Innovation in pint glasses tends to come in the form of shape or weight, though not much has changed in decades (save for the famous Sam Adams glass).  But clever marketers came up with a brilliant way to make you want to fill your glass with a dark beer: screen a special QR code onto the glass that can only be read when it’s up against a dark enough background.

For those who don’t know, QR codes are modern bar codes — they hold some form of data that can be read by one of dozens of different smartphone apps.  For a QR code to work, like a barcode, the scanner needs to be able to tell the basic difference between white and black to be read (or some other combination of contrasting color).  By printing a light-colored QR code onto a glass that simply can’t work with a light beer, it’s possible to provide some sort of bonus material with a dark beer.

Very clever, in the can’t-believe-I-didn’t-think-of-this-first kind of way.