New Year's Cards and QR Codes - Adding a Digital Touch to Paper Letters

Why Add a QR Code to Your New Year's Cards

A New Year's card is a once-a-year chance to share how you have been. However, a postcard has limited space, and it is hard to fully convey "here is what happened this year." A child's growth, memories from a trip, the introduction of a new family member. There is so much you want to share, yet a single postcard can hold only one or two photos and a few lines of message at most.

QR codes solve this problem of "not being able to say it all." You print a QR code in a corner of the New Year's card, and when someone scans it, a highlight video of your family's year, a photo album, or a page recording your child's growth appears. You keep the warmth of the postcard while adding the richness of digital content. It is an approach that "evolves" the New Year's card culture rather than "ending" it.

According to Japan Post statistics, the number of New Year's postcards issued peaked at about 4.4 billion in 2003 and has kept declining, falling to about 1.4 billion in 2024. However, the number of people who "send" New Year's cards is still large, and the reality is that the number of cards per person is decreasing. Raising the experiential value of New Year's cards with QR codes may be one way to pass this culture on to the next generation.

Design Tips for New Year's Card QR Codes

Here are some points for placing a QR code beautifully on a New Year's card.

Size and position: Considering the size of a postcard (100 by 148 mm), a QR code of 2 to 2.5 cm square is appropriate. If it is smaller than this, it becomes hard to scan, and if it is larger, it crowds the design. For placement, the lower right or lower left of the back side (the message side) is recommended. It is a position that does not get in the way of the main photo or illustration and naturally catches the eye.

Harmony with the design: To keep the black and white of the QR code from standing out against the design, it is effective to add a decorative frame around the QR code or to match the color of the QR code to the accent color of the design. However, if you change the colors, ensure sufficient contrast. Combinations of two pale colors cause scanning failures.

Guiding text: Adding a short line such as "Scan to see this year's highlights!" near the QR code greatly increases the scan rate. If a QR code sits there all alone, people may not know what the code is for, and it may end up never being scanned.

Consideration for Elderly Relatives

The recipients of your New Year's cards will likely include elderly relatives who do not own a smartphone. When you include a QR code on a New Year's card, it is important to make a design that "works as a New Year's card even without the QR code."

The QR code is only a "bonus," and the main message and photos should be complete on the postcard itself. If you add a note next to the QR code such as "If you have a smartphone, you can also watch a video here," it will not be impolite to those who do not have a smartphone.

Conversely, the QR code can sometimes lead to a happy experience such as "my grandchild showed me how to scan it, and I got to see a video of my great-grandchild." The side effect of the QR code becoming a trigger for communication between generations should not be overlooked either.

How to Create the Linked Content

The content linked from a New Year's card QR code does not need to be elaborate. Simple methods like the following are enough.

• Google Photos: Create a shared album and turn its link into a QR code. All you need to do is upload your photos and videos together
• YouTube (unlisted): Upload a family highlight video as unlisted and turn its link into a QR code. If it is unlisted, only people who know the URL can watch it
• Free web page creation services: Make a simple page with Canva or Google Sites and arrange photos and a message on it

As a point of caution, check that the linked service will still exist next year and beyond. Because New Year's cards may be kept, it is ideal to choose a service that will still display the content even if someone scans it several years later. Google Photos and YouTube are expected to last for the long term, so you can use them with peace of mind.

For Seasonal Greeting Cards Other Than New Year's Cards Too

Greeting cards with QR codes are not limited to New Year's cards and can be applied to all kinds of seasonal greeting cards, such as summer greeting cards, Christmas cards, moving announcements, wedding announcements, and birth announcements.

You add a QR code to a wedding announcement postcard, and when scanned, a digest video of the wedding ceremony plays. You add a QR code to a birth announcement, and when scanned, a photo album of the baby appears. You add a QR code to a moving announcement, and when scanned, the location of the new home is shown on Google Maps. QR codes fill in what a paper greeting card "cannot fully convey."