The Key to Lenticular - Keep it Simple
January 2006
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EVEN THE MOST seasoned marketing guru has most likely been stopped in his or her tracks by the sight of some of the incredible lenticular print jobs out there on the shelves. "Oohs!" and "Aahs!" can be heard in an aisle that holds a product packaged in this eye-catching manner. But there's a lot a printer needs to know about lenticular products to achieve the right look within the right budget—and keeping the design simple is the best place to start.
Keep it simple
Let's start from the very beginning. Lenticular images are digital files that are printed onto a plastic material made up of a series of lenses (lenticules). What makes this process so appealing to packaging is that the digital files are specially prepared and printed onto the lenticular substrate in such a way that it looks like the image is moving, or in the case of 2D or 3D, that the piece has depth.
There are several kinds of effects that lenticular prints can produce, some with movement and some with no movement at all. Which you choose, or which your customer chooses, will determine how the piece is printed. For instance, according to the World Holographics Inc. Web page, to produce the illusion of depth, the lenses should be run vertically relative to the image. To produce motion, the lenses will be run in a horizontal direction.
According to Mike Maguire, CEO of Structural Graphics, the objective of lenticular is to capture the full attention of a customer. How this is all accomplished, said Maguire, is to keep it simple, and to make sure the lenticular image becomes part of the entire packaging, and not just something that is added on as an afterthought.
"We see lenticular materials used as gimmicky add-ons to packaging and that is really not the correct way to use it. The lenticular image needs to be integrated into the the packaging. It can't look 'last minute' or like an afterthought," said Maguire. "You don't want it fighting with the rest of the product. In my opinion, the simplest designs are the most effective; the basics work best."
Some of his favorite examples of lenticular, he said, have only a two-way effect, either left-to-right or up-and-down. "For point of sale [POS]," he explained, "it's best to have these two-way effects, and it's best to use the up-and-down effect."
Maguire says that the up-and-down movement works best for POS lenticular materials primarily because of how our eyes are positioned. Because our eyes are horizontally located on the face, a left-to-right motion sometimes can become distorted—not at all good when a package has only a fraction of a second to catch the quick-moving eye of a busy and overwhelmed consumer.
Keep it simple
Let's start from the very beginning. Lenticular images are digital files that are printed onto a plastic material made up of a series of lenses (lenticules). What makes this process so appealing to packaging is that the digital files are specially prepared and printed onto the lenticular substrate in such a way that it looks like the image is moving, or in the case of 2D or 3D, that the piece has depth.
There are several kinds of effects that lenticular prints can produce, some with movement and some with no movement at all. Which you choose, or which your customer chooses, will determine how the piece is printed. For instance, according to the World Holographics Inc. Web page, to produce the illusion of depth, the lenses should be run vertically relative to the image. To produce motion, the lenses will be run in a horizontal direction.
According to Mike Maguire, CEO of Structural Graphics, the objective of lenticular is to capture the full attention of a customer. How this is all accomplished, said Maguire, is to keep it simple, and to make sure the lenticular image becomes part of the entire packaging, and not just something that is added on as an afterthought.
"We see lenticular materials used as gimmicky add-ons to packaging and that is really not the correct way to use it. The lenticular image needs to be integrated into the the packaging. It can't look 'last minute' or like an afterthought," said Maguire. "You don't want it fighting with the rest of the product. In my opinion, the simplest designs are the most effective; the basics work best."
Some of his favorite examples of lenticular, he said, have only a two-way effect, either left-to-right or up-and-down. "For point of sale [POS]," he explained, "it's best to have these two-way effects, and it's best to use the up-and-down effect."
Maguire says that the up-and-down movement works best for POS lenticular materials primarily because of how our eyes are positioned. Because our eyes are horizontally located on the face, a left-to-right motion sometimes can become distorted—not at all good when a package has only a fraction of a second to catch the quick-moving eye of a busy and overwhelmed consumer.
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