I have always been confused about QR codes and wtf they’re even for. Don’t we already have bar codes, which are about the same thing? Well, yeah, sorta, but no. The advantages to QR codes over bar codes are aplenty: they hold a ton of information, and you can now create customized versions of them. Bar codes, are pretty rudimentary in comparison. But what are QR codes good for?
I never really could answer that question very well, because in all honesty whenever I think machine-readable codes, I think of the Cue Cat and how that piece of idiocy was supposed to change all our lives in, like, 1998. Seriously, I don’t know one ex-dot commer who doesn’t have one; they were giving them away like America Online CDs. I think mine is tossed in the leftover delivery boxes I have from my last WebVan delivery about eight minutes before that company exploded.
Anyway! Someone has finally come up with a really awesome illustration of exactly what a QR code can do. In this example, tattoo artist Karl Marc has created the world’s first animated tattoo, sort of. It’s cool, and it totally shows what the QR code does well: replace a complex piece of information (in this case, a URL for a YouTube video) with a symbol. The end result’s gonna be great for this kid’s drunk party tricks.