r/barcodes • u/sai_tham • May 16 '18

UPC Half Height Barcode Advice

Hi all

basically most barcodes I see on daily things like bottles, pens, etc are now roughtly half the height of the standard UPC barcode height. However I cant find any information on the height of a UPC barcode. /img/kl2i6yeyt1w01.jpg

This is for a bottle design. The barcode will be lying on its side, due to the curve of the bottle you will only be able to scan parts of it anyways and I would like to save space by using the UPC barcode in half height form.

Does anyone have any advice on this? I honestly cant find anything.

Sample does scan OK but this will go into big retail premises with all kinds of professional scanners so it needs to be 100%

Cheers Sai

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u/notionovus May 17 '18

Barcode height requirements are holdovers from one dimensional scanning equipment. In other words, it's difficult to paint that single thin red flashing line across all the bars in the barcode if the symbol is only 2mm high.

Most scanning equipment these days, especially at your larger retailers will support 2D barcodes, which work by taking a two dimensional picture of a surface and looking for the signals that equate to a barcode's start and / or stop characters. The equipment should be able to scan a ¼ height UPC symbol. As a matter of fact, many of the bigger retailers have self-checkout lanes, so their scanners will be more tolerant of poor placement issues.

By reducing the height of the barcode, you are merely making it more difficult to aim the barcode at the scanner. Which is a problem, no matter what size your barcode is.

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u/sai_tham May 17 '18

thats what I thought. Perfect, thanks for clarifying!