QR Code Basics: Introduction
Have you ever heard of those little, square, black and white symbols that people have been using in Japan for years? No? Well they are called QR codes and they are coming to western culture and marketing in full force. It’s time to get to know about them.
Definition: QR codes (or Quick Response codes) are a new form of bar code that can be quickly decoded. QR codes are most known for use with mobile phones, where they can be scanned by a cell phone camera link to a web page.
History: QR codes were invented by a Japanese automotive parts company called Denso in 1994. Denso used them innitially to track parts in their manufacturing process. QR codes have the potential to contain much more information than typical bar code. There are also features in the bar code that allow the decoder (ie. cell phone) to see position, scale, allignment and version / format information. There is also redundancy built in so that damaged or hard to read codes can be scanned. QR codes can store 4,296 alphanumeric characters or 7,089 numbers. It was adapted to mobile marketing in 2003, and is called ‘mobile tagging’. The QR code has ISO standardization.
Competition: QR codes are the leading standard in use with mobile phone, or so called mobile tagging. But there are also other standards and proprietary solutions that give it competition-
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Data Matrix: The second leading standard. Can hold only 2,335 alphanumeric characters or 2 kb. Data Matrix was patented by Acacia Technologies, but the patent has expired. -
Microsoft Tag: A code that uses triangular sections arranged in a square that uses Microsoft’s High Capacity Colour Barcode (HCCB) technology. Microsoft Tag uses 4 – 8 colours to encode more ammounts of data. Contrary to the name can be black and white as well, but with less data storage.
Next we will talk about the current applications, and talk about future applications.
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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.
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