That $5 pound note looks great, I love the white sides with the emblem of the notes in general.

But the pattern remains, those bills are for the most part extremely dense and overflowing with information and layered graphics. Especially the existing $50 one which is crammed full of stuff.

It's like someone came up with a list of ideas and said yes to all of them.

It's mainly an anti-counterfeit thing to have that much info on them.

Fact is, there's even more that you can't see, there's microwriting on them too (can't find an image, but on the £5 and probably all others) and it's almost unnoticeable without magnification.

Can anyone find an image of this?

Number 9, "check the microlettering": https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/banknotes/...

A bigger but not clearer image here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/5-pound-note

Thanks, that's excellent! I couldn't find a thing just now whereas I could find an example few years ago no problem - is it me or is google search getting totally shit?

I struggle with Google search. I've tried using it like people used to use AskJeeves and sometimes that works and others it just fails.

For this search using the words "bank notes" first in the list of search terms ruined the results.

If the design were more minimalist, they would be easier to counterfeit.

That's no excuse to make it ugly. There are plenty of ways to achieve this without massively cluttering it.

Just look at Canada, Australia, or even Mexican plastic currency. These are nowhere near as bad but are just as secure.

Canada: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Canadian_Fron...

Aus: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d3/91/b8/d391b8dafd8c60277a81...

MX: https://www.inside-mexico.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Fot...

Truth! There's always a human element though... A previous employee of mine once accepted a $10 bill that turned out to be a $1 bill with a zero drawn in black marker on each corner of the bill by the ones. The store was insanely busy that day so I can kind of understand how she let it slip past her, but good grief.

You're kind of demonstrating why the £ design is superior to the $ though

They're all very different colours, for a start, so you can know what you're holding quickly/intuitively (so long as you're not colour-blind).

Do you not realise that the point of the complexity is to counter forgery?

You're not critiquing a web page design!

Interesting, I like the withdrawn notes page

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/withdrawn-banknote...