Erik Bruun
Encyclopedia
Erik Bruun is a Finnish graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

er.

Bruun spent his childhood in village of Säiniö on the Carelian isthmus. In the war years
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...

 his family was forced to move to Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

, where he later enrolled in the Central School of Industrial Design. He graduated as a graphics designer in 1950.

After graduation, Bruun worked for three years as an exhibition designer and advertisement artist. In 1953 he founded his own design studio, where he produced the most of his work.

Bruun's works are diverse and numerous. They include posters, postcards, stamps, and most notably the reverse sides of the last ever series of the Finnish Markka banknote
Banknote
A banknote is a kind of negotiable instrument, a promissory note made by a bank payable to the bearer on demand, used as money, and in many jurisdictions is legal tender. In addition to coins, banknotes make up the cash or bearer forms of all modern fiat money...

 series from year 1986.

In his work, Bruun mostly features the Finnish nature in all its richness and beauty. Particularly prominent motives include the marine eagle, the Saimaa seal and the bear. The Saimaa seal is the symbol of the Finnish nature preservation association, whose logo Bruun designed.

Bruun also submitted a proposal for the design of the Euro banknotes
Euro banknotes
Euro banknotes are the banknotes of the euro, the currency of the eurozone and have been in circulation since 2002. They are issued by the national central banks of the euro area or the European Central Bank...

, featuring various kinds of animals. This proposal was rejected in favour of Robert Kalina
Robert Kalina
Robert Kalina from the National Bank of Austria created the T 382 design, which was the winning design of the 1996 competition for the art shown on the euro banknotes. Kalina's design was chosen by the EMI Council on 3 December 1996...

's proposal featuring European architecture.

Miscellaneous notes

In the early days of the 1986 banknote series, Bruun and his wife were visiting Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. They needed to exchange Finnish Markka notes to Swedish Crowns, and had some of the new Markka notes with them. The cashier, never having seen the new notes before, asked if they were genuine. "Of course they are", replied Bruun's wife, "my husband drew them himself!"
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