How to design your own music cards
The card designer is the part of QRSong! people spend the longest in, and usually for the wrong reasons. So here is what actually matters on a music card, and what is decoration.
The front has one job
The QR code has to scan, from across a table, in bad light, held by someone who has had a drink. Everything else on the front is subordinate to that.
Two rules cover most of it. Keep the code dark on a light background, because light-on-dark reads on some phones and fails on others and you will not find out which until the party. And leave the quiet zone alone: the clear margin around the code is part of the code, and crowding it with a background image or a logo is the single most common reason a card will not scan.
A background image is fine. A busy background image directly behind the code is not. If you want a photograph, let it sit behind the card and keep a clean area where the code goes.
The back is where the game is
The back carries the artist, the title and the release year. That is the answer, revealed when somebody flips the card, so the only real design question is legibility at arm's length across a table.
Bigger type than you think. The year is the thing people squint at, and it is the thing the whole timeline game turns on.
Where personalisation earns its keep
You can put your own message on any card, and this is the feature that turns a deck into a present. Not on all hundred: on the five or six that mean something. The song from a first dance with a line about the first dance on the back of it lands very differently from a generic deck.
Same with the background. A single photograph used across the deck reads as a designed object. A different photograph on every card reads as a scrapbook, which is sometimes what you want and usually is not.
Printing realities
If you are printing at home, the design has to survive your printer. Two things to check on a test sheet before you commit:
Bleed. Anything that runs to the edge needs to extend past the cut line, or a millimetre of drift leaves a white sliver down one side.
Dark backgrounds. A full-bleed dark design eats ink, and on uncoated home-printer paper it goes patchy. It also makes the QR code harder to place well. Lighter designs are more forgiving at home; save the dramatic dark ones for the printed cards, which are laminated and hold ink properly.
Start from a preset
There are ready-made backgrounds in the designer, and starting from one and changing the colours gets you a better-looking deck in five minutes than starting from blank does in an hour. You can see finished examples on the examples page.
If the deck is a gift, the gift box takes a design too, including a photo in the window of the lid, so the presentation matches the cards.
Ready to build one? Start with a playlist.
Questions people ask about this
Can I use my own photos on the cards?
Yes, as a background on the front, and you can add a personal message to individual cards. Keep the area around the QR code clear, because the quiet zone is part of what makes it scannable.
Why will my QR code not scan?
Almost always one of three things: the code is too small, the quiet zone around it is covered by artwork, or the contrast is too low. Dark code on a light background at 2 cm or more fixes nearly every case.
Can I put a different design on every card?
You can, but it usually looks better not to. One background across the deck reads as a designed set; a different one per card reads as a scrapbook. Personal messages on a handful of meaningful cards are the version that lands.
Do I have to design anything at all?
No. There are presets, and a deck with a preset background and the default layout looks perfectly good. The designer is there for when you want it, not as a step you have to get through.
What is printed on the back?
Artist, title and release year. The year is the one to keep large, because that is what the timeline game turns on and what people squint at across a table.
