Create a QR code with a logo in the middle

Not every part of a QR code is data. The three big squares in the corners are finder patterns, the strips of format information run right beside them, and a dotted timing line connects them along one row and one column. None of that is protected by the data error correction (the format information has its own small code and is stored twice, but that is all): lose it and the scanner cannot locate the code or work out how to read it.

The centre is the one area well away from all of it. In the small codes a short link produces, it holds nothing but data and error correction codewords, which is exactly what the decoder can rebuild. That is why the generator always puts the logo in the middle and offers no control to move it. Long content pushes the code to version 7 and above, which adds a small alignment pattern in the centre as well — one more reason to keep the link short.

A QR code carries far more modules than its content needs. The surplus is Reed–Solomon error correction — redundant data a decoder uses to rebuild the message when part of the pattern is missing. A logo spends that reserve, and the four levels differ only in how much of it there is to spend.

The percentages people quote are shares of the width, which is not what the code loses. This generator draws a white border around your image at 12% of its size on each edge, so a logo set to 20% blanks a square 6.2% of the symbol's area, and the 25% maximum blanks 9.6%. Both are comfortably inside level H's budget, which is deliberate: the damage sits in one solid block in the middle rather than scattered the way the encoding expects, and the rest of the reserve still has creases, glare and cheap ink to absorb.

A logo is usually half of a branded code; the other half is colour. The Foreground and Background pickers in the generator set the module and background colours, and the border behind your logo follows the background colour, so the centre blends in instead of showing up as a white patch on a tinted code.

The limit is contrast. A scanner converts the image to greyscale before it reads anything, so the modules have to be clearly darker than the background, not just a different hue. Deep brand colours on white or a pale tint work; mid-tone pairs and inverted codes are where logo codes that were fine in black start failing. The guide to which QR code colour combinations actually scan gives the ratios.

Not really. A QR code is always a square grid of square modules, and its three finder patterns have to stay recognisable squares in three of its corners, or a camera never finds it. Codes that look like a logo are a square code with artwork built around those corners, and every change to the pattern itself spends error correction the same way a logo does.

So design around the code rather than into it: your logo in the centre, your colours on the modules, and the shape of your brand in the frame or layout outside the quiet zone. This generator does the first two and draws plain square modules; it does not make rounded dots or cut the code into a custom outline.

The two download buttons produce genuinely different files. PNG is the canvas in front of you, logo included, and is what you want for a screen, a slide or an email. SVG is written straight from the encoder as pure vector geometry, which means it scales to any size without softening a single module edge — and that it does not contain the logo.

For print that division is a feature. Hand the printer the SVG, place your logo over the centre in the layout, and both halves of the artwork stay vector at whatever size the job ends up being. The longer route is explained in the guide on putting a logo in a QR code without breaking it, alongside the error correction levels it depends on.