Overdrawn Accounts

To cater to the individual tastes of their customers, banks have long printed checks in a wide spectrum of colors. More recently some have begun to offer checks with floral or scenic backgrounds. Now the modest-sized Bank of Marin in Marin County, Calif., has gone one step further. Its customers can simply bring in their own photograph or drawing and have them printed onto a standard check form.

Undeterred by the higher cost ($4.95 for 200 as opposed to $2.95 for the conventional kind), more than 500 customers have already signed up for the illustrated checks. Most of them have selected pictures of their families or pets to adorn their checks, but some have seized the opportunity for more imaginative self-expression. A Chinese customer, for instance, ordered checks illustrated with a portrait of Chairman Mao. An advertising executive displays a photograph of himself seated on a soapbox, while another patron adorns his checks with a bottle of his favorite whisky. The manager of a San Rafael branch of the bank uses enigmatic checks that show a gorilla gazing Hamlet-like at a skull. "I'm not sure what it means," he admits.

Perhaps the most imaginative--and vindictive--customer so far is the one who ordered special checks to be used solely for making his alimony payments. They show him beatifically kissing his new wife.

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