Optical security innovations continued to win global recognition. Recent award ceremonies across the currency, identity, and packaging sectors have highlighted how these innovations continue to protect these. In this article, Holography & Optical Technology News™ (HOT News) reviews several of the award-winning developments.
Firstly, the prestigious Regional Banknote and ID Document of the Year Awards form part of the industry’s High Security Printing™ (HSP) Latin America conference.
The event was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (9-11 June), with the awards presented at a special ceremony during the conference dinner on 10 June on top of the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain.
The Bermuda Monetary Authority won the Best New Banknote, or rather Banknotes, award for the 2 and 5 Bermudian dollars(B$), issued last November on SAFEGUARD® polymer substrate under the theme ‘Same Look, Smarter Design’.
Designed and printed by De La Rue, they incorporate several innovative security features. These include half windows which are fully and partially transparent, depicting a cloudy sky and an underwater scene viewable from both sides of the notes.
Surrounding these windows, features such as ILLUMINATE™ and ROTATE™ are fully integrated into the iridescent ink design of waves, multiple fish, and a sun, that appear when the notes are tilted.
In addition, the notes feature the silver ARGENTUM™ in the form of a tuna fish and Enhanced GEMINI™ that appears under UV light. They also have raised dots as an aid to the visually impaired.
The winner of the Best New Series was the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten, with not just a new series (including coins as well as notes) but a new currency – the Caribbean guilder.
This went into circulation on 31 March, replacing the Netherlands Antilles guilder, with exceptional thought given not just to the design and features, but also to engaging and educating the public about their new currency.
Designed and produced by Crane Currency, these notes include a watermark with electrotype, MOTION SURFACE® stripe, SPARK Flow® in the shapes of shells which change from blue to green, and 3mm wide RAPID HD® Detect microoptics threads.
This award went to the Banco de Guatemala (Banguat) for the 1 quetzal commemorative note issued to mark the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the national currency, named after the Resplendent Quetzal, the Central American country’s national bird.
The Q1 is only the second commemorative banknote in Banguat’s history, and the denomination has been brought out of retirement, having been replaced by a coin in 2012. It is similar in design to the previous editions of the note, but has been produced on paper rather than polymer and was printed by Giesecke+Devrient.
The key security feature is an octagonal Varifeye® colour change patch, depicting the iconic arch of Santa Catalina in Antigua Guatemala. The patch is gold in reflected light, with a window on the reverse that appears in transparent blue when the note is held up to the light. When the banknote is rotated, a change between the years 1924 and 2024 is optically visible.
The Best House Note Award was first introduced at the sister event HSP EMEA last year, but such was the demand and pace of innovation that it has now been extended to Latin America and the Caribbean. The winners of this inaugural award for the region were Casa da Moeda do Brasil, BlendPaper and Hueck Folien for the Cotton Cycles House Note, produced to highlight the importance of using natural resources in the production of banknotes, and reducing resource waste.
Casa da Moeda do Brasil printed the note on a substrate from BlendPaper made of recycled fibres from shredded Brazilian real banknotes under the Tranfsorma initiative, a pioneering and scalable solution that enables the reuse of banknote fibres as raw material for new security papers.
The Optomove® micro-optics security thread was made from recycled PET and aluminium and supplied by Hueck Folien.
The Regional ID Document awards recognise outstanding achievement and technical sophistication of a personal identification or travel document programme. The awards are designed to identify the best in system infrastructure and the implementation of a government passport, identity, or other secure identification scheme.
The Ministry of National Security, St Kitts and Nevis, was awarded Best New Passport for its innovative 2024 ePassport, making it the first nation in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to win a High Security Printing award.
The passport design celebrates national heritage, drawing from the pre-Columbian island names ‘Liamuiga’ (St. Kitts – ‘fertile land’) and ‘Oualie’ (Nevis – ‘land of beautiful waters’), with interior imagery reflecting the motto ‘Country Above Self’.
Visual and UV elements guide the holder through the islands’ landscapes and flora. Security features include tactile elements, optically variable magnetic ink, and transparent windows, ensuring it is one of the most secure government-issued documents in the Caribbean.
