QR Codes for Flyers
A flyer gets about two seconds of attention. The code has to be findable in the first of them and worth scanning in the second, which makes the line of text next to it more important than anything about the code itself.
The line of text does the work
A bare QR code on a flyer is a request for effort with no stated reward. Almost nobody takes it. The fix is one line, and the difference between a vague line and a specific one is large.
| Instead of | Write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Scan me | Scan for 20% off this week | States the reward |
| Follow us | Scan to see this week's classes | States the content |
| More info | Scan for the menu and opening hours | Two concrete things |
| Visit our website | Scan to book in 30 seconds | States the effort as well |
Put the line directly above or below the code, not beside it, and set it large enough to read at the same glance that finds the code.
Size and placement
A flyer is held at about 30 cm, so the 10:1 rule gives 30 mm, and 35–40 mm is safer for a code that has to be scanned while standing up outdoors.
- Bottom right is where eyes finish on a page, and it is where a thumb is not.
- Not in the bleed. Trimming tolerance is ±1–2 mm, which on a 30 mm code is a meaningful part of the quiet zone. Keep 5 mm clear of the trim.
- Not across a fold on a folded leaflet. A fold through a code destroys it; a fold through the quiet zone often does too.
- Quiet zone clear of borders, background photographs and panel edges.
- Print the URL underneath, small. Flyers are frequently read in places with no signal, and someone who cannot scan now may type it later.
Coloured stock and brand palettes
Flyers are the format most likely to be printed on coloured paper or a full-bleed brand colour, and that is where codes quietly fail.
What matters is luminance contrast, not how different the colours look. A decoder converts the image to greyscale before anything else, so brand red on brand navy — visually striking — can collapse to two nearly identical greys. Our own contrast testing found decoders more tolerant of low contrast than expected, but that was on clean synthetic images; on printed stock under uneven light the margin disappears. The details, and the caveats, are in how to print a QR code.
- Safest: black modules on a white plate, with the plate extending four modules past the code on every side. It looks like a deliberate device rather than an accident.
- Acceptable: a very dark brand colour on a very light background.
- Avoid: mid-tone on mid-tone, any inversion, gradients behind the code, and a photograph behind the code.
To sanity-check a design, convert it to greyscale on screen. If the code stops being obvious, it will not scan.
Where it should go
Match the destination to the promise. A flyer offering 20% off should land on the offer, not the homepage — a customer who has to navigate from a homepage to the thing they were promised usually does not.
- One code, one destination, one promise.
- A short path on your own domain so the flyer's code survives a site change:
example.com/spring. - A page that loads fast on mobile data, because flyers are read outdoors.
- An expiry plan: when the offer ends, that path should say what happened and offer something else, not 404.
Tracking without a subscription
The usual reason people reach for a paid dynamic QR service on a flyer is to count scans. You do not need one.
Give the campaign its own short path — example.com/f for the flyer, example.com/w for the window poster — and redirect each to the same page. Every scan is then a request in your own server logs, distinguishable by path, counted by whatever analytics you already run. You get per-channel numbers, no fee, and no third party that can stop resolving your codes. The trade-offs are set out in static versus dynamic QR codes.
Written by Manuel Llovet, who builds and maintains QR Code Free Forever. Published 2026-08-31, last checked 2026-09-08. Figures and measurements on this page were produced for this site; the method is described in each caption.