The Signs of Business

As a graphics guy at heart, I’m always interested in making signs look as good as they can. One of the things that has irked me about the recent increased use of QR Codes is the lack of a vectorized QR Code generator. Bit.ly creates a measly 72dpi 249×249 pixel .png file. Other programs create slightly larger files that are fine for business cards and most small uses. You can even scale most generated QR Codes with some degree of success. However, there comes a point when my desire for clean lines is burdened by the fuzziness that is a scaled up web image (that feels like the topic of another blog post) inserted into an otherwise exquisitely designed large sign.

So, until someone creates a vectorized QR Code generator, (c’mon folks, Microsoft’s Tags are vectors by default), here’s how to vectorize a bit.ly created image in Adobe Illustrator:

1. Grab your .png file or .jpg or .gif if you are using a different generator. PSA: adding ‘.qrcode’ to any bit.ly shortened link displays the QR Code for that link. Ex: http://bit.ly/m3VCom.qrcode
2. Open up any version of Illustrator, CS2 or later. Create a new CMYK document 20″x20″ (still relatively small in the world of wide format graphics but it’ll do (donkey… it’ll do).
3. Place or open your QR Code image and scale it up to 20″x20″. Easy way: In the transform palette Width change ’249 px’ to ’20 in’ <- Did you know you could type in the units of measurement and it will automatically convert it to the units that you are using on that document? Press CTRL+TAB (or something else if you're on a mac) to apply that change proportionally. With newer versions of Illustrator's tracing algorithm, this step is becoming less and less important. But it still seems to help create straighter lines with fewer overall vertices.
4. Live Trace. Here’s a screenshot of my settings:
   I’ve even saved that as one of my Live Trace Presets.
5. Clean up. Expand and save. Now you have a vectorized QR Code that you can put virtually anywhere.

Have you seen a vectorized QR Code generator? For someone who knows how, it can’t be that difficult to make one to save codes as a vectorized .pdf or even .svg. Let me know if you find one.