Both your approaches would of course work, but really you just need to learn how to write a QR code and then memorize the message encodings (mask and error) and the message…
You’re examples as a “Hello World” analogy:
The first one looks like a ladder “H”, so imagine climbing up that ladder. The next “e” looks like… but if you know what an alphabet is and how words are formed, you’d simply memorize “Hello” and “World”.