The Creation of the First Goldback®
The ‘one’ Goldback got the most time investment out of all of the denominations and was the most difficult to produce.
How do you even make a new money? What would you put on it? I had never put much thought into these things but I had suddenly found myself in the middle of a creative process that I probably wasn’t qualified for. It wasn’t enough to just have an idea of what I wanted, I had to get a whole team of people to actually make it.
My wife and I found this rough sketch while cleaning out the garage. To my knowledge it is the earliest rendition of what became the “One” Goldback.
I now introduce to you: “The first concept sketch of the Goldback”, drawn by yours truly. No one will accuse me of being any good at art, however, I had to have something to show my wife, Emily, because she was assigned to do the concept art for the other artists. On the earliest sketch one can see that the one was going to be 1/1000th of an ounce, that it was going to be “intended for circulation”, that it would be “Prudence”, have two spots for websites, and have the date. Most of the other information was wrong. We didn’t put “In God We Trust” on the money, nor “Legal Tender in Utah”, and the Goldback was not named “Gold Quint”. At this stage there was not a lot of thought on the context in which prudence would be shown, nor the background. Those conversations simply hadn’t happened yet.
The next day Emily set to work on her concept sketch of the ‘one’. Chris and I were brainstorming while Emily did her best to create the result of our discussion as we were discussing it (this led to quite a bit of erasing). It was during this discussion that Prudence became a Native American. We also finalized the design concept for the back of the Goldback which is included in this sketch. On the back of the Goldback we were going to tell the story of the Utah Legal Tender Act of 2011 with three images, the State Capitol Building, the Utah Flag, and a drawing of a photograph of the actual signing of the Bill. We wanted to tell this story so that people would believe that the Goldback was indeed legal tender in the State of Utah.
This sketch saw the addition of the scripture “Deal Prudently” on the back. The latin name for Prudence was used as well. “In God We Trust” was removed, and a slot Canyon background was added. Note that on the top of the back of the image we were going to feature native cliff dwellings that can be found in the remote regions of Utah and Colorado. Prudence also gained her mirror. Some of the men at the signing include; Gov Herbert, Larry Hilton, Attorney General Sean Reyes, and Rep. Ken Ivory. I made the mistake of calling Ken Ivory and telling him that he might be featured on a currency. Oops.
We knew that Prudence would have the smallest design space and Chris was concerned about her looking a lot smaller in scale compared to the other virtues on the other denominations. In order to compensate for this issue Chris made a rough sketch of Prudence sitting down on a rock with a tree. The intent was to give Cheri a better idea of what we were looking for. On this sketch you may also notice that the serial # appears for the first time as well as the name Gold Back with a capital B on GoldBack.
“GoldBack” was considered because we were concerned that having a “db” look wouldn’t be as good. We ended up using all capital letters in the end though. You can tell that Chris is a much better artist than I am if you scroll up a couple of images.
Cheri was at the office within days of Emily’s sketch being finished and she set to work immediately on a full-size Prudence. My wife was amazed at the speed at which Cheri could produce quality art. This draft was produced in about an hour. Cheri added symbolism from the research that Mirkan and Teddy compiled and added a few of her own touches such as the small animals. Larry insisted that the tree for the ‘One’ be a Bristlecone Pine. It was tricky to have Prudence looking down at the mirror. This issue is more apparent in the next draft.
With Cheri’s first draft approved it was time to make the shaded version that we would actually send in. When this image was ‘finished’ Cheri then went on to create the images for the 50, 5, 10, and 25 before coming back to this one. For weeks we thought that this would be the finished image. The biggest problem with this one is that the face looked a little squished as she looks down at her mirror. It also wasn’t immediately obvious that she was holding a mirror. It could’ve been a rattle or a drumstick. Cheri was also unhappy with how the bird in the tree looked. Throughout the entire process Cheri was her own biggest critic. It ended up being important to kind of ‘take a break’ from working on this image and to come back to it once the others were finished.
