QR codes worth putting your name on

Not to generate and download. Every static type — text, URL, WiFi, contact cards, email, SMS and phone — is free to create, style and download here with no account, no watermark and no limit on how you use the result.

An account is what makes a code dynamic: a saved library, scan counts, and the ability to change a destination after printing. Those need somewhere to store the route, which is what the account provides.

Not if the error correction has room for it. QR codes are built with redundancy — at the High setting roughly 30% of the pattern can be obscured and the code still reads. A centre logo takes up part of that budget.

The readability panel does this arithmetic as you work. It compares the area your logo covers against the headroom your correction level provides and tells you when you are getting close to the edge, so you can shrink the logo or raise the correction level before you print rather than after.

Two centimetres square is a sensible floor for a simple code scanned at arm's length, and bigger is always safer. The real constraint is the size of a single module — the smallest square in the pattern — which needs to survive your printing process and your scanner's focus distance.

Two things push the minimum up: a long payload, which packs more modules into the same square, and a decorative module shape like dots or stars, which covers less area than a plain square. If you use either, give the code more room and test the actual print before committing to a run.

Scan the finished artwork with more than one phone, ideally one iPhone and one Android, and at the distance people will really use it. Test in poor light as well as good. If the code will be behind glass or laminate, test it through that surface, because reflections defeat more codes than bad design does.

Keep the quiet zone — the clear border around the pattern — at four modules or more. Crowding a code with other artwork is the single most common reason a design that looked fine on screen fails on paper.

Many modern scanners handle inverted codes, but plenty of older ones do not, and you rarely know what your audience is carrying. The safe arrangement is a dark pattern on a light background with strong contrast between them. The readability panel flags an inverted design and low contrast as you build.

Static codes are yours outright — they contain no reference to T-Forward at all, so they keep working forever regardless of what happens here.

Dynamic codes depend on the redirect route staying available, which is the nature of any dynamic QR service. If a code needs to keep working with no ongoing dependency, generate it as a static code.

The format allows up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters at the largest version, but that is a technical ceiling rather than a practical target. Long content produces a dense pattern of small modules that needs a larger print and a better scanner.

Under 300 characters keeps a code comfortable. Past about 1,000, consider whether a dynamic link to a web page would serve your reader better than a wall of text on a phone screen.