Harry Roberts of CSS Wizardry recently launched a flexible and production-ready CSS framework, inuit.css, which aims to solve real problems and remove the boring, repetitive jobs that development sometimes brings.
Besides desktop browsers, the framework also works on mobile and tablet devices with minimum effort.
inuit.css is a single-file-framework and makes very few decisions and puts you in total control.
It embraces progressive enhancement and the features are compatible by IE7+, leaving IE6 behind.
Hamilton Chan is CEO and founder of Paperlinks. With the free Paperlinks iPhone app, featured previously by Apple as the #1 New & Noteworthy app, consumers can scan and view QR code content with a native app experience. Paperlinks also provides a powerful platform for generating QR codes, hosting content and tracking their performance.
The QR code: A thing of beauty or an eyesore? The magical barcodes that can be scanned by a smartphone to launch an offline-to-online experience are often criticized for their black and white checkerbox appearance. Those who doubt that QR codes will go mainstream are quick to point out that the look of QR codes will deter marketers and advertisers from using them.
Fortunately, QR codes are malleable and can be redesigned in truly extraordinary ways, while still maintaining their scanability. The truth is, QR codes no longer have to be checkerbox in appearance. We’ve entered a new phase of “designer codes” that can be integrated into marketing campaigns in an attractive way that isn’t an eyesore.
QR codes have so much potential from a design perspective, so let’s take a look at a few tricks and techniques you should keep in mind when designing a code to enhance your brand and appeal to your audience.
1. Add a Color Palette
The easiest way to add branding power to your code is to add color to it. Your QR code does not have to be standard black and white in order to be scanned. You can embed multiple colors and apply a color gradient without affecting scanability. The only rule of thumb is that the code color should generally be dark and placed against a light-colored background. Make sure the contrast is sufficient, or the code will be difficult to scan.
A “reversed out” code, where the background is dark and the boxes are light colored, is generally not recommended. Only a small handful of QR code readers can treat such codes as a film negative and properly interpret the data.
2. Soften Hard Edges with Round Corners
One of the QR code’s greatest aesthetic flaws is its numerous hard edges. You can dramatically lessen the severity of this look by strategically rounding some corners. It is not necessary to round all of the corners, but softening up the edges will definitely make the code appear more friendly and approachable.
3. Incorporate Dimensionality for 3D Impact
One high impact way to brand your QR code is to obstruct some of the boxes with imagery, such as a logo. By placing an image in front of the code, you imbue the code with a sense of depth. An ordinary barcode suddenly becomes a form of artwork, and you can really make a statement with the way you melt boxes together or choose to obstruct aspects of the code.
Fun ideas include adding a logo to the center of the code, but you could also add interesting elements to the corners or the sides for an even less standard look. Adding images or characters between the boxes is another playful way to dress the code with personality and style.
4. Use QR Codes With 30% Error Correction
If you decide to add in a logo to create a 3D feel for your QR code, you need to decide which part of the coding to obstruct with your logo. The key to creating these eye-popping designer codes is to take advantage of the fact that up to 30% of a QR code’s data can be missing or obstructed, and still be scanned. QR codes can be generated with 0%, 10%, 20% or 30% error correction rates built in. Building in the 30% error correction rate adds more noise (extra boxes) within the code, but those extra boxes within the code can then be removed to make way for a logo or other interesting imagery.
If you use a QR code with 0% error correction, the code will look more streamlined, but opportunities to brand the code by adding in a logo are very limited. Removing or obstructing a single box within a 0% error QR code could render it unscannable.
Apply a Trial-and-Error Process
Technically, it is possible to mathematically compute which boxes in a QR code are the buffers that can be removed, but such computations are generally unnecessary. By applying a simple process of trial-and-error, anyone can begin applying their design techniques to a code and then test for scannability.
Be sure to test your code’s scannability with multiple QR readers, ideally three or four. Some readers may be able to overcome some stylistic elements of your designer code, whereas others will not. Deploying your code without testing for scannability is designer malpractice and can cause serious heartache with clients. It is true that even with reasonable precautions, designer codes may still be difficult to scan, so you must always weigh the costs of scanning difficulty against the benefits of designing a code that is eye-catching. If a designer code takes more than a few seconds to scan, it probably needs to be redesigned.
Conclusion
In the end, creating branded QR codes is as much art as it is science. The mathematical qualities of a QR code and the impact of a clever design can truly elevate a QR code to the point where the code becomes the central artwork of a piece of marketing collateral. Applying designer best practices will enhance scanning conversion rates and effectively augment an offline item with online capabilities.
It is only a matter of time before QR codes hit mainstream. Knowing how to innovate both in technology and design, and how to implement a QR code in the right way for your business, will keep your brand on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.
Interested in more QR Code resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics.
The Muslim world has unusual prohibitions in advertising. This is due to the national and religious peculiarities of Islamic countries. Any advertising, including logos, should be forcibly adapted to local cultural values and the Arabic language. In order to do this you must know what various animals symbolize, what symbols indicate and how those or other subjects can be interpreted in Islamic countries.
For example, dogs are considered to be “dirty animals”, so you can rarely see them in advertising. Fish symbolizes Christianity, a crow – death, and a chameleon – hypocrisy.
Any manifestations of supernatural forces (witches, wizards, vampires, aliens) can be interpreted as equating to God, and therefore their demonstration is prohibited. In addition, the words “create” and “greatest” should be used really cautiously as they are also associated with God.
