QR code photo sharing for events

A QR code is the shortest possible path between a guest and a camera: they point a phone at it and they are shooting. Every modern phone camera reads them without an app. The code itself is trivial to make, so the whole job is deciding where it goes, how big it is printed, and who says it out loud.

Where should you put the QR code?

Where people already stand still with a phone in their hand. In practice that is a short list, and it is the same list at a wedding, a birthday and a company party:

• —On the tables, one per table rather than one per room.
• —At the bar, where people queue and look at their phone anyway.
• —Next to the seating chart or the entrance, caught on the way in.
• —On the back of the toilet door, which is undignified and consistently the highest-scanning spot at any event.
• —On the screen, if there is one, between whatever else it is showing.

Avoid the one place people always try first: a single large sign at the entrance. Guests walk past it while greeting someone, and they never come back to it.

How big should the QR code be printed?

A rough rule is one centimetre of code for every ten centimetres of scanning distance. A table card read from arm's length works at three centimetres. A sign across a room needs to be twenty or more. When in doubt print it bigger; there is no downside except the paper.

Keep a clear margin around it, use dark on light rather than light on dark, and never put it on a patterned background. Phone cameras cope with most things but they fail on low contrast.

What should the card say next to the code?

One line telling people what happens if they scan it. "Scan to take twelve photos of tonight" gets scanned. "Photo sharing" does not, because it sounds like a task rather than an offer.

Put the short link underneath it as well. A few phones will not scan, and someone will always want to type it into a message to a friend who is running late.

Do guests need an app to scan it?

They should not. The camera app on every phone made in the last decade reads QR codes and opens the link. If the thing behind your code then asks for a download or an account, you have put the barrier back and undone the reason for using a code in the first place.

The mistakes that cost you the most photos

• —Only one code, at the door. It gets passed in the first three minutes and never seen again.
• —Printing it too small to read from where people are sitting.
• —Nobody saying it out loud. One mention during the speeches is worth twenty cards.
• —Not testing it on a phone that has never opened the link before, so you never see the first-time experience your guests get.
• —Sending people somewhere that then asks them to install something.

Is a QR code safe to use at an event?

The code is only as trustworthy as where it points, so print your own rather than sticking someone else's over it, and check that the destination is private to your event and not a public page. A guest should be able to see what they are joining before they take a photo.

Blitz gives you a code for your event, ready to print on the table cards. See how it works