So North America has it's $ sign, Great Britain has it £, there's the Euro €, the Japanese Yen ¥, and the Reserve Bank of India has ... nothing?
Generally they're called Rs or INRs, but these are considerd abbreviations, not symbols. And hot on the heels of a rant against "design competitions" comes a design competition so unique and significant that it surpasses everything I said about this horrible disease that reduces the design community to a horde of old-timey prospectors panning for loose change. The government of India has announced a chance to design the rupee symbol.
The sketch pad practically jumps into your hand, and you'd also want to sketch up a synopsis for the jury that explains "the historical and cultural ethos" of your design. The winner, as chosen by a seven-member jury of experts drawn from various art institutes, the government and the Reserve Bank of India, takes a $5,000 prize and historical bragging rights. A short list of five final entries walk away with $500, but put those pencils down.
Sadly, the contest is only open to residents of India.
From a design point of view, the chance to design something so historically significant doesn't come along very often. How many people do you know with an internationally recognized symbol on their resume? And potential PR if the contest were global aside, look at it this way: when the Euro was introduced back in 1999, the price tag to update computers topped $50 billion. Each entry has a required $10 (500 rupee) fee. Each participant can enter twice, so by my math, as long as half the population of East Asia enters twice, they have a pretty good head start on those new keyboards.
News travels fast, and in the time it took me to type this, a German fontblog has already taken design submissions from the ineligible.
Don't lose hope though. I've heard Russia is looking for a currency symbol for the Rouble too. More to come...
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