When I was in college, all my fellow art college students used to joke about one day you’ll see us designing in the bar code factory. A self deprecating inside joke about our individual talents to make it in the corporate world. How funny is it that nearly 15 years later popping up all around me is a world of art using UPC’s. I feel I’ve missed the boat somehow and all my former classmates have gotten on in life just how they planned.

The great thing about UPC’s that for many years has gone unthought about is that the computer reader’s themselves don’t need a whole lot of area to actually read the code and the numbers underneath the code are pretty much for human reference. So You can get pretty creative in the way you take a UPC apart and still have it function. In the video below the functionality of a UPC-A barcode (the most commonly used) is explained in a very easy to follow format.

Commercial use of the UPC has been around since 1966 although widespread use of them didn’t begin until 1970. Since then they’ve just been stuck on packaging in small insignificant places and generally thought of as a necessary element without much importance in regards to design. But as art always does it has begun to break through the barrier and some really innovative designs have begun to spring up. It could be that little extra something you add to your design that endears your product to your customer.

UPC Art Inspiration