International Design Journal
Article Title
Readability of invisible quick response (QR) codes printed on valuable paper prints as security feature
Abstract
Counterfeiting of security documents such as banknotes, checks, certificates, travel documents etc. is becoming now more than ever a serious problem, Various security features have already been introduced in the past to protect authentication or valuable prints from counterfeiting. And some of the already used anti-counterfeit and security features are special paper, special inks, watermarks, microprinting, security threads, holograms, etc.Though, there is still an urgent need to produce ingenious security features which considerably have to be cost-effective for the produced documents. So, this study aims to secure the most types used as a substrate for security prints with a new security feature that is difficult to counterfeit, an invisible quick response (QR) code, which can be printed with different capacities on these types of paper used in authentic documents, and can be read easily by smartphone cameras under special light sours, this could make these authentic documents difficult to be tamper. After experimental work study, the results have shown that QR code versions that encoded with low capacity of data, results in big modules (squares) in QR code structure, they can be read easily in most of paper types. Contrariwise, QR code versions that encoded with high capacity of data, results in small modules (squares) in QR code structure, they cannot be read easily in most of paper types, and in other types of paper, they never read, neither from all angles, nor by any types of smartphones. On the other hand, we have to take in consideration, the other parameters that are affecting on QR codes readability, like paper roughness, paper texture, paper color, the contrast between paper color and the invisible ink when lighted under the UV light source