License Plate News

[Molandfreak]

I like Michigan's standard issue more than both SD and OH - at least it is fairly simple and clean, easy to read, and doesn't clash with cars of various colors.

I'll just come right out and say it:  I kind of like the Pure Michigan plates.  Not quite as good as their 2007 base, nor their iconic 1980s-90s base, but still pretty good.

I like a return to simplicity with plates.  Honestly, Texas' current standard issue is great.  Very clean and easy to read.

I also like Oregon's base issue.  It adds just a bit of flair with the tree separating the characters, but it isn't as "busy" as some graphic plates can get.

Pure IMHO, but a simple design in a few color schemes may be the winning option. Blackout plates and white plates. Maybe also blue ones? All those combinations are easily readable...

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the sooner we stop fawning over minimalism, the better. It is ridiculously easy for AI to generate a design like the current license plates of Texas. North Dakota's plates are also fully legible from a distance and are too complex to have been created by AI without a significant amount of human input. Supporting those designs means supporting actual artists and graphic designers while their profession is in jeopardy.

Michigan still has the ugliest default plates in the country.

Ohio would like a word, with its coloring book -turned -license plate design.  And South Dakota, with its years-long insistence on making the serial number illegible (except for 2000-05).

LMAO at that description of Ohio's plate. Accurate! 

That said? Early 00's Kentucky was far worse, IMO.

[TheCatalyst31]

I like Michigan's standard issue more than both SD and OH - at least it is fairly simple and clean, easy to read, and doesn't clash with cars of various colors.

I'll just come right out and say it:  I kind of like the Pure Michigan plates.  Not quite as good as their 2007 base, nor their iconic 1980s-90s base, but still pretty good.

I like a return to simplicity with plates.  Honestly, Texas' current standard issue is great.  Very clean and easy to read.

I also like Oregon's base issue.  It adds just a bit of flair with the tree separating the characters, but it isn't as "busy" as some graphic plates can get.

Pure IMHO, but a simple design in a few color schemes may be the winning option. Blackout plates and white plates. Maybe also blue ones? All those combinations are easily readable...

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the sooner we stop fawning over minimalism, the better. It is ridiculously easy for AI to generate a design like the current license plates of Texas. North Dakota's plates are also fully legible from a distance and are too complex to have been created by AI without a significant amount of human input. Supporting those designs means supporting actual artists and graphic designers while their profession is in jeopardy.

Bad news on that front: Arizona just approved a new specialty plate that I'm pretty sure used AI to create the design. If you look closely at the mountains and vineyard the details aren't quite right.

[kphoger]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the sooner we stop fawning over minimalism, the better. It is ridiculously easy for AI to generate a design like the current license plates of Texas. North Dakota's plates are also fully legible from a distance and are too complex to have been created by AI without a significant amount of human input.

If that's true, then I'd say license plate design might be the perfect application of AI.

I don't fawn over minimalism.  I love art.  But that doesn't mean I think license plates should be artsy, any more than I think the tag on my tee-shirt should be artsy, or than the door jamb label on my car should be artsy.  It's just a thing that displays a serial number and, if AI can generate a satisfactory plain design for a thing to display a serial number, then great.

Supporting those designs means supporting actual artists and graphic designers while their profession is in jeopardy.

Supporting a design I like less, just because it was designed by a human artist, doesn't make sense to me.  In my opinion, a license plate design should have easy legibility as its only criterion, and artistic design tends to only diminish legibility—even if some designs do so more slightly than others.

On a related note, I wonder how good AI can get at designing a BGS.  As often as people on this site complain about poorly designed BGSes, I suspect that AI could more easily generate a properly designed BGS.  Legibility should be of paramount importance in laying out a BGS, and art really shouldn't factor into it—kind of like how I don't think art should factor into license plate design.

[Molandfreak]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the sooner we stop fawning over minimalism, the better. It is ridiculously easy for AI to generate a design like the current license plates of Texas. North Dakota's plates are also fully legible from a distance and are too complex to have been created by AI without a significant amount of human input.

If that's true, then I'd say license plate design might be the perfect application of AI.

I don't fawn over minimalism.  I love art.  But that doesn't mean I think license plates should be artsy, any more than I think the tag on my tee-shirt should be artsy, or than the door jamb label on my car should be artsy.  It's just a thing that displays a serial number and, if AI can generate a satisfactory plain design for a thing to display a serial number, then great.

Supporting those designs means supporting actual artists and graphic designers while their profession is in jeopardy.

Supporting a design I like less, just because it was designed by a human artist, doesn't make sense to me.  In my opinion, a license plate design should have easy legibility as its only criterion, and artistic design tends to only diminish legibility—even if some designs do so more slightly than others.

