Design I is the only proposal in the shortlist from a French team. It comes from Isabelle Daëron, a designer whose whole practice has been organised around natural flows.
| Design letter | I |
|---|---|
| Theme | Rivers and birds |
| Designer | Isabelle Daëron |
| Based in | Paris, France |
Design I — Isabelle Daëron. Complete family of six denominations, fronts and reverses. Design proposal only: it does not show an issued or approved euro banknote.
Who she is
Daëron graduated from the École supérieure d’art et de design in Reims in 2005 and from the École nationale supérieure de création industrielle in Paris in 2009. She founded Studio Idaë out of her research into how water, air and light can be used in public space, and the studio works across product, installation and graphic projects from Paris, with a workshop at Ivry-sur-Seine.
Her selection means the theme of rivers reached the shortlist through a designer who has spent years working with actual watercourses rather than with their imagery.
What the proposal shows
Movement is the organising principle. Birds appear alone on the fronts and in groups on the reverses, so that a reader moving through the series sees individuals become a collective — the proposal’s way of stating interdependence without symbols.
The drawing combines two registers deliberately: hand-made strokes laid over vector patterns, so that the same subject is rendered by two different means on the same note. The river flows carry that combination across denominations, and the ECB’s description notes the consistency of the interpretation as one reason the family stays recognisable from €5 to €200.
Where it sits in the process
Design I was published on 23 July 2026 as one of ten shortlisted families, with a public survey open until 21 September. A final decision by the ECB Governing Council is expected around the end of 2026, and until then every published image remains a proposal.
