Then and Now – Holography and the Graphic Arts

In the August Holography News® (HN) edition of ‘Then and Now’, I highlighted the role that holograms have played in protecting banknotes from counterfeiting. Looking through the archives of HN I note that at about the same time as the first hologram on a banknote was reported there was an article titled ‘Upper Deck Hits Home Run with Holography’ which told one of the many stories about applications of holograms on trading cards – a phenomenon that took the US by storm in the late 1980s early 90s.

It may be hard to believe now, but at that time the use of holograms in the graphic arts industry was driving innovation in terms of holographic techniques and materials at least as much, if not more than, security print applications.