Be careful when adding Images to QR Codes

Designers beware! Adding graphics to your QR codes can cause them to fail.

Picture this: dozens of QR codes were locked and loaded and ready to go. We started scanning them as part of our testing, and 80% of them failed. These had already been placed on various materials queued to print.

After some hair pulling and some gnashing of teeth we got it all fixed with minimal impact beyond a few late nights for everyone. Let our pain be your lesson.

There are a myriad of QR readers on the market. They range from really good like Red Laser (which was acquired by eBay) to kind of crappy to really crappy. So if you use Red Laser to test, you’ll probably get great results. By the time you license a third-party scanner to do something else you will probably get much lesser results.

What do designers need to know about adding graphics to a QR code?

• There is about a 30% margin of error in QR codes that you can work with. That is you can modify up to 30% of the code and still have it work.
• The edges of the code have the alignment marks and can be temperamental and should not be changed in any way.
• See that little square in the upper right of the above code? The one below the large corner square? If that gets deleted by mistake you are going to be in pain.
• It is best to play with the exact center of the image rather than the edges of the image.

One final note, and this contains a lot of salty language so proceed at your own risk, this site is spot on: WTF QR Codes. We saw the people handing out the girlie cards in Vegas with QR codes on their shirts. Really? Did someone think that was going to work?

Test it, test it, test it…

These guys did a really amazing job of testing variations and displaying results. Take your time to check them out: QArt Codes