King's Day Dokkum with 0-euro banknote WA van Buren

The King's Day celebrations in Dokkum start as early as the weekend, from Friday evening through Monday. Hence the early publication of my weekly contribution. There are similarities between designing a logo, corporate identity, and banknote for a national event and designing postage stamps. That is why this time I am drawing attention to an original design for a 0-euro banknote.

The graphic design duo Rick Bergsma and Max Dol of Buro Bend from Dokkum, as the winner of a design competition, executed the visual identity of the King's Day celebration on Monday, April 27, in an original way.

The orange logo consists of two playfully graceful, interconnected water lily leaves that together form a crown with curved lines underneath. The three lines represent the landscape consisting of land, the Wadden Sea, and the horizon.

The crown symbolizes the royal character of the King's Day celebration in Dokkum.

The interconnected water lily leaves with crowns together form a symmetrical whole (with a central heart-shaped connection at the bottom) and thereby refer to the connecting power of the municipality of Noardeast-Fryslân, consisting of 52 villages, and that of the city of Dokkum (which is also the final stamping point of the tour).

0-euro banknote WA van Buren

Both designers found it appealing to offer Dokkum something extra for its King's Day celebration by means of a banknote design paying tribute to the monarch, who visited Dokkum 40 years earlier on skates, unannounced and incognito.

Despite similarities between the banknote and the stamp, the Frisian identity has emerged in the banknote in a completely different and original way.

Front of the banknote

On January 26, 1986, the 18-year-old Prince Willem-Alexander, under the pseudonym WA van Buren, rode the 14th Elfstedentocht along with many others. The prince stands in the foreground during the ride, with the pedestrian bridge over the Lyts Djip (Klein Diep) with canal houses and the octagonal windmill Zeldenrust (1862) on the Westerbolwerk in Dokkum in the background.

The image is spatially enhanced by the orange-colored water lily leaves on the left (leaves of the yellow water lily, which refer to the red Frisian flag) transitioning from large to small, and by the blue leaves on the right executed in a similar manner. Color perspective is used here, with the dominant orange and receding blue of the leaves.

Below the year 1986 appears the pseudonym WA van Buren with the princely abbreviation WAVB 0001 (placed before the notation of a banknote serial number from the series 1 to 1986), which refers to the 0-euro of the souvenir banknote.

Back of the banknote

On the back of the banknote, the Elfstedentocht route is depicted in front of the contemporary portrait of the king. Furthermore, another frontal photograph of the skating prince is featured in the background.

A transparent orange rectangular area has been applied to a section of the banknote. The Elfstedentocht route, including an indication of the eleven different cities, is colored a brighter orange there.

This 0-euro banknote is not legal tender, but is intended as a collector's item. The first edition comprises 1986 numbered copies as a reference to the year of the 14th Elfstedentocht in 1986.

The price, 59 euros, refers to the King's current age. The reason? Apart from children's drawings, the King accepts nothing on King's Day, but sometimes there is an exception.

The king is in Dokkum for a repeat visit.

Designers Bergsma and Dol have delivered superb designs for the city, municipality, province, and country, complete with logo, corporate identity, and banknote, featuring meaningful and substantive metaphorical comparisons.

From Wednesday, April 22, a mini ice rink measuring 15 meters x 40 meters will be constructed on a pontoon in the Lyts Djip, on which the King will undoubtedly skate a few laps on Monday. Here, past and present meet.

An extremely attractive occasion for both designers from Buro Bend to personally present the King with the 0-euro banknote as a 'prize' after the skating trip, to crown his extraordinary 'Eleven Cities Tour'.