Peru’s National Registry of Identification and Civil Status (RENIEC) won Best New National ID Card for the 2024 launch of its DNIe 3.0 (Documento Nacional de Identidad Electrónico) an advanced electronic identity card engineered to support secure digital transformation.
Made of polycarbonate and embedded with a Common Criteria EAL6+ chip, the DNIe 3.0 biometric verification, digital signatures, and encrypted authentication.
It features multi-layered security elements, including optically variable inks, UV fluorescence, a changeable laser image (CLI), microtext, a transparent DIDT inlay, and laser-engraved tactile data ensuring resilience against forgery.
A machine-readable zone and encrypted QR code support automated identity verification across digital and physical platforms.
The Government of Guyana was recognised for its groundbreaking new biometric ID system, developed in partnership with Veridos.
At its core is a polycarbonate ID card featuring advanced security technologies: Spectre ID (a dynamic image of a running jaguar symbolising national pride), Magic ID (optical animation for visual verification), and CLIP ID (high-resolution, colour portrait embedded directly into the card structure). These innovations offer robust fraud resistance and durability.
In another important forum last month, optical innovations were at the centre stage at the International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) 2025 – ‘Excellence in Currency Technical Awards’. These were presented at the recent Currency Conference on 28 May 2025 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Among the category of Best New Banknote or Banknote Series, the three finalists were:
The winner was Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for its new polymer series, and specifically the new 50, 100, and 500 piso banknotes issued in 2024 (the first in the series, the 1,000 piso, was issued in 2022).
Printed by Note Printing Australia, each note includes CCL Secure’s IRISWITCH™ feature, which appears transparent when viewed straight on, but reveals a pearlescent colour when the note is tilted.
The ‘switch’ colour has been designed to match the primary colour of a given denomination, which is gold for the PHP 500, lilac for the PHP 100 and red for the PHP 50.
The vertical clear window contains multiple security features, including dynamic metallic wavy lines, the country’s seal, mirrored denomination, BSP logo and (for the PHP 500) a 3D rainbow effect. In common with the PHP 1,000, the PHP 500 also includes a Plasmogram™ Reverso stripe from SURYS, while the two lower denominations feature a shadow thread.
Interestingly, all the finalists include optical security features. Kazakhstan’s Saka series banknotes include a RAPID® Vision micro-optics windowed thread from Crane Currency, a RollingStar® Patch from Louisenthal and, on the reverse, a SPARK Flow Prime element.
The other finalist, the Bank of Jamaica’s new polymer banknote series, designed and printed by De La Rue on SAFEGUARD, includes security features such as a holographic stripe with photo-realistic dual portraits, DEPTH™ and PUREIMAGE™ effects. The lower-value denominations notes also feature ARGENTUM, ILLUMINATE, TACTILE EMBOSS, and Enhanced GEMINI™.
Shifting from high security to packaging, the Foil and Speciality Effect Association (FSEA) gold leaf awards once again recognise the innovative work of hologram companies.
FSEA organised the 32nd Annual FSEA Gold Leaf Awards this June. Altogether, there were various categories highlighting their innovation in embellishment, binding, and finishing.
Hazen secured a total of four awards at the 2025 FSEA Awards. Two of these were for its ‘Time Traveller’ calendar, which won the gold leaf award for Best Use of Transfer Metallization and the silver leaf award for Best Use of Foil and Embossing.
In addition, Hazen received two more silver leaf awards – one for Best Use of Transfer Metallization for the ‘2024 Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Booklet’, and another for Best Use of Foil and Holographic for the ‘2025 Super Bowl Stadium Edition Program’.
Unifoil won gold for Best Sustainable Design for its Unilustre™ ‘Silver Maze’ creation for the Formes de Luxe Brochure Cover and bronze for Holographic Design.
Looking ahead: IOTA excellence awards As a reminder, the IOTA Excellence in Optical Technologies Awards is a new global initiative recognising innovation and technical achievement across the wider optical security technologies (OSTs) landscape. The deadline for nominations is 8 August, and the awards will be presented at the Optical and Digital Document Security Conference™ from 15-17 September 2025. The program for the conference has been announced, and registration is open.
For more information about the awards, visit iot-association.org/excellence-in-optical-technologies-awards/
or opticaldigitalsecurity.com for the latest updates.
