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Colorado. Yes, our plates are immediately recognizable nationwide and the mountains were a cool idea before graphics. But 60 years of essentially the same look is enough already.
I think Michigan could do a better job. And Ohio appears to change their's every couple of years or so.
I think that states need to dial it back. The primary function is getting lost... the worst is the SC plate where you can't see anything but the super font size lettered GOD on it. That's the point of the design and that's wrong. Their purpose is to identify a car. Anything that distracts from that is not good.
I miss the "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania" tags. As distinctive and recognizable at Vermont tags are I think they could use a new design. Oddly enough I have always found Nevada plates attractive.
IMO license plates should be simple. States like NJ, PA, MA, even CA and NY (though I hate the orangey-gold color ew) are doing it right. We don't need pictures or figures or a bunch of words. A simple color scheme and something that's readable is all you need.
I wouldn't agree that just because a state hasn't changed its plate in years, doesn't mean they necessarily should. Colorado has had the same basic design for years, but IMO it's one of the best ones in the entire country: simple, easy to read, and evocative of the state it represents.
Maryland used to be that way, but then they went to that awful War of 1812 one. So that's one that needs updating. Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia could definitely stand a refresh as well.
California used to have one with the setting sun for the letter O that I thought was really nice. Why they went with their current one, I'll never know.
And in a class by itself is Delaware, the state that bears the single most plain, boring, uncreative license plates imaginable. If I were picking a state in which to live based solely on its license plate, Delaware would rank dead last.
The multicolored glitzy ones loaded with pictures and slogans and illegible fonts need updates. To bring them back to what they are supposed to be - visible legible identifiers for properly registered vehicles. People who want to adorn their cars with multicolored banners promoting their state are welcome to go to their state tourism offices and get as many bright psydhedelic in-your-face bumper stickers as they want and put them next to the license plates. In fact, feel free to go to a sign shop and have yuour own made up. Or park your car in the street and invite kids to paint it license-plate-colored.
I don't want to hang a gaudy sign on my Tesla, and i should not be forced by kindergarten-mentality law to do so.
My favorite story about childishly idiotic license plates, is about drug dealers who are plating their cars in Indiana, where they can get the "In God We Trust" plates, where the slogan is so large, there is no room for a legible license number, and drug runners can escape identification by anyone who cannot get within six feet to read the one-inch plate number font, but instead simply gets insultingly proselytized.
The reason some states cannot stick with a standard plate format, is because there is a new governor every few years, and governors (who are notorious idiots) like to design plates to be monuments to themselves. Howver, I will give credit to the moron governor of Texas. The highway patrol begged him go redesign the plates so a normal human could read the number, so he want all the way to what are now the most sensible plates in America, of which I am quite proud. White background, black letters,the word Texas in plain legible block letters, no pretty pictures. What more do Texans need to say about their state, besides "Texas". They've already got a reputation for saying too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vegas_Cabbie
I think it would be fun if for people who collect classic cars, that each state used a remake of the license plate the year their collector car came from.
Most staes allow collector cars to use an authentic plate from the car's model year and validte it.
I'm not sure there's a state that tops Alabama in the sheer diversity of plates. There's the basic two (Alabama the Beautiful, God Bless America) and then you have your college plates (believe it or not there's way more than just Alabama and Auburn), the military plates, education plates, curing children's cancer plates, wildlife plates, police/firefighter plates, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
On top of that, Alabama keeps changing their standard two designs every 3 or 4 years. It was Stars Fell on Alabama for a while, then Sweet Home Alabama, and since last year it's now Alabama the Beautiful. I wish they would just find a design and stick with it.
The multicolored glitzy ones loaded with pictures and slogans and illegible fonts need updates. To bring them back to what they are supposed to be - visible legible identifiers for properly registered vehicles. People who want to adorn their cars with multicolored banners promoting their state are welcome to go to their state tourism offices and get as many bright psydhedelic in-your-face bumper stickers as they want and put them next to the license plates. In fact, feel free to go to a sign shop and have yuour own made up. Or park your car in the street and invite kids to paint it license-plate-colored.
I don't want to hang a gaudy sign on my Tesla, and i should not be forced by kindergarten-mentality law to do so.
My favorite story about childishly idiotic license plates, is about drug dealers who are plating their cars in Indiana, where they can get the "In God We Trust" plates, where the slogan is so large, there is no room for a legible license number, and drug runners can escape identification by anyone who cannot get within six feet to read the one-inch plate number font, but instead simply gets insultingly proselytized.
The reason some states cannot stick with a standard plate format, is because there is a new governor every few years, and governors (who are notorious idiots) like to design plates to be monuments to themselves. Howver, I will give credit to the moron governor of Texas. The highway patrol begged him go redesign the plates so a normal human could read the number, so he want all the way to what are now the most sensible plates in America, of which I am quite proud. White background, black letters,the word Texas in plain legible block letters, no pretty pictures. What more do Texans need to say about their state, besides "Texas". They've already got a reputation for saying too much.
Most staes allow collector cars to use an authentic plate from the car's model year and validte it.
The best thing Texas did was ditch the illegible "Wild West" motif in favor of a simple white license plate with black lettering. The only decoration on it now is a lone star in the corner.
For a while, the worst license plates of all belonged to Ohio. It was bad enough that they got rid of a fairly good design with a red top and a blue bottom, but what made it even worse was that they replaced it with some design-by-committee cluster**** that a) didn't know what color it wanted to be, and b) had to have several features on it to represent every corner of the state that c) were impossible to discern from a distance. Thankfully now, they've gone back to something simple, with a red triangle at the top with "Ohio" clearly visible in it, and dark blue letters on an off-white background. Of course, what makes the background off-white instead of white is a bunch of unnecessary small words in light gray font.
The best license plates are those that are simple but manage to stand out from a distance, like California, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. You can be a distance away from cars with those plates and know exactly where they're from.
One thing I'm in favor of doing is eliminating all special-interest plates. It's not the state's responsibility to endorse your pet cause. Furthermore, each special interest wants its own unique design that ruins the uniformity of what's supposed to be an easy vehicle identifier. If you want people to know that you support a certain cause, put a bumper sticker on your car. Don't go pleading with the state to make you a super-duper-special license plate.
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