Design-a-Note: Make bitcoin printable

[swedishfrenchpress]

Design-a-Note: Make bitcoin printable.

Design a custom paper cash note for an ecash money printer.

This task invites you to design a template for a printable ecash note for brrr.gandlaf.com, a tool that lets anyone generate printable ecash in the style of traditional bank notes.

The task is to create a beautiful, printable, reusable note design that people will want to hand out, tape to a café wall, or give to their friends as a fun bitcoin onboarding experience. The winning design(s) will be featured as a selectable template on Brrr, along with a credit and a link to the designer’s profile.

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💰 Prizes

🥇 150K sats + Here Comes Bitcoin Toy
🥈 70K sats
🥉 30K sats
👥 50K sats (crowd favorite)

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🧑‍🎨 What You're Designing

You’re building a template for an ecash note that can be used inside the open-source brrr project. These templates are implemented as a Svelte component, and the final deliverable should be an .svg file that can be integrated into this component.

We’ll also accept design files in .svg, .ai (Adobe Illustrator) or .fig (Figma) formats, as long as they allow us to export the final design as an SVG. The winning design(s) will be released under open source license.

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✅ Submission Requirements

Your design must:

• Include a QR code placeholder for redeeming the note
• Include an amount placeholder (e.g. “5,000 sats”)

Bonus points for:

• Real-world inspiration from bank notes or local currencies.
• Thematic designs (cypherpunk, futuristic, minimalist, meme-worthy, etc.)
• Print-friendly color choices and layout (e.g., no ink-heavy black backgrounds)
• Delivery as a CustomNote.svelte component that works out of the box with the Brrr app, requiring no additional modifications.

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📦 Deliverable

• A single svg file: ai (Adobe Illustrator) or .fig (Figma) files are acceptable
• Include a PNG/JPG mockup of your note for presentation
• Optional: Support a main brand image (logo or emblem)
• Optional: Support a corner icon
• ❗ Important: Mint QR code is not needed. This feature will be removed in upcoming versions of the tool. Do not include a mint QR section in your design.

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🔗 Resources

• brrr.gandlaf.com — Live tool
• GitHub repo — For source code + structure
• Noteworthy - For examples of bitcoin paper note design
• History of Physical Bitcoin - For visual examples of different physical bitcoin designs, coins and banknotes.

[GBKS]

Erik, can this issue be closed?

I think this initiative was very successful. People really enjoyed it at the Designathon, and then the ecash notes popped up at Oslo Freedom Forum, BTC Prague, and it looks like other orgs also showed interest on social media.

[swedishfrenchpress]

Agreed. Really satisfied with how this track turned on. Closing issue. We should work on a reflection for this for the next community news letter or maybe a larger x/nostr post about it.

[GBKS]

Good idea. Wanna just start a write-up? We can put it in the newsletter and the socials.

[swedishfrenchpress]

Good idea. Wanna just start a write-up? We can put it in the newsletter and the socials.

Yup, happy to do that. I'll add it to my task list. When is the next news letter going out? First week of July?

[GBKS]

According to our 3-week schedule, it would be Wednesday (in two days). But we haven't started it yet, so let's see.

[swedishfrenchpress]

I put together this Design-a-Note summary. Let me know what you think. After any edits how about we post it from the Bitcoin Design nostr account using https://habla.news/ ?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jL1IcBKDw2KwA0xGQ5quoT-2kDlbrGs-jJESjyd-U0g/edit?usp=sharing

[GBKS]

Looks great. I think it's good to go, maybe with inclusion of a link to the Designathon site for reference, and maybe also a reference to OpenCash as a sponsor. Let me know if/when you want me to post it (on Habla).

[swedishfrenchpress]

I updated the Thank You section to include the sponsors, I also linked to the Designathon at the begining.

I think we're good to go. How about we post it Habla and then also include the post in the design newsletter?

[GBKS]

Here's the Nostr post. Will also add the link to the newsletter now.