. With the Split command (opposite from the above mentioned), the selected text only can easily be split into 2 columns.

Borrow content from another Indesign Document
With Mini Bridge within the Workspace, you can select links from another Indesign project and drag it into the open Indesign document you are working on.

Gap Tool

This tool detects the gaps between frames and automatically drag and resize the frames whilst keeping the gaps between the frames equal. Interactive gap and frame placement takes place. By holding down the shift key, the two top and bottom frames can be change independently.

Interactive Live Corner Effect
Rounded corners is possible for frames of previous versions, but not with a live stroke. Dragging the corners changes the radius and by keeping in shift, each corner can be changed individually to get different corner effects for each corner.

Interactive Indesign Documents
Flip through the document, get sound, animations, roll overs, slide shows, flash video to play directly inside of the document. All happening in Indesign with out writing a single line of code.

Dreamweaver

Inspect Mode
Inspect Mode needs to be turned on by having Live View open. By hovering over areas on the page it uses colour codes to show how CSS is effecting the page. By hovering over a section, it freezes that state in the CSS rules panel. It makes it quick and easy to make changes to the CSS file.
This works well if you want to play around with different options for an element. A CSS rule can be ‘switched off’ with one click. The result can be viewed immediately in real time.

Live View Navigation
I must have feature when working with a dynamic website. Make changes to a .php include and in Live View it will render the whole web page as it would in a browser. With this you can actually click around and navigate through the test website.

Dynamically Related
By turning on Live Code, it renders the code the browser see. Then there is also a way to get to all the related files and assets. Click on the new feature Discover, which will turn on another new feature, Dynamically Related files. There is an option to exclude some of the files in the list (that could be way to long). For example, by selecting CSS from a drop down menu it will only show .css files. A custom filter is also available to search more specifically.

Final Thought

I personally think there are enough useful new features to make the upgrade worth while (especially from CS3). CS Live will make my life a lot easier by streamlining work flow and save time and the client’s time. For those sharing the same excitement, the English language version is expected to be available for shipping by mid-May 2010.

I created a 2010 calendar for Printhouse Corporation and jelly. jelly bring together a collection of original and fresh talent from around the world, from live-action directors, illustrators, animators and web/flash developers. jelly organised the stunning illustrations for the cover of the calendar and each month.

I am really fascinated by some of the illustrations. Below are my favourites.

Illustrations

Front Cover

The illustration for the cover by pokedstudio is one of my favourites! Do check out their website. I could not help myself to download and use one of their (free) wallpapers.

February

Illustration by Steve Scott.

April

Illustration by Jo Bird.

May

Illustration by Karen Cheung.

June

Illustration by Migy. Festive for the month of Glastonbury.

August

Illustration by Fabio Coruzzi.

October

Illustration by Toyzmachin. I am fond of this style and the colours used.

December

Illustration by Matt Johnstone. In the spirit of another festive season ahead!

More about the Calendar

The whole calendar is matt laminated. Spot UV have been used on the title of each month. To make things a bit more interesting, I added Spot UV to a few elements on each illustration. It add some texture to the over all look and feel. The illustration below  for January is by Brand Nu.

On the illustration for September by Sandra Suy, I used Spot UV on all the black bits.

The last page of the calender is 20mm longer. This allow to show the logos of the two companies through out the year. A charcoal background colour was used for bottom part (22mm high) of the back page. The logos are in Spot UV only. The rest of the back page has a light cream background colour with information (text in same charcoal colour) and contact details about the two companies.

Only a limited amount of the calendars was printed. Luckily I got my hands on one to entertain me all year around.

In the Halloween spirit, a Twitter background redesign was way overdue. My new Twitter background was inspired by my god-pet, Terry (at the moment I can not have any pets of my own). He is a healthy big cat. His proportion to the chair in this layout, is over exaggerated only by a tiny bit. So much for the Twitter bird…

View the design at Semblance’s Twitter page.

Not so long ago my sister asked me to design her an email party invite for her birthday. With me living in the UK and missing my sister in Cape Town, South Africa, I happily agreed to set it up as a birthday present. It is spring in South Africa and everyone is getting into the summer spirit (no pun intended). She is having a spit barbecue (in South African terms: Spit Braai). She requested something colourful. I was also reminded not to forget about her “hearts end”: her big black cat (with white features mixed in), a Sausage Dog and her Golden Retriever. Gathering a few elements, getting a bit nostalgic and putting my illustrating skills to the test, I thought I will post about it.

Just at the right time I read Little Box of Ideas where I downloaded the ‘Free Day Scene’ from Day And Night Scenes – Fun Free Vectors to use some elements for the background.

View the full version!