Printable QR signs for the day

Most QR signs fail for one reason: nobody knows what scanning it will do. The code is the easy part. The line of text under it, the size you print it at and the spot you stand it in are what decide whether anyone scans at all. Your dashboard builds the sign for you - four layouts, your own wording, your own colours - and hands the result back as a PNG image rather than a PDF.

The words under the code do more work than the code

A QR code is a black box. People scan when they already know what they will get, and walk past when they do not. “Scan me” tells a guest nothing. Say the destination and the action: scan to view the seating chart, scan to reply by the fourteenth, scan to upload your photos. If there is a deadline, that is the line it belongs on.

Put your names and the date on it too. A sign with names on it reads as part of the day. A bare code on white card reads like something the venue stuck there. The studio starts you with wording for the four jobs a wedding sign usually does - the invitation, the reply, the seat lookup and the photos - and every line is yours to rewrite. Leave a field empty and it disappears rather than printing blank.

How big to print it

Scanning distance sets the size, not the other way round. The working guide is ten to one: a code about a tenth as wide as the distance the reader stands back. That is a starting point to print and check, not a specification. A card propped on the welcome table and read at arm’s length is a different object from a board people squint at from the back of a queue.

The download is drawn at five by seven inches at 300 dots per inch, so it prints crisp at that size and scales cleanly to A5 and A4. Past A4, ask a print shop to place it at the size you want rather than enlarging the file at the counter.

Contrast is handled for you. Pick a dark background and the code is drawn on a light panel, because a scanner needs a pale field around a dark code. Pick a pale text colour and the code keeps a dark ink anyway. The type follows your palette; the code follows what a camera can read.

Where to stand it, and what ruins it

• Glass and gloss. A sign framed behind glass under a spotlight collects the glare exactly where the code is. Matte paper, no glass, or tilt the frame down.
• Height. Chest to eye level. A sign at knee height makes people crouch, and a phone held at a steep angle reads worse than one held square.
• Light. Candlelit rooms are lovely and hard to scan in. Where the sign lives somewhere dim, print the code larger than distance alone suggests.
• Traffic. A scan takes a few seconds, and anyone doing it in a doorway blocks the people behind them. Stand the sign a few steps past the entrance, or print two.

Test it with two phones before you print

Print one at final size and stand where a guest will stand. Scan it with the newest phone in the house, then with the oldest one you can borrow. A current camera will read almost anything you point it at, so it proves very little; the tired handset with the scratched lens is what decides whether your code is big enough. Test in the light the room will actually have, too: a code that reads at your kitchen table at two in the afternoon is not the same code at seven in the evening under warm downlights.

Then test what scanning leads to. The invitation is a web page, so it needs a signal, and basement banquet halls are where a QR sign quietly stops working. Ask about guest wifi, and if there is a password, put it in the caption next to the instruction. Scan the printed copy when it comes back from the shop as well, not only the file you sent - cropping and a heavy laminate both change the answer.

Four places a sign earns its keep

• The welcome table. This one is for the guests your link never reached: the neighbour invited in person, the plus-one attached to somebody else, the relative whose message got lost. Worth knowing before you print: the code carries your invitation’s public address, the same one for everybody who scans, not a personal link. A reply that comes in that way asks for a name and number, and arrives pending until you approve it.
• The seating queue. A sign pointing at the seat lookup takes the pressure off one printed board that two hundred people have to read in turn. It works only once you have published the plan, and only where there is signal, so keep the board as well.
• Photos. A small sign on each table is how guest uploads actually happen. Open your account and confirm the gallery is really there before the cards go to the printer: it comes with the Excellence plan, and on every other plan it is bought separately. Cards pointing at a gallery you have not got yet come home in the same box they went out in.
• A note instead of a pen. The public reply form carries an optional message box, so a sign inviting a few words gives guests somewhere to leave them without queueing at a book. Those notes ride in with the reply, which means they wait for your approval alongside it.

When a sign is not the answer

If every guest already has their own link on WhatsApp, a sign at the door is decorative. Its real job is the people the link did not reach, so print one if that group exists and skip it if it does not.

If your venue has no usable signal, print the information rather than a route to it. A table plan printed as a plan beats a code that spins. And if a meaningful part of your list is older, a sign that says nothing but “scan to find your table” strands them at the door. Print the tables too, and put somebody near the sign who knows the room. A QR code is a shortcut for the people who want one, not a member of staff.

Related: RSVP QR code for printed cards