The stickers in detail
The stickers are the most visible part of the project. They contain a lot of the functionality and should be flashy so that people who are passing by a location immediately see them.
- Label: The sticker itself should be a plastic label. This is not only better suited for outside (weather proof) but also easier to remove at the end of the project.
- NFC-location: The German sentence "Handy hier auflegen" has a double meaning. It could mean "place your phone here" or "stop talking on the phone". Whatever slogan you use make sure to attract the users. We placed the NFC-tag behind the "X".
- Label ID: You will probably be dealing with hundrets of stickers that need to be put on on a certain location. For not mixing them up, we gave them an ID. Next to the ID we put the name of the photographer of the image of Ingeborg Bachmann. His widdow gave us therefore the permission to use the photograph.
- Simple icons: You can use those provided in the sample layout or use your own ones. They should make it obvious for the user what to do.
- QR-code: each and every site has it's own URL and QR-code. You do not have to use a special service to genereate them, our Wordpress-plugin will generate them. Just copy and paste them later into your layout.
- Sponsor's logo: If your whole project is being sponsored, you can use this space here. We did not get any money from this company, it provided us with plublic space. We put the logo on in order to signal their employees not to remove the stickers from the bus stops.
We use labels (Avery L4774) that you can get at any office supply store or at Amazon (Amazon). Our labels can be printed with a laserprinter or copy machine from any copyshop. It turned out that you cannot print them on a cheap colour-laserprinter (in our case: Samsung CLP-320).
But copying them at professionals is better and not so expensive anyway. The cost is also very low: 80 stickers cost around 25 Euro, printing the stickers on them will cost another 20 to 30 Euro.
Currently we are using copyrighted fonts though we are already looking out for fonts that are licensed under open source. Soon we will provide you with all the layout templates that can be used.
Of course: Every QR-code and NFC-tag needs an URL that tells the browser to open a certain website. To reduce complexity you can use only a single URL for all QR-codes and NFC-tags, thus reducing the functionality of the whole system as well. For this purpose you do not need our plugin at all. Everythings points to a single Wordpress-page whose content you change from time to time.
Here is our way of doing it:
Explanation: Every QR-code and NFC-tag has it's own URL that is tied to a certain sticker on a certain location. When someone scans the QR-code at Location X, the plugin recognizes that and forwards the browser to this weeks content for that specific location. The same happens for an NFC-tag.
Although we have the same content on all 100 stickers, the plugin know what was downloaded on which place with a certain technology. The plugin uses this data to generate heatmaps or charts and send tweets. See for example our stats page.
Don't worry! Setting that up is relatively easy.
Since each sticker has it's own URL on the QR-code, you cannot print all stickers from one master. But the good news is: The plugin generates all the QR-codes for you.
In order to generate thes fuzzy URLs, just choose "QR", press "random url" and then "add". The word "QR" gets highlighted as a hyperlink. Pressing on it, opens the QR-code which you can save by right-klicking on it and choos "save graphic as" or even easier: press "copy graphic" and then "paste graphic" in InDesign.
We put the sticker and the NFC-tag together using a a paperclip and packaged both in an envelope for distribution. The envelope had the ID on plus the location name on it.
I know this seems to be "very German" though it saves you a lot of time and bewares you of mislocated stickers.