The Case for Better Designed License Plates | Hacker News Reader

The Case for Better Designed License Plates

obrella.com

25 pointsKeenanSteel27 comments

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Pop quiz: What's the most important feature of a license plate, by far?

1) ṚЁÄḊÄḄЇḶЇṪŸ

2) ɌɆȺĐȺɃƗŁƗŦɎ

3) READABILITY

Hmm, kind of hard to read options 1 and 2 because there are a bunch of distracting elements over or near the text, huh?

As far as readability goes, these designs are sore on the eyes. The backgrounds need to be significantly toned down to keep from overwhelming the tag numbers.

Right now, for instance, Abraham Lincoln's giant head is competing with the tag number for my attention, and if the plate is on a vehicle that's fleeing the scene of a crime, that's not going to help me discern the most important information on the plate.

I do, however, like the idea of trying to come up with some design uniformity across all 50 states (e.g. using the same fonts for the same elements, and using the same layout).

I know it's probably too much to ask to have boring plain text on a boring plain, high-contrast background -- which would be the easiest to read.

But there are some easy ways to tone down the busy-ness. Two suggestions immediately come to mind:

Make the tags letters/numbers completely opaque, rather than translucent.

And try to keep the most detailed portions of the background images away from the center (as with the Arizona plate).

Agreed on the opaque comment. It took me a moment to realize that was the common factor for all the ones with worse readability. The California design is particularly egregious. I personally would prefer to see a move back to raised letters rather than fancy prints.

I think the most important feature is that it be difficult to decode algorithmically :-)

I agree. I think the approach should be similar to that used to come up with a wayfinding typeface, if we presume number tags should have their main characteristic to be readability from afar.

Here is a decent look at the approach Ralf Herrmann took when designing an improved wayfinding typeface: http://opentype.info/blog/2009/09/02/designing-the-ultimate-...

My first impression of these license plate examples was more or less 'flat design' aesthetics and branding was exercised on them. However, branding and looking good should be a distant secondary consideration to readability.

I thought the author might mention some reasons why the current designs were lacking, and give some possible solutions that would improve the license plates in some measurable way. But it seems that he simply has a preference for his own design that features transparent font on two-color "simple" pictures. Why does the public need to "wake up" and realize that we are living in a world of awful license plate design if the solution just involves making each state conform to some arbitraty template?

I don't really understand why these would be better. Looking at his proposed New York one and the real New York one, the real one is clearly easier to read. Adding a background image that overlays the text makes it harder to read the text, I don't think it is an improvement. I don't really care how pretty the plates are, I care that if someone hits me and tries to drive off as many people as possible have a chance of reading the plate. This whole post kind of sounds like someone redesigning road signs to look pretty instead of meeting the key requirements like being able to read them at speed.

I also don't see how that "stays true to the identity of the state".

I assume the red color it evoking the 'Big Apple' nickname for New York City. That, plus the skyline overlay makes it clear that this is a "New York City" license plate, not a New York State license plate (despite the fact that ~85% of vehicles registered in the state are registered outside NYC)

EDIT: I'm not currently able to reply to the child comments (which seems odd, as they're not that deep...), but it does appear I did misremember slightly. The actual percentage is closer to 80%.

10.9 million vehicles in total, 2 million in NYC.

http://dmv.ny.gov/statistic/2013reginforce.pdf

That can't be true, can it? The population of the state ~19 million and the population of NYC is ~8.5 million.

You don't need a car if you live in NYC, but you do need a car if you're outside the city.

It could be true considering the availability of public transit and the high expense of parking a car in NYC.

Who drives in NYC!? We NYS-ers drive everywhere, because it's a massive state with a lot of open space between the interesting things.

(I can't comment on child comments either) I didn't realize it was THAT imbalanced.

Also, who are the two farm vehicles registered in NY county?

"This whole post kind of sounds like someone redesigning road signs to look pretty instead of meeting the key requirements like being able to read them at speed."

Even worse, if we encourage them, they're going to apply themselves the same way to web pages.

The UK had a good attempt at designing road signs that looked good as well as meeting functional requirements some time ago, with good results: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15990443

Personally, I prefer the old single-color plates that went away around 10 years ago. Today there seems to be a push to logo-ize everything and the results are tacky. A license plate serves to present a series of numbers to law enforcement and fellow commuters, nothing more. Each state should pick a distinct foreground and background color and leave it at that, IMHO.

I typically don't think European things, but I think they got license plates right. Black on white. Very small designation of the origin.

What is better about these? More "modern" maybe? What about functional improvements? What's the reasoning behind the design decisions?

Haha, a fellow jonah with the same complaints as me

I find the color palate to be quite visually pleasing but unfortunately the colors selected for each plate don't provide enough contrast.

Part of what makes the current plates look so 'poor' is the need for letters and numbers to contrast with the background.

One of the bad things about current plate designs that is not addressed by this is readability from an OCR perspective.

Some legitimate (read: non-state spying, such as permitless parking) License Plate Recognition (LPR) software/hardware uses need more legible plate numbers/state info. It would be nice if these included a QR code containing state and number info.

Maybe I missed it, but no case was given.

These plates demonstrate a pretty myopic naive design view; Washington, for instance, is a lot more than just the Seattle skyline.

The current Washington plates feature Mount Rainier: http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Washington3/wa-1145wsp.jpg

How is this WA plate design better? Just because it's trendier in its flattyness? It has limited appeal to anyone in the state outside of the Seattle area AND it's harder to read.

There is a slight irony in "the evergreen state" using red, white, and blue for its numberplates, without so much as a hint of green to be seen...

I personally think the current AZ plate template is superior to the one offered by this article:

http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/Arizona5/az2014baa2002.jpg

Arizonan here who can't stand the new plate (and who also doesn't care for the plate in the article). The current plate's kitschy cactus-and-horizon drawing fades into a blob when viewed from greater than ~4', i.e., the normal viewing distance. The older maroon plate with the raised cactus symbol was far superior, IMHO.

http://www.15q.net/us1/az81a.jpg

What does "ESTD" mean?

Why are the mottos sideways?

Why bother with the capital city?

Some Texans wouldn't appreciate a skull.

I prefer Mt. Rainier to Space Needle and friends.

I'm with you on the Washington plate. The Space Needle is emblematic of Seattle, which is great for things that are for Seattle. But the Washington license plate is for the entire state, and even though I grew up not too far from Seattle, there's a lot more to the state than just one city. Mt. Rainier is something that's emblematic of the entire state.

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