If you dislike QR codes, you are not alone. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but few who behold QR codes ?nd beauty there. Not only are they unsightly, but they can be difficult to design around, and take up often valuable layout real estate. Still, the idea of making print interactive is a good one.

For marketers, getting users from a printed piece to an online site can provide helpful analytics that quantify the effectiveness of a print campaign, and for content providers, linking to ancillary material—such as a website, a video, etc.—can provide supplementary material and additional reading without having to use footnotes or end notes. Technologies that often (although not entirely correctly) are grouped into the category of “augmented reality”—like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper or HP’s Link—are well-positioned to add this interactivity to print.

Xanté recently introduced a unique take on the idea of adding an interactive element to print. Called InfoMark, it replaces the familiar QR code matrix with a four-digit numerical code. Indeed, InfoMark was speci?cally developed by Xanté as a QR code alternative.