Each year during Tokyo Design Week, DesignTide Tokyo features top design innovations from a variety of fields. With today marking the end of the five-day event, we’ve highlighted three projects below that we find particularly inspirational.

As a promotional tie-in corresponding with the launch of their upcoming series of “Dunny” action figures, toy and apparel retailers/designers Kid Robot (with the help of creative ideas studio We Are Plus) has organized a mobile phone-based scavenger hunt centered around scanning QR codes.

The Shapeways blog lets us know about an interesting use of their 3D printing service. One user generated a QR code which, when scanned, links to his website. Using the Shapeways Stampmaker service, he created a custom stamp of the code, that can be placed on most flat surfaces as a kind of real-world hyperlink.

QR Codes are the bar codes of the future, linking online and physical graphics to websites and multi-media. For the most part, the codes have still maintained an abstract look akin to their predecessors.
A recently released designer QR symbol, produced by Tokyo based creative agency SET is looking to change all that with a stylized remake of the standard code. Mixing design with technological innovation, SET teamed up Takashi Murakami with Louis Vuitton to create a distinctive code featuring one of the artist’s characters and the classic LV pattern. The agency hopes this will add much needed style and character [...]