Sheet 03 · introductions
A contact card nothing can misread.
Names get spelled wrong, phone numbers get mistyped, and the card ends up in a drawer. A vCard code hands the whole record to the phone in one scan.
Content
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A business card that cannot be lost
A vCard code is a full contact record inside a square. Scan it and the phone offers to add the person directly to Contacts, with the fields already separated: no typing, no squinting at a phone number, no mistyped email.
Print it on the back of a paper card, put it in an email signature, or show it on a phone screen. The same file works for all three.
What a vCard actually contains
It is a plain text format from the 1990s that never went away:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Lovelace;Ada;;;
FN:Ada Lovelace
ORG:Analytical Engines Ltd
TEL;TYPE=CELL:+44 20 7946 0958
EMAIL:ada@example.com
END:VCARD
Design notes
- Fewer fields, shorter code. Every extra field packs more modules into the same square. A card with a name and a phone number scans from further away than one with eight fields.
- Skip the photo. A logo or portrait multiplies the payload and makes the pattern dense enough to fail on older phones.
- Test on both platforms. iOS and Android render the Add Contact prompt differently; check both before you print a thousand.
- Put it where the phone can see it. On a laptop screen it works. On a glossy folder it often does not.
Contact code questions
Is the vCard 3.0 or 4.0?
This generator writes vCard 3.0, which every current phone reads. Newer 4.0 codes are smaller but not universally supported yet.
Will it appear in Apple Contacts or Google Contacts?
Yes. Scanning the code offers Add Contact, and the phone fills in the fields itself. Nothing is imported from a service.
Can I include a photo?
Not in this version. Embedded photos blow up the payload size and usually force a much denser, harder-to-scan code.
Can I update a printed card later?
No, and that is true of every static contact code. The data lives in the pixels, so a printed card is fixed. Choose the phone number you will still have in three years.
How much can it hold?
Plenty for a contact: name, company, title, phone, email, website and a note all fit comfortably even at error correction H.
Other sheets
QR Forge Desktop — $19 once
Everything on this page, minus the browser tab and the limits: batch generation from a CSV, your logo in the middle, vector PDF for print shops, and a folder you can keep on a machine that never goes online.