QR code symbols and font glyphs

Imagine being able to place your favorite QR codes in any document anywhere at the touch of a key on your keyboard.  Considering that printed QR codes have the most intrinsic value it nearly seems fundamental that these should be available for publishing at a key stroke.

Having your QR codes as a font means you can publish them in any document at any time and at any size. So whether you place your vCard QR code at the bottom of all your stationary, or as a designer put your Facebook like QR code on a giant poster, the same QR font set is perfectly suitable. This is because fonts are scalable to any size, from micro printing to massive billboards the font will always give a perfect sharp representation.

How QR code fonts work

A QR code is a two dimensional bar-code built with square blocks. Each block is made of four lines and then filled with a colour, preferably black. All the blocks of a QR code are placed as a 'glyph' into a 'font' and assigned to a specific letter of the alphabet. Consider placing your Twitter QR code under the letter 'T' and the Facebook QR code under the letter 'F'. In this way it is possible to place any QR code of any complexity under any key of your keyboard.

Even designer QR codes can be used as a font provided the design in monotone (one colour)

QR code font example

Provided is a free downloadable TrueType QR code alphabet font that instead of letters and numbers has a QR code that represents each letter and number (ASCII only for now). I don't think it idea to use to publish your next novel, but does show that QR codes are perfectly at home and usable as a font.

QR Code Alphabet Font PC compatible Mac compatible Linux compatible Usable with any word processor Universally scalable Download as TrueType Font File Download as Zip File

QR Code Font Service

QR4 offers the service to turn your QR code collection into a font to enable you to publish your QR codes anywhere and at anytime. For more information about QR code fonts and what they can do for you, please contact us.

What is QR code error recovery

Error recovery in QR codes allows pieces of information in the QR code to be damaged or missing and still have the ability to be read correctly. In a nutshell, it does this by using some very clever complex algorithms to place 'compressed duplicated' information in different places of the QR code, so if some data goes missing it can (try too) reconstruct the missing pieces using the remainder of the existing code.

There are four different settings available that can be chosen from before creating the QR code, Each one allows for a different amount of data loss.

7% Loss Recovery	15% Loss recovery	25% Loss Recovery	30% Loss Recovery

So why not always make QR codes that support 30% loss recovery?

The higher the damage recovery percentage, the more room is needed inside the QR code to encode and store the information vital to recovery. Below is a URL QR code of the same URL and created using the four different error compensation selections.

7% fault tolerant	15% fault tolerant	25% fault tolerant	30% fault tolerant

Scan any of the four codes and they will all take you the same URL. the left QR code is more sensitive to damage then right one. Lets put this to the test by taking the first and the last QR code and 'damaging' them proportionately in favor of the smaller QR code.

Bad QR code	QR code still readable

Clearly the 30% fault tolerant QR code on the right still scans even though a big piece of its data has been obscured, while the smaller code on the left no longer works at all, even though visually it has less data damage.

This same technique is used to create designer QR codes. Making QR codes pretty by damaging the data but at the same time keeping them scannable and working.

How to use QR code error recovery

When creating QR codes for example business cards, the chances of it getting dirty are rather low and you want the QR code as small as possible. Here a standard 7% error threshold is enough and very suitable for cards and other printed matter. However if are going to use QR codes outdoors, on cars and trucks or any place where data may be obscured by dirt then setting the error correction to a higher setting is advisable although chances are you will land up with a bigger image.

TIP: Do not believe everything people tell you about QR codes...ask them to prove it and show you!
Myth: 'you can tear a QR code in half and it can still be read'
Here's what a British 'technology consultant' had to say during an interview on business hub radio...

Should you have any questions or need professional advise QR code use and strategy, please contact us.

A world of difference between QR codes intended for computer screens, video and TV and those used for printed matter.

Choosing the right QR code colour

And it even applies to black and white QR codes too. There are two basic colour models that are interesting for QR codes. The one for 2D codes displayed on computer screen, used in video or on television. This colour model is called 'RGB' (Red Green Blue). The second is used in the printing industry for printing coloured text, images, graphics and of course QR codes as well. This colour model is called CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black).

These two colour models are complete opposites of each other. Lets see how this works....

RGB 

Is used for radiant media like computer screens and television it is made up of three basic colours : red green and blue. If all colours are not used (switched off) you have a black screen. As you add more of each colour it becomes lighter. Adding 100% of each colour will then give as result a white screen. Thus the more colour, the lighter it shows.

CMYK 

Used for reflective media, like white paper. It is made up of four basic colours with one (Black) being an interesting one. Here no colours (or ink) means a white sheet of paper, and the more of a colour you add the darker it becomes. It is thus the exact opposite of radiant media. using Cyan + Magenta + Yellow should give us black, but instead it turns into a very dirty bark brown, and costs a lot of ink from each colour to achieve this. So black is added as fourth colour to ensure a solid black colour and minimize the amount of colour ink(s) needed to achieve this.

RGB Colour Model	CMYK Colour Model

From this we can see that printing QR codes created with a RGB colour model may look great on your screen, but your printer does not want them as even if your QR code is black and white, the black will translate to 100% cyan, 100% magenta and 100% yellow which is exactly what you printer does not want.

Sample PDF QR Code using each colour model, see which one your printer prefers. Click on the images below to download the PDF files.

