Urmas Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 Introduction The Dutch Ministry of Finance organized an architecture competition for which a selected group of architectural offices (unstudio, nox, ...) and artists were invited, including myself. The goal of the competition was not to design a building, but the new 5 euro commemorative coin with the theme 'Netherlands and Architecture'. The winner will be rewarded with a nice price, but most of all with the honor: his design will be realized and will be a legal coin within the Netherlands. _______________________________________ Technology The whole design was done for 100% with free software. The biggest part consists of custom software in Python, of course within the SPE editor. For the visual power I used PIL and pyCairo. From time to time also Gimp, Inkscape and Phatch helped quite a bit. All the developing and processing was done on GNU/Linux machines which were running Ubuntu/Debian. In the end I had to collaborate closely on location together with the technicians of the Royal Dutch Mint (coin factory). So all the last bits were done on my Asus Eee PC. (I am still wondering why Asus doesn't offer Ubuntu on its netbooks.) The Eee laptop took a bit longer (30 seconds instead of 3 seconds to generate a whole coin), but did the job just fine. For looking up the number of hits on the internet, I rediscovered Yahoo, which provides a much better api for automatic querying than its competitors. Of course the jury judged only the design and not the software used as others used Maya, Illustrator, ... And the winner is... I am proud to announce that I won the competition! So soon 350.000 Dutch people will use the fruits of free software. I would have loved to release the coin under the GPL, which could maybe solve the financial crisis. However for obvious reasons I was not allowed to do that. There will be also special editions for collectors which can be bought world wide: a massive silver edition for € 30,95 and a massive gold edition for € 194,95. They will be probably sold out quickly as these are real collectors items. The coin is released in all Dutch post offices to the public the same day as the Intrepid Ibex: 30th October 2008. The whole INTERESTING story Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shamgar Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 (edited) Very impressive. Is this going to be engraved on the coin by a machine or by a man? Edited October 31, 2008 by Shamgar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 A very nice looking coin ( I like the sice with the queen best ) . . . I sure will get me one Very impressive. Is this going to be engraved on the coin by a machine or by a man? The *stamp* to produce ( stamp ) the coins is engraved by a machine Bruno** not sure if "stamping" is the correct word for the process . . but I'm sure you get the picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted October 31, 2008 Share Posted October 31, 2008 (edited) Congradulations Urmas!. The whole work ( both sides look very impressive.)You are not just a good Linux technician but an artist as well! Edited October 31, 2008 by réjean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urmas Posted October 31, 2008 Author Share Posted October 31, 2008 Er... nope. Not me (I wish!). Stani Michiels is his name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 Extremely interesting story about how everything on the coin is a lot deeper than first glance might suggest. Thanks for the link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eggdog Posted November 2, 2008 Share Posted November 2, 2008 I'm intrigued by Urban Flotsam as a book title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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