We also learned that this image was too wide which created a lot of negative space.
While we were sitting on the latest image of Prudence, Bonnie, our digital artist, got to work on the digital aspect of the Goldback. This image is the first one that we got back from Bonnie. She included a colored slot canyon behind Prudence. Also, she put a lot of work into the security features, much of which remained intact throughout the various renditions.
This draft included the name “The Vaults of Zion” which was a holding company we never ended up using. “Utah” was not included in the original name either.
On these drafts the white space shows up as gold. Despite the project not being anywhere near done, it was validating for Chris and I to see the project move this far along. That feeling increased with every step the project moved forward.
The scripture “Deal Prudently” ended up on the front because, by this time, the backs of the Goldbacks had been scrapped.
This draft also did not include much of the legal wording that ended up on the final draft.
Compared to the first image from Bonnie this one felt done so we went ahead and ordered 50 of them so we could start showing potential businesses something other than the Brefine notes.
Several weeks later we came back to Prudence because the other images were done or nearly done and Prudence was being printed first. We had to get it done. Cheri was unhappy with Prudence’s face so she drew a separate face, bird, and some tree branches with the intent to merge the images. We then asked Bonnie to photoshop those things on to the existing drawing since everyone was happy with the rest of the it.
The ‘Utah’ was added to ‘Utah Goldback’ and “voluntary, local currency” were also added because we wanted to emphasize the intended nature of the Goldback. “Specimen” was added because this version was to go into a limited print so we could see how the image looked in gold.
This prototype declares itself as ‘Utah Legal Tender’, and even cites the case for saying that in the Utah State code. Bonnie also added a security feature background in place of the slot canyon. This resulted in the Goldback having a much more golden appearance.
Getting the first Goldbacks was quite the event. We had been working on this project for months up until this point so having something in hand felt like a major milestone!
Take a close look at the image on the right. What do you think? Does it look okay? Check it out for a minute.
There was a bit of drama over this demo because both Cheri and (to a lesser extent) Chris felt like the image looked like a partially decapitated woman due to the tricky execution of photoshop. The artist has always been her own harshest critic. She was horrified and ashamed that her name was even on it.
Chris was mortified at the idea that this image would be shown to anyone. I had to take him to about a dozen businesses around our office to get candid feedback from random people. Not a single person felt like there was anything wrong with the image, in fact people were impressed by its beauty. Satisfied, Chris calmed down a bit and was able to help Cheri realize that no one else saw the error.
After taking this photograph I learned that Goldbacks are really difficult to take good photos of because of how shiny they are. The fifty demos were gifted out to people that had been involved with the project up until this point.
The Demos were the wrong size (almost the size of the 50) and had 1/10th of a gram of gold in them vs the 1/1000th of an ounce. (Cheri Jensen is the only person with her name on any of the Goldbacks)
This image was drawn knowing where the security features would be whereas we did not know how it would turn out for the first image.
Apparently the idea of over a 100,000 partially decapitated Prudences circulating around kept Cheri up at night. The next day she secretly, and without being asked went to work on another Prudence. While the first one took a couple of weeks this one was produced in just over a day. I was lucky enough to capture this picture which I believe is the only image of this drawing in progress. This second image was so much better, the first one was scrapped completely. This Prudence includes imagery from five different major Native American tribes in Utah as well as a wolf.
Throughout the process it was very important to Cheri to produce art of the absolute highest quality. She wanted to give her very best to the project because it was important to her to do it well. We are all very grateful to her for what she was able to accomplish with us as she took our rough ideas and (alongside our digital artist Bonnie) turned them into a reality.
The final version was far better than anything we had envisioned. The ‘one’ denomination went on to be sent to tens of thousands of people. This image has been printed over 200,000 times in the first year and is quickly becoming the most popular small denomination gold product in the world.
For a quick view of the progression scroll back to the top and glance at each stage!