How to make a QR code

How do I make a QR code?

To make a QR code, put what you want it to open on a web page, paste that address into a QR code generator, and download the code as an SVG or a print-ready PDF. The real work is not the generating, which is free and instant, but choosing a destination you can change later rather than one that will move and leave the printed code pointing at nothing.

A QR code is just a web address drawn as a pattern of squares. That is worth knowing up front, because it means the code is only ever as good as the address inside it. TheQR code generator draws the pattern in a second and for nothing; the part that decides whether the code still works next year is the link you give it.

How to make a QR code, step by step

1. Put the thing you are linking to on a web page, your menu, your price list, your booking form, your profile. A page, not a file you will later move or rename.
2. Copy that page’s address, including any campaign tags if you want to tell a poster scan from a message.
3. Paste it into the generator. The code appears as you type, with the white quiet-zone margin already included.
4. Download it as SVG for print, or PNG for screens. SVG scales to any size without softening the squares, which is what a print shop wants.
5. Scan it once, from the printed proof on the stock it will really be printed on, before you order the full run.

Static or dynamic: the one decision that matters

The choice that matters when you make a QR code is static versus dynamic. A static code holds the destination inside the pattern, so it can never be changed; a dynamic code holds a short link you can re-point, so the same printed code can send people somewhere new. For anything going to paper, dynamic is the one that survives a change of plan.

If the code only ever lives in a message or a document, static is fine, you can just send a new one when the link changes. The moment it goes on something printed, a poster, a menu, a sticker, a product, that calculation flips: reprinting is the expensive part, and adynamic code is the one that lets you change the page behind it without reprinting a thing. That is the whole reason to put a short link in the code rather than the final address.

What to point the code at

• A web page, not a PDF. A PDF opens in a viewer, loads slowly on mobile data and arrives zoomed out. A page loads in under a second and reflows to the screen. If a PDF is all you have, point the code at a short link that redirects to it, so replacing the file later does not kill the code.
• Something you can edit. The value of a QR code is that the paper is fixed and the destination is not. Point it at a page you can change from your phone.
• One destination per code. One code, one address, is the cleanest. Use separate codes only when you genuinely need to tell which one was scanned.

How big to make it, and testing before you print

Size the code to the distance it will be read from: roughly one tenth of that distance across, so about 3cm for something read at arm’s length and much larger for a poster across a room. TheQR size calculator does the arithmetic. Then test the printed proof, not the screen, because most codes that fail do so from being printed too small or having the quiet zone cropped, never from the generating.

Making a lot at once, for a sheet of tables or a product range? Thebulk QR code generator takes a list and draws one code per row, checking each address as you paste.