Why no QR codes are not directly architecturally relevant, yet. They are, however, proving to be somewhat helpful to creating a buzz around some of the hippest new up start firms. Firms on the leading tip of new trends in social media. At least that’s the word on the street.
To that end our business coach recently suggested that we use a QR code on our business cards for some added convenience to tech savy folks looking to acquire all of our vital info in one fail swoop…or camera capture as it were. So we did a little digging on the old internet. We did some quick research on the best and most popular QR code creators out there. This lead us to Kerem Ekran. Who by the way is quite fond of himself but he does make a dandy of a QR code generator.
The list of options for what you want these smart little gestaltish looking images to do is quite impressive. We settled on the simple vcard, not wanting to get too dodgy on the details, it being our first go at this and all.
A few clicks later and we had a QR code for iARCHiTECTURE. So what to do with it? Well the obvious choice is to have it prominent on the back of our next order of business cards. Other ideas that come to mind include tattoo (temporary of course, until we go global), facebook profile picture or linked in headshot(not recommended unless you want some serious jeers from your not so nerdish social media friends) and others equally silly yet not so mentionable.
It is quite ironic that the day we got the gumption to create our first QR code also happened to be the day we were finalizing the design graphics for our bike jerseys. So of course, the QR code is now on the jerseys. Not that we think it will make or break the universe, but it sure looks cool on our jersey.
A little trial an error shows that as long as you keep it white on black or black on white or at least two colors that have a reasonable level of contrast you should be golden. There are options on the generator wizard but if you know your way around photoshop you can produce any color options you would like in photoshop and just test them right on your screen with your smart phone using one of several QR reader apps. We like Qrafter, because it’s free and it works. The only color option that didn’t work for us was the royal orange from our logo over the dark grey of our logo. Our hunch is that the contrast was just not enough.
We settled on royal orange over white for the sleeve and white over dark grey for the lower back of the rear panel. It looks quite rad on the sample imagery. The true test will be when the jersey is printed. Update to follow in 6-8 weeks.
Jeff Spikes, iARCHiTECTURE