A little bit of QR Code Colour Loving

Yes, that is “Colour” not “Color” for all your Americans out there! 🙂

QR Code is one of the more widespread/popular 2D barcodes out there.  Sure there are others that are used commercially in airline/train ticketing, but none wide as much ‘reader’ support in the form of mobile phones and software.  Almost all phones in Japan are able to read QR Code, add to that Nokias and various WinMo apps.  Not to mention the wonderful ZXing open-source app that’ll work on any mobile that supports Java or Android.

One of the beautiful things about QR Code is that it can tolerate errors in the code.  Depending on the encoding used, up to 30% of data can be lost and the full content can still be retrieved.

I caught onto QR Code a few years back but the ZXing Android app reminded me of this wonderful piece of technology.  A little curious, I thought I’ll add a bit of colour to the otherwise dull and boring black/white QR Code.  Others have noted that if you have enough contrast between foreground and background, most readers will still recognise the code – but lets make every block a different colour!  Yup, it still works!  Its a lot more prettier and fancier, but a thing to note is that you should still use colours that are a high contrast to the background.  I guess I could have used a pale yellow instead of a white background to add more…but that’ll be just over doing it.

Have a play with QR Code.  There are numerous generators online if you do a search, here is the ZXing Generator link.

(Anyone want to write an extension to a generator to make random colour QR codes?)