RGB PDF QR Code	CMYK PDF QR Code

So next time you create a QR code, think first where it is going to be used, for display on a screen or for printing and choose the correct colour model to get the right results. If required for both media it is advisable to generate it twice using both colour models.

Just how transparent are your QR codes.

And I do mean literally as can be seen below. It's a bit like hiding QR codes in plain sight.

Transparency allows the QR codes to blend in with the surrounding and not being 'so loud'. On the left is a normal code with the standard black and white colours as all good bar-codes should be. As we move to the middle both the background and foreground colours have been adjusted with opacity and the transparency allow the background to 'shine' through. The image on the right is a perfect test pattern as I found that only the latest versions of QR code readers will decode it.

Did you know that most of the on-line QR code generators of QR4 and 0D0A support transparency and opacity.

Making transparent QR codes.
Each QR Code generator has a colour management components that resembles the image below. Here the current background and foreground colours are shown.

By clicking on the colour button a colour dialog display is opened and here is where the fun begins.

At the bottom of the panel the radio-button "A" (Alpha channel) should be selected this exposes the transparency and opacity settings which can be typed in as a percentage or the slider can be used to make it more or less transparent. The checkerboard pattern shows how transparent or opaque you colour is. Basically that is all there is too it. One golden tip when working with transparency and QR Codes is test, test, test and test again. Also of interest may be the previous article on working with colours and QR codes, before you get stuck into transparent codes.

If you have any questions regarding the use of colour and transparency with QR codes, please contact us.

Colourful QR Code solutions with QR4.

Using colour to create more attractive QR codes could be the trigger for it to be scanned or not by making the QR code stand out from the crowd.

Normal QR code	QR code with colour	Contrasted QR code	Colourized QR code

Other advantages are making the QR codes match company colour schemes to make it blend into the documents or media it is printed on for a more professional 'look and feel'. There are a few important things to keep in mind when using colours with QR codes because not all colour combinations will work, and even if some do, they may not work on older mobile devices or outdated QR Code Apps.

There is a very good reason QR codes are black and white, the reason is contrast. The bigger the difference in colour between the background and the data elements, the better is it to read. When it comes to the ultimate contrast, you cannot get better than black and white. Any other colour combination will have an effect on the contrast and thus the ability for scanner applications to read it successfully.

The golden rule when working with colours is to keep the background and foreground colours contrasting each other as much as possible. To do this we need to determine which colours 'oppose' each other and for this we can use a colour wheel.

Below is the QR code colour wheel, where 'S' is the start and 'E' is the end colour. The idea is try and choose an ending colour that is 180 degrees from your starting colour, as this should give the best results. As you choose ending colours closer to your starting colour, the contrast becomes smaller and this will effect the ability for applications to read your QR code successfully.

Wait, we are not finished yet!

This is about QR code scanner applications and the developers who build them as well as mobile devices with camera's.

Unfortunately not all mobile phone camera's are of the same quality and even more so for QR code scanner application developers. To date there are hundreds of different QR code scanners for mobile phones that can be downloaded for 'free' from a variety of on-line application stores. Our findings are that most of them lack severely in the ability to decode QR codes correctly. So do not 'just download the first best app you find!'

Having said this, I am assuming that the developers do honour the ISO specification for QR codes, and here it is clearly stated it should (must) be black and white. So who is at fault if your colour QR code cannot be read, you are !

The good old times of QR codes

Older mobile devices like my 'mini-fridge' Nokia N95 that came with pre-installed qr code readers use a trick that is still used by developers today, although it should not be required anymore....Let me explain, it's called being colourblind and this has a big impact on the ability to detect and decode QR code images.

In the past storage and processing on mobile devices was a lot more limited than the smart devices of today and some cleaver tricks were developed to make this work for QR code scanners. They used image conversion from colour to black and white before processing the image. Why? Because black and white images are digitally smaller because each pixel does not have any colour information. Because the image was smaller it could be processed faster. Today this method is still in use with some readers and this has a whole new influence on our colour wheel.

Suddenly we can see why some QR code readers may not be able to read the QR codes if we take into consideration the requirement for 'maximum contrast' we can clearly see that the selections of colours we can use in the 'colour world' could bee seen as the same 'shade of gray' in the 'black and white world. If we want to make colour QR codes for a 'black and white world' our colour contrast selection becomes even more limited.

Acoording to the specifications

QR codes should be black and white only, so taking our colour wheel and converting it to black and white based on a 50% conversion threshhold we see how a single bit image processor would see the colours. 

The good news about colour QR codes

As new generations of smart phones are replacing the older mobile devices in the market, the problem of gray-scale QR code interpretors should become less, but until the day that all smart-phones have perfect camera's and developers write ultimate intelligent QR decoding software and applications, this developer will still always test the QR codes with old legacy decoder systems. As final itam and maybe the most important tip is to always test the QR codes you create as best you can with different QR reader applications and with different types of smart-phones. Just because it works on your device is no guarantee it will work for everyone.

Colour QR Code generator list

• Website URL
• Send Email
• SMS message
• Direct Calling
• Contact Information
• Text Message
• WiFi Access
• Branding and personalization
• Geo location

Most of the QR code generators here at QR4 support the use of colour and other advanced features such as transparency and opacity. You are welcome to test generating QR codes in colour for yourself. Remember that the secret to success is to test your QR codes thoroughly. Should you have any comments, questions or need advice about using colour with QR codes, please contact us.