The Big Issue In The North, a UK magazine, is releasing a digital version of their magazine via QR Codes October 29th. Why is this interesting? The Big Issue In The North is sold by homeless street vendors and the sales of these magazines provides them a steady income. Releasing a digital version of the magazine would negatively impact the sales of printed versions of the magazine making it harder for the street vendors to provide themselves with a steady income. The Issue In The North decided to leverage QR Codes to allow the street vendors to sell access to the digital versions of the magazines. I have to say this implementation of a full digital magazine available through QR Codes is pretty awesome. Moreover, it’s great to hear this story on how QR Codes helped to keep these vendors employed in a time and age where print is struggling to compete with digital media. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more print media companies allowing consumers to digest their content via their digital devices through QR Code access cards in the future.
