Creative Expressions: The Art of Barcode Design
- Charlotte Wensley
- May 30
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
I'd never registered 'barcode art' as a 'thing' before I was asked to join the 'Slivers' exhibition currently showing at Studio One Noosa, so naturally curiosity got the better of me and I had to dig a little deeper to find out more about the concept....
How much thought have you ever given to the barcode as you're rushing your shopping through the self-checkout at the supermarket? I'm guessing not much! But barcodes are on everything we purchase and are now an intrinsic part of our shopping transactions. Commerce as we know it would probably cease to exist without them these days as each barcode contains a wealth of information about a product from price to type, size, colour and so on.
The barcode is like the DNA of a product.
Yet, we take little notice of them. They are unexciting, seemingly just functional graphics on our packaging. That these black and white lines and series of random numbers could be the subject of art may seem a little strange.
But let's rewind briefly.
The inventor of the barcode was Joe Woodland who, in 1949, was inspired by the dots and dashes of Morse code to come up with a similar approach to simplifying product inventory and stocktaking in order to get shoppers through the checkout lines more quickly at his small grocery store in the city of Troy, Ohio, USA. His solution was to have every product coded in a way that would eliminate the manual work of pricing (and eliminate the need to look up prices when a price tag was missing). It was a simple concept that evolved into something far more sophisticated and far-reaching in its uses and benefits. It was at the Marsh Supermarket that the very first product labeled with a Universal Product Code, or UPC, was scanned at a checkout; the product was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum.
It wasn't until July 1972 that the first automated checkouts, with barcode scanners became a reality. Though industry wide take up of the idea came later with the advent of computers and it it took until the 1980s for the bar code to really take off, with Kmart and Walmart being two of the first adopters, both of which pushed for its adoption because of the tremendous benefits to their cataloguing and tracking.
Barcodes have come to be perhaps the most instantly recognisable symbol of commerce, capitalism and modern life.
And for centuries artists have been drawn to symbolism, so it seems only natural that the modern artist's relationship with symbolism and a desire to converse on canvas about contemporary life gave rise to the opportunity to express thoughts and ideas using the visual vehicle of the humble barcode.
This idea came to fruition in the 1990's when Bernard Solco, an Italian American multimedia artist from New York, became the first artist to really see the barcode as having all the fundamentals of good design and in itself, a work of art.
And there's a story to it.....
In the spring of 1993, Solco had an opportunity to show his artwork to a select group of serious Pop Art collectors and art critics at a private exhibit in the prestigious Soho Arts District in lower Manhattan. The artist had only two weeks to create a masterpiece that would make a lasting impression on the esteemed group.
Solco set to work and stretched two oversized canvases but had no particular inspiration or subject in mind. Three days had passed and the artist just stared at the canvases waiting for something to appear in his mind’s eye. The artist, who lived and worked in a loft, woke up the next morning and sat in his kitchen eating breakfast while looking at the empty canvases that were in the distance leaning against the wall in his studio. The loft was quite large and the studio was far enough from the kitchen that in perspective the canvases appeared to be only a few inches tall.
While pouring Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup into a glass of milk his eye immediately focused on the barcode on the back of the bottle. Serendipitously, the shape of the barcode was exactly the same shape as one of the stretched canvases in his studio.
As the artist was holding up the bottle and looking at the barcode he glanced at the canvas in the distance.
The idea for a giant barcode was born. Solco spent the next three days painting an impressive four foot tall Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup barcode and the rest is history.
The artist not only impressed the art collectors and critics, he also sold the Hershey’s painting on the spot. In addition, an art dealer invited Solco to do a solo exhibition of his giant barcodes in his New York City gallery. For the next six months, the artist painstakingly created an entire series of paintings and limited edition prints entitled, “American Product Series.”
The series was comprised of 20 large scale paintings and prints of American product barcodes. Several of the paintings depicted barcodes from food items that the artist himself purchased on a regular basis. Solco united the two distinct roles of consumer and artist, representing a range of popular products from Oreo Cookies, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Marlboro Cigarettes, and Kodak Film. The impressive oversize paintings were so precisely scaled and rendered that each painting is capable of actually being scanned.
Twenty five years later, the paintings can still be scanned today by using a barcode scanner that can be downloaded to a cell phone or tablet.
The Bigger Picture......
Most recently and arguably the most innovative of barcode artists is US artist Scott Blake. Born in Florida in 1976 Blake focused his pop art creations around the barcode in the early 2000's. But rather than creating micro type images he has done the opposite by using a multitude of barcodes to create a pop art image.
He is perhaps most well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Andy Warhol. He says of the work:
"This is my Barcode Andy Warhol portrait made with 2,160 barcodes. I used the UPC barcodes from Campbell's Soup cans that were part of Warhol's iconic screen prints. I even curved the barcodes to mimic the cylindrical shape of soup cans. I also created an augmented reality interface to go along with the portrait, so when a barcode is scanned, a video projector lights up the corresponding soup can and dumps virtual soup into a bowl. I added a simple game which is activated by scanning the barcodes in sequence from Tomato all the way around to Clam Chowder. The mosaic includes several hidden "Easter Egg" barcodes. For instance, one plays a special clip of Warhol eating a hamburger and another shows David Bowie playing Warhol in the movie Basquiat"
Now that's taking barcode art to a whole new level, I'm not sure I'd have the patience for that!
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