Machine-readable information provided on a printed document in the form of printed marks which are not visually perceptible to the human eye. The printed marks are of a combination of sufficiently small size and selected color which renders the printed marks visually imperceptible to the human eye, yet easily detectable by a machine such as a scanner. The printed marks are dispersed across portions of or all of the printed document in selected patterns for encoding information, such as in a bar code, or the information may merely be printed text. The marks representing the information are printed in unused blank space between or surrounding existing text and other images on the printed document thus avoiding the use of any additional surface area of the media.