Every Bar Is a Multiple

Every Bar Is a Multiple

Produce ONE image, 2:3 portrait: a two-colour poster built around a large barcode. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these five lines only

• The words knocked out of the bars: {two or three words, and a number}
• The numerals under the code: {a number, in groups}
• The supporting lines, and where each goes: {up to four lines, each with a position}
• The two colours: {an accent, and a ground}
• The headline under the code: {a headline, and a line above it}

The module law

A barcode looks the way it looks because every bar and every gap is an exact multiple of one small base width. That is the entire visual signature: widths that are 1, 2, 3 or 4 units, never anything between.

Borrowing the shape without the rule gives you stripes.

A reference run of this style produced bars at widths measuring 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29 and 39 pixels — sixteen different widths with no common unit between them. It looked striking and it did not look like a code, because nothing about it was quantised.

Pick one base unit and build everything from it:

• Every bar is 1, 2, 3 or 4 units wide.
• Every gap is 1, 2, 3 or 4 units wide.
• No bar and no gap has any other width.
• The pattern is irregular in sequence and strictly quantised in size — that combination is what a code looks like.

The parts of a code

A code is not just bars. All of these are required:

• Guard bars. A narrow 1-1-1 pattern at the left end, at the right end, and at the centre. The guards run taller than the rest of the block, dropping below its baseline.
• A quiet zone. A clear margin of at least nine units of bare ground on both sides of the block. Nothing enters it.
• A numeral row. The number from the fields, set beneath the bars, in a monospaced face, split into groups, with one digit sat outside the block on the left.

The knockout

The words from the fields are knocked out of the bars — cut through them, so the ground shows where the letters are.

• Heavy condensed sans, set very large, filling the width of the block.
• The bars continue correctly above and below the letterforms; they are interrupted, not stopped.
• Counters and gaps inside letters show ground, not bar.
• Two or three words at most. Every character costs bars, and beyond three words there is no code left to read.

The rest of the sheet

• The headline below the code, in the ground's opposite colour, large and flush left.
• Supporting lines small, in one plain sans, at the positions the fields give, aligned flush to one margin.
• A QR-style block may sit at the lower right. If it does, it has three corner finder squares — top left, top right, bottom left — each a solid square inside a ring, and a quiet margin of its own.

Colour

Two colours only, and the ground is one of them. The code carries the accent; the type is either the accent or the ground's opposite. No third colour, no tints, no gradients, no shadows, no glows.

Never

• ✕ bar or gap widths that are not multiples of one base unit
• ✕ a code with no guard bars
• ✕ anything entering the quiet zone
• ✕ a code with no numeral row
• ✕ bars that stop at a knocked-out letter instead of continuing past it
• ✕ more than three knocked-out words
• ✕ a third colour, a tint or a gradient
• ✕ a QR block without three finder squares
• ✕ text the fields did not supply

The result

A code you could almost scan: irregular in sequence, exact in measure, guarded at both ends, numbered underneath — and a headline cut clean through the middle of it.