GS1 Sponsored Barcode Competition
Natcoll and barcode experts GS1 have been working together for the past couple of years providing a competition for up-and-coming designers to promote the message that “holistic” packaging design must not only look good, it must also maintain the integrity and purpose of the barcode as a stock-taking necessity. In essence, turning the “ugly duckling” of packaging – the barcode – into a swan encouraging designers to incorporate the barcode into their art, as opposed to feeling it is an intrusion.
Graphic design student Elio Freeman was delighted to win the second annual GS1 Lifting the Bar competition.
GS1 NZ is a global organisation dedicated to the design and implementation of universal standards for international trade and commerce, and has been providing students and tutors in the Diploma of Computer Graphic Design course with expert training from its staff on barcoding and standards. As an additional incentive to these students, GS1 NZ has also provided prizes for a barcode design competition. The winning barcodes had to display creativity but must also pass verification within strict GS1 guidelines.
“We've always known that designers aren't keen on having to stick a black-and-white striped rectangle on their carefully-created graphics and while we sympathise, we are the technical standards body and we could never approve of the size reductions and shortening that we often see," explains Owen Dance, Technical Consultant GS1.
“Barcodes that don't scan, or don't scan well, lead in turn to delays and inefficiencies right through the supply chain. Rather than play the policeman and try to enforce a conventional application of the standards we're trying to be creative and positive and send out the message that you can use colour and innovation to make the barcode an interesting and attractive part of a total graphical presentation.”
In 2008, GS1 donated to Natcoll three Hand Held Products verifiers to be used during the design process to check that bar code ideas are compliant with GS1 standards.
The inaugural GS1 Lifting the Bar competition winners:
