SF-07
Microtext
Lettering cut so small it reads as a plain rule to the eye, and as words under a loupe.
Microtext ×200
Specification
- House code
- SF-07
- Method
- Engraved microtext, 0.15 mm cap height
- Apparent at
- ×200
- Deters
- Reproduction at consumer scanning and printing resolutions.
- The recipient’s check
- Under a loupe, what looked like a plain rule or a border resolves into legible words with clean, sharp letterforms.
Microtext is text engraved at a cap height below about two-tenths of a millimetre. At arm’s length it is a hairline. Under ten or twenty times magnification it is a sentence, and usually a sentence that says something specific about the document it is printed on.
Its security value comes from the gap between origination and reproduction. Cutting legible letterforms at that size is a plate-making problem with a known solution. Reproducing them is a resolution problem, and a copy made at ordinary office resolutions turns the words into a broken grey smear — recognisably not a rule, and recognisably not text either.
As specified
We normally engrave microtext into an element the document already needs, so it is not obvious that it is there: the rule beneath a signature line, the inner border of a plate mark, the spine of a guilloche. The wording is agreed with the client and recorded in the job file.