QR Codes for Design Studios

Your own portfolio, first

A printed portfolio shows the artefact. It cannot show the motion piece, the interface, the campaign in situ, or the result.

• A code beside each case study opening the live work, the film, or the prototype
• A code on the studio's own printed matter leading to a portfolio page that stays current between reprints
• Different codes per piece, so you learn which work in the book actually gets looked up after a meeting

Client proofing without another portal

Approval chains break in email. A code on the physical proof, the sample pack or the printed mock-up opens the current version, the comment thread and the approval button.

That solves the problem every studio has: the client is looking at a printout from three revisions ago and commenting on it as though it were current.

Codes clients will accept

This is where a studio earns its fee, because most brand guidelines have nothing useful to say about codes.

• Set a minimum size in the guidelines and defend it. One tenth of the scanning distance, stated in millimetres per application.
• Specify the quiet zone as a lockup, so nobody crops it.
• Choose matte over gloss in the print specification, which prevents the single most common field failure.
• Give the code a defined position across formats, so it reads as a system rather than an intrusion.
• Styling is allowed: rounded modules, brand colour, a logo in the centre. All of it is fine within limits, and the design best practices guide sets out where those limits sit before scannability suffers.
• Then test the styled version on a cheap phone in bad light. A code that scans in the studio on a new phone is not tested.

Self-promotion that reports back

Studios send beautiful things to people and then never know what happened. Put a distinct dynamic code on each mailer, each award submission and each conference handout. Scans tell you which piece worked, and more usefully, when. A scan six months after a mailing is a live prospect.

The colour and contrast question

Brand colour is where most styled codes fail. The rule is contrast, not darkness: the modules need to be substantially darker than the background, measured rather than judged by eye. Light brand colours can be used for the background and dark ones for the modules, never the reverse. The colour contrast rules give the thresholds worth writing into a guideline.