We celebrate the World Poetry Day since 1999. The main purpose is to help the language diversity through poems and poetry, and increase the possibility to get to know endangered languages. However, how does the World Poetry Day connect with document security?
The graphics on documents or banknotes can be familiar for the many of us, but fewer know that they also serve as a security feature. Not only illustrations, motifs, symbols, but also literary-poetic masterpieces appear on national documents. Graphic artists can work on a solution, on a real work of art, even for weeks!
And these things are connected in such a way that poetry also appears in some documents, and graphic artists and designers often smuggle poetic or even national song excerpts onto them.
In the new Hungarian passport the national anthem of Hungary is displayed in two separate ways: a part of the text is embossed on the plastic datasheet, and under UV light the notes of the anthem are visible on the paper pages of the passport.
The Hungarian identity card also has some hidden features related to poetry: under UV light a patriotic song called “Szózat” appears on the back of the card.
In the Irish passport too we can find the national anthem. There is a different string of notes of it on every page, and reading the pages in order gives the whole anthem.
Finnish passport has something similar, it accomodates an extract of a poem written by Eino Leino, the best known Finnish poet, which can be visible by naked eye. The Sámi minority living in Northern Finland is represented by a micro-written poem.
Similar poetry can also be found in banknotes. On the Singaporean 1000$ banknote the national anthem of the city-state is visible by the naked eye. This is the only banknote to include the whole text of an anthem in the world. In this case, it also functions as a security element, as the text is printed on the banknote with microwriting technique. However, in 2021 they are planning to withdraw it from circulation, as a result of anti-counterfeiting efforts, but in the meantime we can count it as one of the symbols of poetry.
All these solutions not only link the documents to the culture of a nation, but also have artistic, theoretical and security value. Also in our printing company, many graphic artists, designers and experts work to ensure that these products are not only tamper-proof, but also aesthetically pleasing and unique, while also paying tribute to our greatest poets and artists.
