Do you remember…

Do you remember your first passport, or maybe your first ID card? If you’re my generation – or even a generation younger – then that ID document had a black-and-white photo of you, glued in to the designated space. This was a very easy photo to remove or alter to make a false identity.

What a change there has been in the way the photo is shown on the document and how it is protected! In your ID documents today, the photo is almost certainly digitally printed so it cannot be removed, and it may even be reproduced in shadowy form elsewhere on the page or card. And the whole of your personal information is protected by a thin laminate which contains at least one type – and some have several types – of optically variable design. It is almost impossible to remove that laminate without destroying it, and the OVD is probably one of the most sophisticated authentication devices yet invented.

Let us consider that laminate and its OVDs. These days there’s a good chance that it is made by Hologram Industries, which in the last few years has become a leading supplier of protective laminates for passports and ID cards. One reason for that is DID®, the company’s easy-to-recognise optical feature. DID’s colour-switch makes for a memorable and easily-viewed protection feature, but its visual simplicity belies its sophistication and complexity – it is a difficult feature to make, and this combination of easy recognition but difficult production (as well as the fact that it can be made with a narrow viewing angle so it doesn’t interfere with the readability of the data underneath it) means that it has served HI well as a door-opener for the passport and ID market.

But HI’s laminates don’t depend on only this one optical feature for their security. There will be several other OVDs incorporated in to the laminate, drawn from the company’s portfolio of excellent optical features.

One thing that you won’t find on your ID document, though, is a holographic version of your photo. Yet… But think how this could enhance the security of that ID document, which in today’s world is a valuable and much-coveted item. Imagine an ID document with your photo digitally printed in full colour, and alongside it, incorporated in to this all-important protective laminate, is the same photo reproduced as a hologram. If you know anything of holography, you will now be wondering how this can be done; you might even accuse me of having an over-active imagination, because you know how expensive it is to make a one-off hologram, and of course this holographic portrait is a one-off. It is a unique hologram of you, only on your passport or ID card.

I can assure you this isn’t my fantasy or imagination in overdrive! Hologram Industries has developed a method of making a low-cost one-off photo of you, derived from your ID photograph. The product is called HoloID® and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is in use on passports and ID cards within a year or two.

Ian Lancaster, November 2015