On a related note, I wonder how good AI can get at designing a BGS.  As often as people on this site complain about poorly designed BGSes, I suspect that AI could more easily generate a properly designed BGS.  Legibility should be of paramount importance in laying out a BGS, and art really shouldn't factor into it—kind of like how I don't think art should factor into license plate design.

I will say that as long as there is a quick and easy process for me to switch to a specialty license plate I like, I don't really care what the default plate looks like.

What really grinds my gears is forced adoption of minimalism such as how operating systems shifted away from the skeuomorphic design standards. Windows XP had options where you could switch to design patterns that more closely matched Windows 2000 or 9x. I appreciated that, since you could have the OS look you were used to and still enjoy full support. Now, there's no way to easily go back to a Windows 7 look or a Snow Leopard look on a Mac, which I consider to be the most beautiful operating systems ever made.

[Flint1979]

I like Michigan's standard issue more than both SD and OH - at least it is fairly simple and clean, easy to read, and doesn't clash with cars of various colors.

I'll just come right out and say it:  I kind of like the Pure Michigan plates.  Not quite as good as their 2007 base, nor their iconic 1980s-90s base, but still pretty good.

When they had MICHIGAN across the top instead of Pure Michigan it was tolerable. The slogan Pure Michigan is lame in the first place.

[vdeane]

I appreciated that, since you could have the OS look you were used to and still enjoy full support. Now, there's no way to easily go back to a Windows 7 look or a Snow Leopard look on a Mac, which I consider to be the most beautiful operating systems ever made.

You're making me wonder if this actually works, though the reviews aren't promising.

[kphoger]

When they had MICHIGAN across the top instead of Pure Michigan it was tolerable. The slogan Pure Michigan is lame in the first place.

There wasn't ever a 'wave plate' without the word 'Pure', was there?

I think the 2007 base isn't just tolerable, but close to ideal.

[pderocco]

I like Michigan's standard issue more than both SD and OH - at least it is fairly simple and clean, easy to read, and doesn't clash with cars of various colors.

I'll just come right out and say it:  I kind of like the Pure Michigan plates.  Not quite as good as their 2007 base, nor their iconic 1980s-90s base, but still pretty good.

When they had MICHIGAN across the top instead of Pure Michigan it was tolerable. The slogan Pure Michigan is lame in the first place.

Pure Meshuga

[Flint1979]

When they had MICHIGAN across the top instead of Pure Michigan it was tolerable. The slogan Pure Michigan is lame in the first place.

There wasn't ever a 'wave plate' without the word 'Pure', was there?

I think the 2007 base isn't just tolerable, but close to ideal.

Nope just the one with the wording Pure Michigan. The original one like that just had MICHIGAN across the top but didn't have a sea wave at the bottom just the state website. The sea wave came out in 2013-2014ish with the Pure Michigan across the top instead of MICHIGAN.

[Flint1979]

One thing about Michigan is that you have to get a new license plate every 10 years. I haven't ever gone a full 10 years with one license plate though.

[Scott5114]

On a related note, I wonder how good AI can get at designing a BGS.  As often as people on this site complain about poorly designed BGSes, I suspect that AI could more easily generate a properly designed BGS.  Legibility should be of paramount importance in laying out a BGS, and art really shouldn't factor into it—kind of like how I don't think art should factor into license plate design.

Why would you use AI to design a BGS when a simple procedural script will do it much more efficiently? Kurumi SignMaker was doing that 25 years ago with just Java. A fancy AI inference model couldn't improve on that in any meaningful way. (What would improve on it is sitting down with the MUTCD and writing in all of the numbers found in the spacing tables and such, which is not something AI would be able to do.)

At Signs by Jake, we've done some experimental tests of scripts to generate signs automatically, and found that when you include the time it takes for a human designer to adjust them to look visually, rather than mathematically correct—the old "centering the number 41" problem—it really doesn't save that much time over just having the human do the design the whole way. That being said, we're making home decor pieces so our output has to look nice to the human eye. If you were just interested in churning out a hundred panels and your quality guideline was "ODOT or better", then yeah, you could do that procedurally. But again, AI wouldn't help at all because it's going to be doing inference when you actually need rules followed.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I like Michigan's plates as well. I only wish they'd make the "Michigan" stand out more instead of "Pure Michigan". Kind of like Florida's plates appearing the the state name as myflorida.com.

[Flint1979]

The throwback plates Michigan has are cool. The Pure Michigan ones are not. I like the WWW and the white on black plate from 1979 where it simply says Great Lake State. I like those better than the white on blue they had from 1983-2007.

