Ohio recently released a new, incredibly ugly, license plate designed by... the governor's wife.
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I'm going to assume she has no prior graphic design experience based on how ugly it is. Fortunately, they have stopped production and the older, slightly less ugly plates will stay.
I am not sure why we feel we have to make the plates all fancy. A plain numbered plate would be fine with me! It's not that I'm not against the new plates looking like a butter package, my problems with them are, 1) they are trying to convey too many thoughts at once (Ohio is beautiful, founded in 1803, birthplace of aviation, we have both farmland and cities!, etc...) and 2) there are plenty of talented graphic designers and illustrators in ohio... why can't the state government hire one of them instead of making it a PR stunt for the governors wife?
I started digging around for other plates and here are my faves. I think simple is best.
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I saw one of these on the road yesterday and didn't know what to think. I immediately knew that I hated it, but I wasn't sure which state it belonged to until I got closer and realized that it was my own. This is about as good of a design as the smiling sunshine face thing that KY did a few years back which got about as miserable a reception. I'm with you though on this...less is more.
Posted by: Randy Simes | 28 December 2009 at 01:30 PM
It is quite bad, I agree. Definitely worse than the current crop.
I used to live in DC for awhile and I'm still enamored by theirs: http://daviding.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/20071009_dc_license_plate.jpg
Posted by: Ryan Merrill | 28 December 2009 at 04:20 PM
kansas used to have a less simple one that's ok. http://www.plateshack.com/kansas/ks2005.jpg
Posted by: sidd finch | 28 December 2009 at 05:20 PM
Totally agree it is horrible. I saw it just the other week when I renewed my tags.
Posted by: Dan | 29 December 2009 at 01:06 PM
It is possible to have both a simple license plate without being boring...like the example of Colorado's old plate above.
Posted by: Fritz | 03 January 2010 at 02:22 AM
I used to like the Maryland plate with the nice crest.
You know some entrepreneurs sold frowning face decals to put over the KY smily sun. Apparently as long as the numbers were shown it was legal.
Posted by: Deborah Boyer | 02 February 2010 at 02:52 PM
Hmm. None of those look simple to me. Clearly we define the word differently :O)
Posted by: Dvdsmth | 27 February 2010 at 12:31 AM