page_title: Euro sign
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Euro sign / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: The Euro symbol (€) printed and in handwriting Español: El símbolo del Euro como está en el teclado (€) y como se lo usa en papeles escritos manualmente Українська: Символ Євро (€) друкований та рукописний
context_page_description: The euro sign, €, is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the Eurozone and some other countries. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E, crossed by two lines instead of one. In English, the sign precedes the value; in most other European languages, the reverse is true.
context_section_description: There were originally 32 proposed designs for a symbol for Europe's new common currency; the Commission short-listed these to ten candidates. These ten were put to a public survey. After the survey had narrowed the original ten proposals down to two, it was up to the Commission to choose the final design. The other designs that were considered are not available for the public to view, nor is any information regarding the designers available for public query. The Commission considers the process of designing to have been internal and keeps these records secret. The eventual winner was a design created by a team of four experts whose identities have not been revealed. It is assumed that the Belgian graphic designer Alain Billiet was the winner and thus the designer of the euro sign.
   Inspiration for the € symbol itself came from the Greek epsilon (ϵ) – a reference to the cradle of European civilization – and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to 'certify' the stability of the euro.
  — European Commission
  The official story of the design history of the euro sign is disputed by Arthur Eisenmenger, a former chief graphic designer for the European Economic Community, who says he had the idea 25 years before the Commission's decision.
  The Commission specified a euro logo with exact proportions and colours (PMS Yellow foreground, PMS Reflex Blue background), for use in public-relations material related to the euro introduction. While the Commission intended the logo to be a prescribed glyph shape, type designers made it clear that they intended instead to adapt the design to be consistent with the typefaces to which it was to be added.
caption: The euro sign; logotype and handwritten
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