QR codes for packaging and labels

A label is a physical boundary and a digital opportunity at the same time: the box cannot change, but the page it opens can.

Match the code color to the label without losing contrast, keep it off folds and glossy patches, and size it for a hand-held scan rather than a poster. If the packaging is small, print larger relative to the label than you think you need.

Everything else a brand prints is thrown away: the advert, the leaflet, the shelf talker. The packaging leaves the store with the customer and stays in the house for years, which makes it the only print a brand owns at the moment of use.

That is the argument for putting a code on the box and using it for the things customers actually need: warranty registration, spare parts, refills, care instructions and support.

Different codes for different batches give a manufacturer a channel that a notice on a website cannot match: the notice is reachable from the pack in the customer's hand.

A recall, a formulation change, a discontinued variant or a corrected instruction sheet can be published to the exact batch that is affected, while every other pack keeps pointing at ordinary product information.

Customers increasingly want to know what happens to the pack and how to keep using the product. Both answers are long, market-specific and change with local rules, which is exactly the kind of content that cannot live on a printed panel.

Rules by country make one printed pack serve every market: the recycling guidance follows the customer's location rather than the pack's.

Packaging is where codes get printed badly: on a curved bottle, over a varnish, across a fold, in a colour with no contrast against the print behind it, at a size chosen to look tidy rather than to scan.

Test on the real pack, not on a flat proof. Most failures are curvature, gloss and size, in that order, and all three are visible the moment you scan the actual finished article.