A (Moving) Picture Tells a Thousand Words

At the Currency Conference in May, Bundesdruckerei presented visuals of the latest house note in its ExNihilo series. To do so, it used an ingenious new tool from Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBS) – Nota-Live™, which provides accurate live simulation of security documents, complete with realistic optically-varying effects, offering an exceptionally accurate and dynamic way to visualise the designs of these documents.

Nota-Live has been purpose-built for the unique characteristics of banknotes and other secure documents (eg. passports and ID documents), offering specialised tools and features tailored to support their inherent complexity and sophistication.

Described as redefining the way banknotes are conceptualised and presented, it is based on more than a decade of light field research by KBBS partner Fathom Optics and took six months to jointly refine and develop into its current form. It was launched publicly earlier this year.

Nota-Live enables world-class rendition of nearly any optically-varying feature, and at the core of this is support for SUSI Optics® Jazz™, the latest innovation in the SUSI Optics family. Jazz uses KBBS Super Simultan (SUSI) presses to achieve ultra- high-resolution, two-sided printing with best-known registration. In collaboration with Fathom Optics, KBBS developed a version of Jazz that can be used on the transparent or semi-transparent windows of security documents. This is made possible by a combination of high-level front-to-back registration and dedicated offset inks with controlled density. The result is a print that creates the illusion of movement and depth or an image flip – without the need for lenses.