Japanese creative packaging design solutions to ugly barcodes

Creative Japanese packaging designers at D-Barcode have come up with delightful ways of incorporating the UPC bar-codes into their products. Link, Link to Dark Roasted Blend roundup of creative barcodes (Thanks, Marilyn!)

[#1 posted by djmermaid, April 4, 2008 1:48 AM]

those are cool - but I've been seeing this on Tecate boxes ever since they redesigned their logo (a year or so ago.)

[#2 posted by Crawford Tillinghast, April 4, 2008 2:15 AM]

I prefer MAD magazine's approach back in 1979; they just put a gigantic barcode on the cover, with a caption below expressing hope that that particular issue would jam up every damn computer in the company....

[#3 posted by Crawford Tillinghast, April 4, 2008 2:17 AM]

Sorry, "company" = "country". (Talk about a Freudian slip.)

[#4 posted by trimeta, April 4, 2008 2:22 AM]

This reminded me of Scott Blake's art, in particular this collection.

[#5 posted by schwal, April 4, 2008 2:57 AM]

Very cool, but what's that one on the bottom left suppose to be?

[#6 posted by dagoon86, April 4, 2008 2:57 AM]

The Scott Blake's collection seems to be better than those straight-lined bar codes.

[#7 posted by Rich_Morin, April 4, 2008 3:28 AM]

Wonderful stuff. Since joining Reactrix, I've become intrigued by the challenges of blurring the line between advertising and entertainment. This promotional video is a great example of something that does this very well...

[#8 posted by rocklifter, April 4, 2008 3:29 AM]

#5 Chopsticks with noodles, is what I see.

[#9 posted by Anonymous, April 4, 2008 4:14 AM]

I believe those are EAN-13 codes, not UPC-A; you'll find UPC-A and UPC-E mostly in the US, and EAN-13 and EAN-8 in the rest of the world.

[#10 posted by Anonymous, April 4, 2008 5:07 AM]

I also like what the German design firm "Pfadfinderei" did with the barcodes for their products (mostly LP covers): http://www.pfadfinderei.com/07beta/print/print18.html
http://www.pfadfinderei.com/07beta/print/print19.html
It's amazing how similar some if the ideas are compared to the works mentioned above. The idea of making barcodes into trees seems to be kind of obvious, for example.

[#11 posted by Pipenta, April 4, 2008 5:33 AM]

Fun!

[#12 posted by The Thompson Five, April 4, 2008 5:47 AM]

#2

I immediately thought of the MAD magazine thing too. I think they kept it up for a year or so. The only issue I really remember had the bar code over a caption that said something like "Exclusive up close preview of the new Bee Gee's album".

[#13 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, April 4, 2008 8:42 AM]

A bit too blurry, Rich Morin.

[#14 posted by tdoupe, April 4, 2008 9:43 AM]

Was this the same company that won the Cannes Titanium Lion in 2006 or a rip-off of the idea?
http://www.barcoderevolution.com/gallery/index.php?c=all

[#15 posted by SXA, April 4, 2008 11:28 AM]

The bottom left one is chopsticks picking up noodles--Im not Nipponese so I had to think on that.

The only possible name for such a company is:

BAR-NONE!

simon

[#16 posted by moonracer23, April 4, 2008 2:19 PM]

Interesting, my first thought on the bottom left image was that is was a towel or sheet on a clothes line.

[#17 posted by Bottlekid, April 4, 2008 3:11 PM]

Cute, but this also affects the accuracy of the bar code reader. Bar codes scanners need "quiet space" on either side of the code. The pizza example could cause some issues there. And the house example has reduced the readable height by about 25%. An annoyance for point-of-sale, but could cause big problems on coveyor systems where the read rate is determined by the bar code height and conveyor speed.

"Price check on register six!"