Beyond the Logo: How We're Weaving Full Images Inside QR Codes
12 comments
·August 18, 2025edent
athenot
The irony is you can scan a URL with a phone camera and it's clickable, with the nice side-effect that the domain is human-inspectable. Just make the font a little bigger and it scans easily.
QR codes are fascinating though, as they can encode more than mere URLs. But the vast majority in the consumer space are links. For that purpose, I'm rooting for OCR.
jedbrooke
it’s gotten to the point where I’ll find myself screenshotting text and using ocr to grab links because sometimes apps disable highlighting text for whatever reason.
wrs
The classic Russ Cox QArt code doesn't suffer from this. [0]
herman_toothrot
Title reminded me of these https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/i4WR5ULH1ZZYl8Watf3EPw
zhengkyl
I wrote a blog post about QR codes with an overview of image techniques like this and a bunch of links to different implementations if anyone would like to see more things like this.
https://kylezhe.ng/posts/crafting_qr_codes#image-techniques links directly to that section and skips the fluff about how QR codes work
I highly recommend checking out https://cgv.cs.nthu.edu.tw/projects/Recreational_Graphics/MQ... which uses word clouds with QR codes and looks crazy cool
6r17
Hei ! Just wanted to drop by to say that i tested this with a black and white logo that I had generated ; sounded like the worst case scenario ; it handled it flawlessly ; the picture didn't look the best - but the job was done and it worked. Bookmarked it will definitely use it if i need to !
Is this a commercial project or an open-source ?
meindnoch
Reminds me of perforated LSD sheets (https://d2cbg94ubxgsnp.cloudfront.net/Pictures/2000xAny/9/1/...)
s1mplicissimus
This looks great! I also gave it a try, uploaded a transparent png (which was converted to black, fair enough, guess there's no good default choice for all cases) and scanned the pretty QR code with my phone: Flawless. Thanks for building and sharing this, I love to see QR codes become more readable
theblazehen
This is cool, but what's the use of error correction when you're deliberately introducing noise?
In my experience, these art-y qr codes are more challenging to scan than traditional plain variants, especially in real life scenarios where you don't always have a perfectly clear image
ethan_smith
The error correction is actually what enables the artistic elements - QR codes with high EC levels (H=30%) can have up to 30% of their modules modified while remaining scannable, which is exactly what these image-embedding techniques exploit.
wilfredk
This is absolutely awesome!
Well done.
I've been writing about (and using) QR codes for a couple of decades. I love the innovation that happens within the bounds of the specification.
One problem that I foresee with this is that they don't look like QR codes. People are now used to looking for a specific monochrome pattern to point their phone towards.
There was a competitor to QR - MS Tag - which tried something similar. Their codes were able to be integrated into designs without the "ugliness" of QR codes. The problem is, no one knew they were there!
See https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2010/11/ms-tags-vs-qr-codes/#not-as...
The corner targets are still visible in Nitro's codes - so hopefully people will spot them. But I think it is OK to embrace the ugly. Not everything needs to be smothered in your corporate branding. Something which is standardised across multiple things is useful.