I just recently visited Scott Blake’s Barcode Art website and created my own personal barcode, pictured above. This interactive project creates a barcode based on the personal data you enter such as gender, age, height, etc. The program then allows you to calculate your “worth” by scanning the barcode. I’m “worth” $6.98, with the highest possible amount being $10. Blake provides more information about the calculations used to determine your worth (which are pretty funny) and even offers personalized t-shirts and mugs with your barcode on them. You should visit Barcode Yourself today to try it out, who knows maybe you’ll be worth $10.
I just heard about a group of students from Malmö University in Sweden that have created a system to convert barcodes into music. Once a barcode is scanned it is converted into an audio sample set on a timeline, this allows users to scan multiple items to create an entire composition. The following video shows the team of Interaction Design students and friends at a local grocery store testing out there project. It’s pretty cool, and you can see that the customer’s throughout the store thought so as well.
For additional information, the Barcode Beats site explains more about the process and includes a video explaining how the system works.
Now I’ve seen it all! Check out this awesome photo of an iceberg in Antarctica, look familiar? This looks exactly like a barcode and it’s really amazing looking too. See, barcodes are even on the far ends of the earth in the middle of nowhere.
Dark Roasted Blend recently featured these new artistic UPC’s that are showing up on products all over Japan. They are created by the Japanese firm D-Barcode and are a creative approach to the traditional UPC. These are a few of my favorites, to see more you can go to Dark Roasted Blend: Japanese Creative Barcodes.
I recently found a bunch of great videos on YouTube by Scott Blake (he’s the guy who uses barcodes to create art), and I had to include this one. You should really check out some of his other stuff as well. I just thought this was funny and it also displays something else made possible by barcodes.
