The Netherlands has released really cool new animated stamps. Yes, these are regular postage stamps that can be attached to letters and sent through the post.

They use a technology called Lenticular Printing to achieve this affect, and you’ve probably seen it before. It uses small slices of different pictures printed next to each other, with a plastic lens cover that only reveals one set of slices (all from the same image) at any particular angle. As you tilt the picture you see a different image. Do this tilting rapidly enough and you’ll see animation that mimics live video.

Creo Kodak has several customers involved in this type of printing because our device’s ability to image 10 micron features onto a printing plate. Given good enough press conditions, these 10 micron features will show up on paper. Small accurate feature placement and printing means you can do things like lenticular printing on a large scale. I have no idea if these stamps are done with Creo’s imaging technology or not, but its likely.

This is probably the start of a new trend in producing stamps. Even better that the topic is related to the Olympics.