[kphoger]

If ... your quality guideline was "ODOT or better", then ...

Actually, I was wondering if it would raise the bar higher than that.  That's a pretty pathetic bar to set.

The throwback plates Michigan has are cool. The Pure Michigan ones are not.

I agree on both counts.  The point of disagreement seems to be that I don't think license plates need to be cool.

[Scott5114]

Actually, I was wondering if it would raise the bar higher than that.  That's a pretty pathetic bar to set.

More likely, you're going to get something that technically meets MUTCD guidelines, but looks off, or inefficiently uses space, or lays messages out in a not so intuitive order, or whatever.

In more a visual example, the "41" thing I referred to above:


In this sign, the number is perfectly horizontally centered mathematically—the space between the leftmost extent of the 4 and the left side of the sign and the right side of the 1 and the right side of the sign is equal, about 20 pixels. But it looks wrong, and there's no real way to programmatically determine how to correct it, since the reason it looks wrong is because human brains do not operate according to mathematics.

[kphoger]

In more a visual example, the "41" thing I referred to above:


In this sign, the number is perfectly horizontally centered mathematically—the space between the leftmost extent of the 4 and the left side of the sign and the right side of the 1 and the right side of the sign is equal, about 20 pixels. But it looks wrong, and there's no real way to programmatically determine how to correct it, since the reason it looks wrong is because human brains do not operate according to mathematics.

To me, it is mathematical, just in a different way.  There's more yellow space between the tip of the 4 and the left edge of the sunflower than there is between the 1 and the right edge of the sunflower.



But if I make those distances equal, then it looks right.

[Scott5114]

But if I make those distances equal, then it looks right.

And I'd still shove it about three pixels or so further to the left. (Check it out, the humans can't even agree on this, so how do we expect the bots to?)



More to the point, a computer program wouldn't have any concept of why those particular points you chose are important reference points for K-41, but wouldn't be as relevant for, say, K-11 or K-26.

Jake and I have gone back and forth five or six times bopping the digits back and forth by hundredths of an inch before. (If you think this is fun, try it with an NH or an ND Indian head shield!)

[kphoger]

More to the point, a computer program wouldn't have any concept of why those particular points you chose are important reference points for K-41, but wouldn't be as relevant for, say, K-11 or K-26.

The way I do it when I'm doing one in Paint is this:

distance between leftmost point of leftmost digit and nearest point of border
= distance between rightmost point of rightmost digit and nearest point of border

(If you think this is fun, try it with an NH or an ND Indian head shield!)

I think the North Dakota one came out fine by my method.  But yes, the New Hampshire one looks a little wonky to me—but still not terrible.

[Scott5114]

And see, Jake—who is a quite capable programmer, enough that he's worked for more than one Silicon Valley company—had a rough draft in progress expressing all of that sort of thought process in code. Somewhere in there, he made the business decision that the process the code was stepping through had gotten so complicated that he was better off just giving up and paying for an hour of my time every time he wanted a shield (five minutes or so to make the shield, and 55 pre-paid minutes of shoving the digits back and forth).

[architect77]

But if I make those distances equal, then it looks right.

And I'd still shove it about three pixels or so further to the left. (Check it out, the humans can't even agree on this, so how do we expect the bots to?)



More to the point, a computer program wouldn't have any concept of why those particular points you chose are important reference points for K-41, but wouldn't be as relevant for, say, K-11 or K-26.

Jake and I have gone back and forth five or six times bopping the digits back and forth by hundredths of an inch before. (If you think this is fun, try it with an NH or an ND Indian head shield!)

I would think you could write code to teach word processing software or computers to kern the letters using the rules that we visually like to see.

You know there is a rectangular space for each letter or digit. When they're just filled in you get the un-finessed look of the 41 above. You could teach the software to make adjustments for the "1" because it's thin as opposed to a wide digit like a "W". Also you could teach it to adjust for the space between angled digits like "V" next to an "A" to put them a little closer together to fit better together.

[MASTERNC]

Sounds like plate readers are struggling with the slash in the zero on PA's new plates

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/0-and-8-on-new-pa-license-plates-causing-confusion-for-recognition-tech/4359771/

[Ted$8roadFan]

After 23 years, Florida has finally removed the "myflorida.com" from its license plates. At least some of them.

https://licenseplates.cc/history.php?id=4040

[Molandfreak]

After 23 years, Florida has finally removed the "myflorida.com" from its license plates. At least some of them.

https://licenseplates.cc/history.php?id=4040

[Scott5114]

somebody else's Florida

[Molandfreak]

somebody else's Florida

.com