Folding origami with money has been around for centuries, but it is especially useful in the advertising world.  Money origami balances whimsy, practicality, and value, making it a popular form of casual yet thoughtful art.  Recently, Taro’s Origami Studio was asked to bring money origami to a national advertising campaign with Kearny Bank.

This project started with a simple idea- taking hard earned bills and turning them into the largest purchases people make.  But the client only had a few computer-generated reference images and turned to Taro’s to make them into real life origami models.

Over the course of a few months the Taro’s Origami team, headed by Senior Artist Frank Ling, worked to turn each of the ideas into a real origami model and display.  He also took a wide variety of folding videos so that the folding process could also be used in all forms of media.  Follow along to see how it all came to life!

1. The Ask

The request from the bank was to flesh out all 4 of the images (a house, a sailboat, a handshake, and a community) with origami models using authentic currency.  The goal was for the bank to have the material necessary for a whole suite of advertizing, from print to social, and tv to billboards.  That meant that all of the images needed to look like real money without disctrating from the overall message.  They also wanted to incorporate they specific orange accent color throughout the scenes.

Frank got to work on test folding everything and here are a few of the preliminary versions of the scenes.

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2. Revisions

The client loved the general look of the models, but now it was time to really flesh them out and perfect everything.

One note that that the faces in the money could be a bit disctrating when cut up, so Frank had to figure out where best to place Ben Franklin so that he wasn’t distracting.

Next, the hardest scene of the handshake needed to be cleaned up.  The jacket was a bit too cartoonish and they wanted an orange splash of color on the other person as well.

And finally, they wanted to make sure the neighborhood scene felt a little more populated.

After taking the notes from the client Frank built the filming setup and got to work.

3. Filming

Frank was in charge of not only designing all the models in origami, but also getting still production images of the final models, and filming the folding process for use in the advertisements.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Frank arranged the filming setup and skillfully filmed and shot everything needed for the ad team.

4. The Rollout

Once everything was finished the advertising team on the project got to work building everything out.  In the end it was a 5-pronged campaign, with elements in print, transit, billboards, online, and video.  Take a look beliw to see how everything turned out!

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