A special euro currency
sign (€) was designed after a public survey had narrowed
the original ten proposals down to two. The European Commission
then chose the final design. The eventual winner was a design
created by the Belgian Alain Billiet. The official story of
the design history of the euro sign is disputed by Arthur
Eisenmenger, a former chief graphic designer for the EEC,
who claims to have created it as a generic symbol of Europe.
The glyph is "a combination of the Greek epsilon,
as a sign of the weight of European civilization; an E for
Europe; and the parallel lines crossing through standing
for the stability of the euro".
The European Commission also specified a euro logo with
exact proportions and foreground/background colour tones.
Although some font designers simply copied the exact shape
of this logo as the euro sign in their fonts, most designed
their own variants, often based upon the capital letter
C in the respective font so that currency signs have the
same width as Arabic numerals. Placement of the currency
sign varies from nation to nation. There are no official
standards on where to place the euro symbol. Generally,
people in the euro countries have kept the placement of
their former currencies.
