Footnotes are portals to information that’s tangential to the text, offers technical details, provides a caveat to the main point, or otherwise takes a deep dive into details that are primarily of interest to a narrow sliver of the audience. They are paths to relatively obscure information, not the main event. Like footnotes, QR codes ask you to break out of a narrative to chase down a vague cloud of related information. You have to be deeply interested in what’s on the other side to take that plunge. They’re best for the truly motivated—not a casual audience.
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QR Codes Are Footnotes, Not Ads (via Global Moxie)—Interesting that so many marketing people have been pushing QR codes as a solution to on-the-go browsing when really one must cross not insignificant barriers to see what lies behind them. (via ragdoll)
I like this, especially in relation to all the libraries lately that insist they’re the wave of the future. I think they’d be great for things like supplemental content in museums or on public artworks, but otherwise?
Why would I go out of my way to check out an ad? (via iena)
What I don’t understand is that computers are more than capable of recognizing text—we don’t even have to rely on the ugly OCR-A font; practically any font will do—but marketers have suddenly jumped to these indiscernible box of blocks with no window as to what is on the other side. QR readers could read actual text and humans could read it too. An actual web address would give more of a hint as to where you are going and if you aren’t wealthy enough to have a smart phone you still access the content by other means.
QR Codes ask “What’s behind door number one?” and the answer is almost always a shitty prize you’ll have to pay taxes on next year.
(via littletinyfish)
Somewhere I would love to see these on: Real Estate flyer boxes outside of houses that are for sale; there’s never a flyer in the box. It would be nice to snap a QR code and see sales info about the house I’m standing in front of.
(via littletinyfish)
- Posted:4 months ago