Drugs, alcohol (even an empty glass of champagne) can not be used in advertising. The only exception – social advertising. Homosexuality and any hints at a non-traditional sexual orientation are also under the strict prohibition.
Any forms of crosses are considered as violations. Therefore the organization “Red Cross” is called “Red Crescent” here.
In the most conservative Asian countries it is prohibited to show open eyes in the advertisement. Thus advertising agencies have to be very imaginative when showing people. The most popular solutions of the problem are:
– Pixelization
– Wear glasses
– Close eyes with pleasure
Nudity is prohibited in any form. Islamic culture is very conservative. Skin can be shown only on face, hands and feet.
In order to protect their citizens from the depraved West, censors had to make extreme efforts. That’s when Photoshop and other available means like a black marker, paper and glue come into the play.
Gisele Bundchen acquired a modest white shirt.
Particular attention is paid to advertising of films. It has to be retouched in order to comply with strict cultural expectations. Legs, chest and even shoulders must be covered. Compare before and after.
Parody to muslim advertisements:
To write the name of a product in the Arabic script keeping at least some hint at the world-famous style of the brand is very difficult.
These pictures were taken in some malls of the UAE. By law of most Arabic countries an Arabic name must go first. But in this case both, the East and the West are content. As the West reads from left to right and the East reads from right to left. So everybody reads the “right” sign first.
In our most recent Web clinic on optimizing leads, we quickly reviewed a recent case study in which two banner images were tested – a generic stock image vs. an image of a real person. This experiment led to more insights than we had time to cover last week; so, I thought I’d give it a little more room to breathe here on the blog.
CONTROL: Who doesn’t love a generic smiling lady?
If you haven’t yet watched the Web clinic replay, the company (blurred intentionally) we were working with in this experiment was a consumer credit counseling service offering free debt consultation. Their homepage had been the focus of many previous radical redesign tests, but for the scope of this research project, we were focusing on one particular issue: The main banner image.
Currently, the homepage utilized a generic stock image of a random lady wearing a headset, basically attempting to bring some reality to a free debt consultation. The main draw (as I see it) is that a really friendly attractive lady is standing by to help you with your credit challenges – why not give her a call today?
But who is this lady? How can she help me? And why in the world does she keep smiling at me?
Your customers are pretty savvy. They know Smiley McHeadset doesn’t really work for your company. They know she’s a paid model and is likely smiling in an ad for a bank and a billboard for a credit card as well. Do you think that deepens the trust with your company?
Or as David Meerman Scott said at this year’s Email Summit, “The problem with the B2B happy multi-cultural conference room with computer shot is that it has become a cliché. It is world-class, cutting-edge, mission-critical visual gobbledygook. Just like written gobbledygook, this kind of image is so overused to have become meaningless.”
TREATMENT: Putting a face with a name
The question arose from our team, “Would visitors respond more to a familiar face over this generic one?” The thought was that the higher relevance created by a recognizable image would more closely tie into the motivations of the ideal prospect.
So, to test this hypothesis, we pitted the happy-go-lucky anonymous phone rep woman against the popular, reputation-wielding company founder. I guess you could say it was a “head-to-head” competition (ok, sorry I couldn’t resist). Now this new image represented a real person, with real credentials, and was highly recognizable for channels coming to the home page (television ads, news articles, etc.).
Side note: Notice anything else different about the images. Yep, that’s right, gender. Might gender play a role here as well? Possibly. (So might weight, hair color, attractiveness, etc.) But just so you aren’t bogged down by this question, this lady had been tested against other male generic stock images, and was the current reigning champion (no offense to all our male model blog readers out there). This test treatment, however, was the first in which we tested a stock model versus an actual person.
RESULTS: Familiarity Breeds… Conversion
So what were the results? Well, Mrs. Generic finally met her match. It appears that an attractive smile is not a match for a good name. Overall, the familiarity hypothesis held some water. When the recognizable image of the founder was used, visitors were 35 % more likely to sign up for a free consultation. Remember, this is a 35% lift on top of many other previous gains in the testing-optimization cycle.
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INTERPRETATION: Quick! Sell your iStock credits before this post goes viral
So what are the implications of this test? Are all of our generic stock images worthless? Should you trade all your iStock credits in for a new camera? Well, not exactly.
Stock images are not the enemy here – irrelevance is. You could hypothetically take your own irrelevant picture and it wouldn’t make a hill-of-beans difference – except that it probably wouldn’t look as good. The main point here is that how we choose images matters. This is true for all graphics, and the following principle is key.
KEY PRINCIPLE: An image is only as valuable as the value it communicates
This is how we must think when choosing images. We shouldn’t just pick images we think make our site look prettier, but rather, we should choose images because they say something about the value of our offer. So, if you use a stock image of a smiling lady, make sure it is communicating value. If you use a picture of a middle-aged balding CPA, make sure it is communicating value. It really doesn’t matter where your images come from, so long as they communicate relevant value.
To help bring the rubber to the road, the following questions can serve as a grid for finding the most effective image. You can see how the images above fit within this grid and why potentially the image of the founder generated the most response.
Image Assessment Grid (Click to expand)
(Note: we also discussed these questions more deeply in the article entitle Images vs. Copy.)
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK: What image would you test next?
Before concluding, I wanted to ask you if there’s an image that you think might perform better than the picture of the founder. We have discovered a picture that is more RELEVANT, but is there an image that might bring more REALITY (per the grid above)?
Maybe you can make a convincing case for what kind of image our research team should test next…
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