: Invisible barcodes? This may border on the 'too technical' side of graphic design but I'll give it a try. We have a contract with a printer who requires a barcode on the interior and cover

@Si6392903

Hsawires gave an excelent explanation about colors. I'm adding my 2 cents. You can play with the size and proportion of the barcode.

There are some limits on the offical guidelines of barcodes. But In my opinion are very square. You can reduce the size of the barcode lets say 75% and reduce the height of the bars in 50%-70%. and can be read by a linear barcode reader quite well.
otake.com.mx/Foros/BarcodeSize.png
And the best part... You can be creative! Just take a look at this google search (images): www.google.com/search?q=creative+barcode
Combine that with the colors you can use and you will have a great work.

An aditional note

Barcodes are ment to be seeing. They normally are not for an "all automated" process, it must be findable by the cashier.

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@Ann6370331

This is a very nice question ... and guess what!? there is an invisible ink !! and it could be done in various ways.

The First method is selecting some color combinations. If you couldn't change the design at least you could select some other color combinations to dissolve the barcode between your design.

The following example are scannable. The best contrast is obtained when the background reflects all the light and the bars reflect none.



That's mean that you could select two color combinations that is highly contract to the scanner and hard to be recognize to the eye. like the brown on red combination. the infrared scanner will reflect from brown the green after absorbing the red. and green over red gives you good contrast. and of course the red background will reflect nothing.

the next examples are Non-Scannable Color Combinations



The second method is using an invisible ink as you request.

Inks that are invisible to the human eye have been available for years. Only in
recent years has there been an interest in using these fluorescing or invisible”
inks for printing machine readable marks, Just using a clear, “invisible” ink
that has specific fluorescing properties.

It has frequently been tendered that it would be nice to print the “invisible” code over normal pictures or text on a package. This can be done, but it frequently required significant attention to the inks used in the background.

When ink fluoresces due to the excitation by the scanners, the ink
fluoresces in all directions, both down toward the background media as well as
up to the scanner’s optics.

A select example of successful print behind a readable UV fluorescing bar code



The only disadvantage of using the invisible ink, it will be so hard to the cashier to see the bardcode to scan it. :)

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@Sims5801359

Ask your printer as Scott mentions what size the barcode needs to be. If its a purely graphical scanner system then you should be able to make it whatever color you want and fairly small.

Can you use invisible ink?

No you cannot use invisible ink. Barcodes are an optical system. Most have now gone "cheap" using basically 2D image processing to scan the image. Traditional barcodes use infrared lasers that have to measure the amount of light reflected back to the reader. In either case though this cannot happen if the ink is invisible.

Solution

Your best bet is to discuss with the client AND printer at the same time. See what options they recommend while the client is on the phone. If terms can't be agreed then find a new printer for that client. Bill accordingly.

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