Being a designer requires at least some degree of perfectionism, a fact which often boils to the surface when working with imperfect tools– such as when one needs to create a barcode for a package or book cover design. We know of more than a few designers who have gone so far as to attempt to re-create an authentic looking barcode in Illustrator– something that takes way too much time and energy to be practical.

Fortunately for us and others (who probably need barcodes to, you know, allow the scanning of things), Wolf Software provides professional quality barcode creation software free of charge for both Mac and Windows. In addition to the old standby's of UPC and ISBN, users have the option to choose from a large variety of other barcode formats, including Datamatix (pictured here encoding "Download Squad").

[Via creativebits]