The new 2,000-hryvnia banknote has become the center of a scandal: the designer claimed the font was “pirated”
11 July 07:52
The new 2,000-hryvnia banknote featuring Vasyl Stus, unveiled by the National Bank of Ukraine, has drawn public criticism. Graphic designer and activist Bohdan Gdal stated that the banknote once again uses the Bickham Script font with so-called “pirate” Cyrillic characters, according to "Komersant Ukrainian"
The designer recalled a similar scandal in 2019.
According to Bohdan Gdal, even back then, he and designer Andriy Shevchenko had drawn attention to the use of this font on Ukrainian hryvnia banknotes.
At that time, he said, the issue concerned the Bickham Script font with an unofficial Cyrillic adaptation, attributed to Russian designer Alexandra Gofman.
“Remember, back in 2019, Andriy Shevchenko and I raised the issue that pirated fonts were being used on hryvnia banknotes? Today, the NBU unveiled a 2,000-hryvnia note featuring Stus. And there it is again—that pirated Bickham Script. Seven years have passed,” Gdal wrote.
What the National Bank Promised
The activist claims that following the public outcry in 2019, the National Bank of Ukraine officially responded to the design community’s concerns.
According to him, at that time the NBU explained the situation and stated its intention to hold competitive design contests when creating new banknotes to avoid the use of questionable or unlicensed fonts in the future.
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Why the Criticism Arose
Gdal explained that this font—Bickham Script, created by designer Richard Lipton in 1997 and later licensed by Adobe—did not have an official Cyrillic version at all until 2016.
“So, if anyone was using it, it was only through pirated modifications, which are automatically considered stolen, because the font license explicitly prohibits any modification of letterforms and their republication,” Gdal wrote.
Upon visual analysis and an attempt to trace the origins of this discrepancy online, a series of fonts titled Bickham Script One, Bickham Script Two, and Bickham Script Three was found, attributed to a Russian woman named Alexandra Gofman. As it turned out, she is quite well-known in font circles as the creator of stolen font versions, which she signed with her own name and then distributed for free without the authors’ permission. She created the series of stolen Bickham Script fonts in 2005.
In contrast, the original authors did not release their Cyrillic version until 2016. And when comparing the inscription on the hryvnia, it is clear that the stolen version was used—a version for which the National Bank simply cannot have a license.
The use of this unofficial Cyrillic version became a topic of debate among Ukrainian designers several years ago.
So far, the National Bank of Ukraine has not officially commented on Bohdan Gdal’s statement regarding the design of the new commemorative banknote.
