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Barcode Designs
I really don't like using barcodes in direct mail. I usually try to avoid them. Wherever you place them on the mailer, they disturb the creative and just don't "look good". But sometimes you don't have a choice, like when you're running a redemption campaign where the recipient has to redeem the offer by presenting their mail piece (with a trackable barcode) in-store.
However, as some Japanese designers illustrate this article, with a little imagination, you can have some fun with barcodes and still make them functional!
Thanks to @graphicstart for the tweet!
Posted on Tuesday, 7 October 2008 at 11:43 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/182
Comments
Noting that most barcodes have standards that have to be adhered to for 'reading'. The scanners are much better at reading codes these days compared to when most of the spec's were put together, however it should still be a consideration when being creative, that the barcodes will still have to 'read'.
For the EAN-13 barcodes illustrated, these are generally used for product ID, not for customer tracking (or in other words, usually static, not dynamic)... the EAN/ UPC standards can be found at the following site: http://www.gs1au.org/ (for us Aussies, this organisation is formerly known as EAN Australia, the organisation that allocates the company number used in the barcode). Retailers would request that manufacturers/ packagers/ printers adhere to these standards before stocking their products...
Posted by Steve on Thursday, 9 October 2008 at 2:04 PM
Steve, thanks for your feedback. I'm aware that these barcode designs probably break the standard barcode clearance rules, but I do like the ideas! Agreed that EAN-13 isn't really suitable for variable, but there are many other 2D barcodes which would be suitable.
Posted by Eliot Harper on Thursday, 9 October 2008 at 7:35 PM
G'day Eliot,
I imagine you've seen Xerox' old Glyph technology? Binary halftoning encoded in tiny 45 degree strokes (like //\/\//\ in rows). This field of tiny strokes was typically a halftoned area which would sort of disappear as a background wash, but had built in redundancy. I don't think it ever took off though unfortunately.
Posted by David Dawes on Monday, 20 October 2008 at 4:44 PM
I was going to mention dataglyph and then saw David's post. I did a lot of work (on a couple of occasions) over the last 10 years or so on working with data glyphs. I think it was an excellent encoding technology, however I think that this was a Xerox product (out or PARC on the West Coast) in never got enough traction to become a standard out in the world. There was the ability to generate them available, however I think the problem was that the reading and interpreting hardware and software wasn't readily available.
I remember a demo that we (when at PrintSoft) did with Xerox a few years ago where we had an image of a champagne bottle printed on a page, and a diamond shape in the label was a dataglyph containing the holders details, which was scanned to go in the draw to win a prize (I think??)
I hadn't look at dataglyphs since I was in discussions with Xerox in the US a few years ago, however it seems that things have actually progressed a little since then with the creation of microglyph. Check this out:
http://www.parc.com/research/projects/dataglyphs/
Posted by Brett Dashwood on Thursday, 23 October 2008 at 12:27 PM