Crafting QR Codes: A deep dive into QR code art (2024)

132 pointsposted 3 days ago
by subset
(kylezhe.ng)

14 Comments

zhengkyl

2 days ago

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.

Walf

2 days ago

>Alphanumeric mode can encode URLs, but it only supports uppercase characters, so no one uses it.

I found that they are still pretty useful because they're noticeably smaller grids. They can be enlarged to use up the same space on screen/print as a denser UTF-8 QR, thus be clearer and easier to scan. Some readers will assume that an all-uppercase URL is supposed to be lowercase and convert it, others will use them as-is. Use short URLs, like https://qr.test/thing so only the case of the path part matters, then make sure /thing and /THING go to the same place, and you're good.

Thanks for the informative guide.

vrypan

2 days ago

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.

392

2 days ago

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!

qqilihq

2 days ago

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".

pimlottc

2 days ago

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?

user

2 days ago

[deleted]

soltanov

2 days ago

What a magnificient post. I enjoyed reading till last word.

borplk

2 days ago

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

2 days ago

> 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

3 days ago

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.