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You may think QR codes are an eyesore or a little blah when incorporated into your marketing and advertising materials. When taken at face value, a plain black and white QR code doesn’t add a whole lot of aesthetic to your overall design. What many people don’t know is that you can create customized QR codes with a variety of colors, designs and themes that can add a fun and engaging element to your graphic designs and marketing work. 
Change Your Color Palette
Not all QR Codes have to be created in black and white format. Although that is the standard design, there are several apps and programs online that can create a colorful QR code that will add a more dynamic color palette to your design. If you apply a color gradient to your QR code generators, it won’t affect the scanability for smartphones. Keep in mind the color code should be a darker color than the background. A great rule to follow is that generally the background should be white. It doesn’t have to be white, but it definitely needs to be a much lighter background than the actual code design. Always keep in mind how a mobile device will scan the code. No matter how pretty the design or colors are, if it can’t scan it won’t work.
Get Creative
In 2012, Taco Bell really went out of the box with its edible QR code marketing campaign. It used a QR code made of lemons and avocados. It was a campaign to support Taco Bell’s new fresh menu backed by celebrity chef Lorena Garcia. The company made a video and posted it on YouTube with an animated QR code, and also ran ads in national magazines with the food image. Taco Bell said the response to the creative advertising was well worth the effort, and it had a great number of downloads of the food code it created. 
Create Great Ad Links
QR code usage is up in 2013 from the past two years. According to a study from a Temkin Group in 2012, about 24 percent of adults with smartphones and mobile devices are using QR codes. The adoption rate is still definitely geared toward a younger group of users. More importantly, if you’re going to use QR code generators in your marketing efforts, make sure that the codes are pointing toward a website that is mobile compatible. There’s nothing worse than for a customer to make the effort to scan your code only to have the website incompatible with their device. All of your marketing efforts should be streamlined, which will encourage people to use and trust your digital assets.
One of the great things that QR code generators lend to your marketing efforts is the ability to track your downloads and user habits through Google Analytics. Being able to have an analysis of what is working within your marketing and advertising efforts is the only way to know what needs to change, and what your customers are really responding to.
Integrate a Code Into Your Brand
There are several creative ways that you can integrate QR codes into your brand, including placing a code in your logo or shaping it into a letter or an image. Photoshop is great to help you round off sharp corners and create something that can really be integrated into your advertising designs. Much like the Taco Bell example, you can really do a lot of creative things with a QR Code. Make sure that you test out your QR code with a new design to see if it’s still functional. There are certain parts of the code that can’t be erased in order for it to work.
If you don’t really fancy QR codes that much and would like to go with proper physical ID cards, then check out DigitalID.co.uk. They are one of the best when it comes to printing and displaying ID cards in one place.
