# Lenticular Printing (レンチキュラー印刷)

> Lenticular printing interlaces multiple images into thin alternating strips and aligns them with parallel lenses so one print flips, animates or gains depth as the viewing angle changes.

- IndexStyle No.603 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/lenticular-printing
- Kind: Technique · Family: Print Expression · Era: 1940s–
- Mood: Play, Technique, Exhilaration
- What this family collects: Techniques that turn dots, plates and registration born from reproduction constraints into the material that constructs the image rather than defects to be hidden.

## Defining characteristics

- Two or more images switching with viewing angle
- Source frames interlaced into narrow vertical strips
- A surface of parallel cylindrical lenses
- Depth or motion built from binocular offsets or sequential frames

## Best used for

- Making exhibit signs, posters or packaging change along a visitor's path
- Putting brief movement or depth into a print without power

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Keep type on the same baseline in every frame and avoid strokes too fine for the lens direction.
- Layout & structure: Set viewing position and movement first; use two frames for a flip or matched sequential frames for motion.
- Material & texture: Interlace to the lens pitch and align the printed strips and lenticular sheet without drift.

## Colour

Read off the reference works below, so a direction rather than a fixed palette.

- Ground: #F4F0E8
- The colour it is remembered by: #EA3C67
- Text and outlines: #215D9C

## What to avoid

Layered stripes do not make a lenticular. Image pitch, lens pitch, direction and registration must agree before the views separate.

## Application checklist

Work through this before calling a piece an application of this style.

- [ ] Visible in the piece: Two or more images switching with viewing angle
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Source frames interlaced into narrow vertical strips
- [ ] Visible in the piece: A surface of parallel cylindrical lenses
- [ ] Visible in the piece: Depth or motion built from binocular offsets or sequential frames
- [ ] The layout follows: Set viewing position and movement first; use two frames for a flip or matched sequential frames for motion.
- [ ] The lettering follows: Keep type on the same baseline in every frame and avoid strokes too fine for the lens direction.
- [ ] The material and surface follow: Interlace to the lens pitch and align the printed strips and lenticular sheet without drift.
- [ ] The colour relation holds: #F4F0E8 as ground, #EA3C67 carrying the style, #215D9C for text and outlines
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Kinetic Art (キネティック・アート)** — Work defined by the condition that it actually moves, or that its image changes as the viewer moves. Mobiles, motor drives and layered grids producing moiré make time a structural element of the work. The foundation of the idea that motion itself is something to be designed. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/kinetic-art
- **Halftone (ハーフトーン（網点）)** — Halftone converts continuous tone into regularly spaced dots of changing size so it can be printed; from a distance they return to tone, while enlargement reveals the screen as material. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/halftone

## Compose it with something else

The dictionary can put this entry in a structural role and another in an accent role, and report where the two fight: https://indexstyle.org/compose?ids=lenticular-printing+kinetic-art

## Further study

- Image interlacing
- Lenticule pitch and viewing angle
- Flip, animation and stereoscopic depth

## Reference works

- Smithsonian Exhibits — Did That Graphic Just Change? — https://exhibits.si.edu/did-that-graphic-just-change/

## Source of record

- Smithsonian Exhibits — Did That Graphic Just Change? — https://exhibits.si.edu/did-that-graphic-just-change/

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/lenticular-printing
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/lenticular-printing/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compare_styles, compose_styles, find_related_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)