The Need for New ‘Printed’ Features

I attended the Optical & Digital Document Security (ODDS) Conference earlier this month in Vienna, both as a seminar leader and as a delegate. Like many I spoke to at this meeting, I had missed the thought processes that conference participation brings. It is not just about the meeting with colleagues and friends; for me it is a stimulation to the intellectual process as we chart the way forward from this point.

This article is a personal reflection of thoughts that came to me during ODDS. And my major conclusion was actually outside of the scope of the conference but flowed directly from it – namely, there will be a continuing need for new physical features for authentication and brand security and we may need to widen our definition of what we consider as ‘printed’.

Physical and digital

As its title implies, the conference scope was wide ranging, covering physical (optical) and digital solutions. Stealing a quote from a presentation by Xavier Prost of Veridos Identity Solutions, it covered the ‘phygital’ world, ie. the combination of physical and digital documents.

This line of thought started with the first session of the conference, which explored the transition into the digital document space and in particular with a presentation by Claudia Schwendimann of OeSD International, looking at how we may bridge any gap between the physical and digital worlds. For me this is an important area to consider as it is not in our interests for these to take independent paths.

My belief is that we need to seek a balance between physical and digital across the secure document space. There appears to be an established consensus that digital will grow but physical will be with us for at least a decade. This came out in the ODDS debates too, but it leaves us with some important questions to tackle.

How will this evolve, how should we seek to influence this and where are any significant gaps? We need to be realistic and recognise that the majority of the investment in new technology is likely to be in the growth area – digital. However, to accompany these we will still need new physical features, and these figured well in the optical part of ODDS.

As the title implied, ODDS featured a range of new optical features from companies such as Bodle Technologies, Optomel and Pennsylvania State University. However, I left the conference considering the question of what other physical features will be required over the coming years to complement these. Do we need to seek a balance in physical features too?

Printed or ‘printed’?

We have significant investment going into digital technologies, both from within our community and from the technology sector. The ODDS conference showed active projects within the physical (optical) domain. However, to continue to add security to our physical documents we need to continue investment in ‘printed’ features to complement these for multilayer security.

The danger here is that we could end up with innovation being taken out of printed features at a time when they are still required. This may be the moment to widen our definition of print to encompass the field of materials deposition, to take into account other emerging technologies in this space. An example of this wider materials deposition space would be some of the technologies used in the field of flexible and printed electronics.

I choose this example for a number of reasons. The technology was on show at the exhibition at ODDS where Prismade showed electronic tags in paper products: PragmatIC Semiconductor are also active in this area with functional print for brand protection. There are growing areas of what is now termed ‘functional print’ and this could be of benefit for further physical or phygital features.

Exploring this further

The next opportunity to discuss some of these issues further is the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum in Malta, 16-18 May, which includes a workshop on Security Printing in the Digital Age. I look forward to debating some of these issues with you there.