QR codes are not meant for humans to read, they are meant for machines to read. Why do they want to make QR codes round or make them heart-shaped when they could just embrace the brutalist geometric QR code?
I mean why make art when people could just embrace the brutalist simplicity of a brick wall?
Because if it exists it’s a possible vector for human expression
Also you have to convince the human to scan it
Get these fancy bricks out of here, this building will be made only with concrete and the crushed dreams of Soviet workers.
Marketing is all about trying to stand out. Lots of companies just slap a default QR on their product and call it a day. Other companies invest a little bit more time and effort to make their products slightly prettier than the competition. Maybe that will increase sales by 0.1%. At least they hope so.
What I enjoy thinking about is the futility of a QR code on an Interstate billboard or in the last 5 seconds of a TV spot.
I get that adding a QR code adds a tracking/metrics component to an organizations resources but as a user it pisses me off. Just put a human-readable URL there so I know what to do. I can remember www.poblanopete.com easier than I scan and load a page on my phone.
My town has a poster downtown that says “Scan here to see a map of this downtown area”. WTF? Why not just put a fucking map there with an arrow that says “You are here?”. It at least makes me laugh every time I see it.
I’m fairly pro qr code, at least over urls. Its just easier to scan and go to a website over sit and type out or worse take a picture and convince myself to go to it later to hand jam it.
But not just printing the map is so silly lol
We can have both and that’s all I want.
Same same. They solve different cases, so no sense square pegging round holes right?
idk what mobile OS you have but on iOS you can actually long press text in an image and it’ll OCR it into an actual text element you can copy/paste, like so:
I would imagine Android would have something similar but idk
No! Not as far as I can see and I couldn’t find any foss software supported on my phone for it. That is a cool feature!
Hell yeah! Or how about menus that have to be scanned to be readable?
Honestly they can look quite amazing with the help of AI.
If you’re going to be wasting space for a QR code, you might as well make it look good.
That’s super cool use case!
So people will scan them
You want consumer engagement. Tip the scales in your favor as much as possible
To catch the eye. Seeing it will gather your attention, maybe just long enough to see what the rest of the advertisement is or peak your interest.
Because they are weak, and seek the mercy of the gods through “beauty”
The 3 Marketeers.
