// HACKER NEWS — CYBERSECURITY
Crafting QR Codes: A deep dive into QR code art (2024)
Nobody willingly goes out of their way to scan a QR code. Yet they have infested the world, because it’s the simplest way to visually share a URL. On signs, advertisements, and packaging of all sorts; if you look around and try to notice, it’s hard to stop noticing.
Of course, regular black and white QR codes are just the tip of the iceberg.
Many people want something personalized and on-brand, which is easily done by slapping a logo right in the middle. This is possible because QR codes, like CDs and DVDs, use Reed-Solomon error correction to recover damaged information.
While this can be executed with taste, it’s most often done lazily to poor effect.
QR codes are displayed small, and illegible logos are the rule. Moreover, more error correction requires a denser code with smaller pixels. If you’re not careful, you can end up with something ugly as well as impossible to scan.
Is there a way to craft a beautiful and scannable QR code?
Many have incorporated photos into the entire code. But there is a real tradeoff between image quality and usefulness.
For maximum style points, artists can design fully bespoke QR codes by hand.
There’s AI for this too. I recommend reading the creators’ blog post and Stable Diffusion QR Code 101. I’ll omit examples and leave a poem in their place.
One interesting direction is to simply change how the black and white squares are rendered.