New Penny Designs Make No Cents

The humble penny falls victim to a series of bizarre redesigns.

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Let's be honest: American money isn't pretty. Our bills and coins are jumbles of incomprehensible symbols--every spot of ink has meaning, down to the number of spikes around the treasury seal, but it'd be a stretch to say they all cohere into a worthy whole. Michael Bierut calls our currency "a cake that has been decorated to within an inch of its life." What it lacks in aesthetics, though, U.S. currency makes up for in quirk...