QR codes are the funky looking squares full of dots and pixels that you might have seen on T.V., in print magazines, on signs and the like.  They’re basically a link to content of some type on the web. That content might be an image, website, phone number, or other type of text.  They enable you to point your smartphone (for example) at one and quickly navigate to a site without having to type in a long URL.

Neat huh?  There are quite a few smartphone apps for every type of phone to read these little gems, like ShopSavvy and Barcode Scanner for Android, Red Laser and Quick Scan Pro for iPhone and RedLaser for Windows Phone.  Just point and there is the link leading to wherever the content owner wishes to.

One of the coolest things about these from a technical standpoint is that they are very redundant in their retention of data.  You can cover up about 30% of the code and (most readers) will still be able to interpret the code correctly.  So why not embed your logo (or other image) in the code so that when someone sees your code they will instantly recognize it as  yours.  You can see what this might look like in the image at the top of this post.  This is my logo for SyberSquad embedded in a QR code leading to SyberSquad.com.  I’ve included a few QR codes with embedded links below so you can see how they can go from simple to very complex.

If you want to make one yourself there are a few ways to do it.  The more challenging but flexible way is to take an existing QR code image and use an image editing program to do it yourself.  This is difficult unless you have a bit of experience editing images.  Some of the programs you could use are Paint.net and Gimp which are free for Windows, Photoshop Elements which is somewhat inexpensive, and the grandaddy of them all -full blown Photoshop – which is available for Mac or PC.

The process involves creating a layer on top of the QR code and adding your Logo/image to that.  Don’t worry if this is a bit technical because I’ll be doing a video in the coming days to show how it’s done, and I have an even easier (and FREE) solution below.

Working with a logo that is reduced to about 50 px x 50 px seems to work the best.  You don’t want to block too many pixels in the QR code or it won’t work.  Also using a logo with a white background will allow your logo to blend into the background of the QR code.  If you use one with a transparent background, a mistake I initially made, the QR code’s pixels will bleed through and you’ll have to manually clip them out.  Not a fun job.

I found a great site that will not only create a QR code containing a variety of content, it will embed an image into it for you.  The site is called BeQRious (I have no affiliation to this site, its just really cool), it does this and allows you to download the generated image for free.  Just go to the site and in the green box about halfway down the page select the Graphical tab.  Click the Choose File button and navigate to your chosen image/logo and upload it.  You stand a better chance of getting a good image if you use one that you’ve already reduced in size to 50 px x 50 px, but if not you can have the site do it for you (choose a square one so the resize doesn’t stretch it unacceptably).  Enter your URL for the website you would like it to point to, choose whether to save it as a PDF or PNG file and click Create Code.

The site will let you save your code on your computer and there you have it, a fantastically branded QR code ready for whatever marketing you desire.  The site has other services it offers to help businesses track QR code campaigns that look quite nice.  Take a look if you have a chance.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know and I’ll be happy to walk you through what I can.

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- Christopher

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