Everybody knows what mouse pads are. They are those usually square things made of plastic or foam or rubber, covered with a hard surface or sometimes fabric that are used as support for your computer mouse, assuring a proper surface for the mouse to move freely, without the fear of slipping away or losing tracking or even getting dirty from the surface of the desk or workstation. But what exactly is "lenticular". Well, I found that out and I am telling you now that the word "lenticular" refers to those objects that are obtained by using a special process of lenticular printing. This process involves the printing of an image due to a technology that uses a lenticular lens in order to obtain an illusion of depth of the image or even to change that image as you look at it from different angles. I remember that I had some lenticular images (I did not know then they were called this way) on my pencil box with a girls who was smiling if you looked at it from the front and was winking if you looked at it from another angle and if you simply moved it a little bit on the side. It was something spectacular for a 10 year old child.

You can see some nice lenticular mouse pads in the pictures and some of them can be really funny.

This lenticular technology had developed since my childhood and the lenticular mouse pads have now a better quality and different effects. First there is the 3D effect that shows a picture in 3D , creating an obvious effect of depth. You can see such a mouse pad in the picture below, where the drops of water seem so real that you can actually see them in 3D and almost want to touch them to see if they are real or not. This can be done by suing a lenticular lens and three or more different images of the same thing or (in this case) nature scene, one being in the foreground, one in the middle and one in the background. In this way, after the three images are printed on a transparent lens and then applied on the hard cover of a mouse pad, you obtain a wonderful 3D mouse pad.

Then there is the flip effect , where you can see two different pictures if you are looking at the same object, in this case mouse pad, from different angles. The zoom effect shows you a small picture at the beginning and if you move the mouse pad a little, you will see the enlarged picture due to the zoom effect. This is again obtained with a special lenticular technology that uses two or more pictures of the same object , all of them in different sizes. Finally the morph effect is the most spectacular one, as it shows you the transformation of one animal for example into another. but it is not like you see two different pictures with two animals; actually there are more pictures used in which the morph - transformation is made gradually. But when you turn the mouse pad on the side you can't see the six or seven images used, but only the almost instant transformation from one thing into another. Exactly the same method is used to create the motion effect, as seen in the picture below. There are more images used and in each of them the characters are shown in a slightly different position. But when moving the mouse pad, you get the impression that actually the characters or things inside are moving. If I am not mistaken a similar process is used for making cartoons animation. But they do not use a lens there like in this case.



Lenticular mouse pads are very recommended to be used as promotional objects, as they are really eye-catchy and if you order a large amount, they can be convenient as price, too. For example the primary image may be an attractive one, as a baby or a flower or a very colourful butterfly and, as you flip the mouse pad, you will see the logo of a certain company that advertizes by means of these lenticular mouse pads. These promotional mouse pads may be given as a gift to the special customers who buy a certain product or simply as a Christmas gift or maybe placed inside some specialized magazines that advertise the company that is promoted by the mouse pads. Now almost all lenticular mouse pads are really thin and this allows people to use them as promotional material inside a magazine. All the mouse pads are made of plastic, as they need this material to apply the lenticular technology and this technology does not work on rubber. The surface where the pictures are printed and applied must be transparent in order to get the best lenticular effects, so this kind of material is the one best recommended. In any case, these mouse pads are also very good quality, as it is a pity to spend a lot of time on a very nice cover and to spare the quality of the product itself.



Except for the companies, even regular people might be delighted to find out that they can customize their own lenticular mouse pads and order them here. You can choose a certain picture or even upload your own photo, write your message on it or a name (yours or your friend's name) and you will get the wanted mouse pad by mail. You can choose from a wide variety of models and, as I said before , you can even customize your products on many web pages that are specialized in the online ordering of lenticular mouse pads.



One of them is www.lenticularmousepads.com.  Here you can find a lor of useful information about the technology used to make the 3D effect or animation effect lenticular mouse pads , beside the opportunity to order an unusual and interesting mouse pad.