Using QR codes in digital scrapbooking

When creating a scrapbook page, everything is static and quiet. How can you add other mediums like sound, music, videos, or additional references for your story? Although you might not be able to add those directly to the page, you can link to them using a QR code. Let's see how you can do that.

What is a QR code?

A QR code is an image that can be read by a Smartphone camera. Every QR code consists of a number of black squares and dots which represent certain pieces of information. When your Smartphone scans this code, it translates that information into something that can be easily understood by humans.

What is a QR code used for?

QR codes allow the user to access online information quickly and easily. This could be a URL for a site, a coupon code for a store, a music track, a video, etc. You can be quite creative in the information you link to the QR code.

What do you need?

In order to generate a QR code, you need a QR code generator. There are many online tools that you can use. Many are free. Some have paid options for additional features. But those are optional and you can get by with a totally free tool. In this article, I will be using QR Code Monkey which is totally free.

Something else to consider is that the viewer will likely need a smartphone with a QR code reader. There are alternatives to use a computer too, but typically, it will be used with a mobile device.

You also need the content you want to share to be hosted online. For example, if you want to refer to a video, you can upload it to YouTube, privately. Remember that it will be linked to something online, so upload whatever you want to share, to the platform of your choice.

How do you generate a QR code?

On the QR code generator site mentioned above, I entered the YouTube link to a video I would like to share along with my scrapbook page.

The next options are for the colors. You can use a traditional black code on white background, but you can be creative too. I decided to use a dark blue from my scrapbook page for the code. That way, it will blend it a bit more.

Then, you also have the option to incorporate a logo in the code. So you CAN identify a particular QR code to the viewer. Is that going to be for your Instagram account, your YouTube channel, or your Facebook page, or is it even for a specific file to download? Adding such an icon or logo might be interesting. As you can see, I am able to add the Campus logo.

For this example, I will include the YouTube logo since it is a video from that platform.

The next options are kind of interesting. You can choose the look of the "dots". They can be the typical square shape, but you can choose something very different, like round dots, and even long dashes for adjacent dots. In addition, you can have a different shape for the corner "squares" (they are called Eye Frame).

Let's have fun and try something a bit different.

On the right side, I will click on the Create QR code green button. This is what I would get.

That is totally wild! I guess you can customize that QR code to match somehow, your project. Once you download the file, make sure you give it a name that will be meaningful to you. That way, you can remember what that code was for.

Although this is kind of a fun-looking code, I will just go back to a basic shape, with that blue color, and no icon. This is what my final code looks like.

Where to put it?

Since the QR code I downloaded is a simple png file, I can use it like any element on a scrapbook page. It will come with a background, so it looks like any sort of tag. Although I downloaded a 1000x1000 pixels version, I resized it to 300 pixels, which is about an inch wide. It is not very big, but typically, you don't want to make it the focus of your page, right?

Let's have a closer look. I added a shadow as I did for all the other elements. This makes the code a real part of the page.

Go ahead and scan it if you want.

This scrapbook page showcases a few photos I took when I visited Illumi. The pictures only don't show the whole magnitude of this experience. Although I have some videos, they are not of the greatest quality. However, I found one video, on YouTube, where the visitor is touring the site, so I want you to experience it.

What would you use a QR code for on your project?