Crafting QR Codes: A deep dive into QR code art (2024)
Comments
zhengkyl
vrypan
Amazing post.
Tangentially related: https://blog.vrypan.net/2026/07/07/where-is-qrdo/ It's a "where is the QR" game, where a mobile is more capable in finding the pattern than a human.
qqilihq
That is a nice write up on all the techniques to create unique looking and still scanable QR codes. We use these approaches at QRocodile (https://qrocodile.io) to create reusable design patterns that can be combined and mixed to create well designed QR codes. We try to make it user friendly with some guards (due to scanability) so that also non techies can "design" unique codes. Currently working on API and MCP to make these design settings easily "promptable".
392
I resent the accusation that no one uses the all caps version :-)
I found support for generating it to be hit or miss with the free online generators, but it really improved scannability for a QR I was pasting onto a vehicle!
pimlottc
Incredible, by far the most comprehensive review of techniques for beautifying and branding QR codes.
What I would love to see as a companion to this is some sort of rigors benchmark for scanning that attempts to quantify how much real-world scanability is lost. There must be some decoding benchmarks out there that simulate common types of distortion, damage and degradation. What did the original designed of the QR code use to evaluate their work?
phrotoma
Oh man, I've had the authors qrframe app bookmarked for a while but never knew about this blog post. Great read.
soltanov
What a magnificient post. I enjoyed reading till last word.
rayoleary
I love that poem!
borplk
This is cool but personally I never really understood the interest in turning a barcode into a piece of art or trying to embed images and logos into it.
dspillett
> I never really understood the interest in turning a barcode into a piece of art
Marketing love it: they want everything to carry the brand.
I like it from a nerdy PoV, my home WiFi QR used to be⁰ vaguely a picture of my face.
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[0] I didn't bother updating it when I last rearranged my network, it got used precisely twice, three times if you count the friend's phone that didn't like it¹, so I just read out the password for him to enter which is what I do now when needed
[1] This may be due to it being a huge low-correcting QR - I had the tool that made it use the largest code it supported and reduce the error correction to minimum to get the most controllable pixels for the image
scottchiefbaker
This is amazing. I was just looking up how QR codes work, and this is already a better explanation than 90% of the content I found.
Author here, thanks for posting this and glad people enjoyed reading. I did some editing and added a conclusion that boring QR codes are a better choice for real world use. Easier for users to understand and more reliable. These artistic designs are mostly just for fun.
One part which I barely touched was how to mathematically "force" pixels in the error correction section. It's an extension of the ideas covered in https://research.swtch.com/qart but unfortunately I don't grasp it well enough to explain properly.