License plates are a typical example of a design object that no one notices until they are horrible. In some countries, designers have done a job worthy of a fancy branding agency; in others, they seem to have left it to a bureaucrat with a weakness for Comic Sans. But what are the most beautiful license plates in the world?Japan: The Bauhaus of MetalJapanese license plates look like something out of a minimalist graphic design textbook: white background, green or black lettering, perfect proportions. Every element is designed to be legible and ordered, which seems to be essential in a country where even the rows at the supermarket seem to be choreographed by an architect. The designer of these plates probably had a poster of the Ulm School hanging in his office, and Nendo certainly appreciates them very much. Too bad the police then decided to spoil them with giant stickers over the numbers to fight scams.Anyone who has been or still is a graphic designer knows this, it happens all the time, you make a cool, proportionate, elegant graphic and then someone powerful comes along, like the marketing manager who notoriously doesn't understand anything about graphics, and forces you to stick something extremely ugly on it, like the logo of an association founded in the 1980s that never made a rebrand. Dear graphic designers, as I have suffered such bullying for years, please know that I stand by you.
United States: a riot of 90s PowerPoint.In the U.S., every state has its own license plate, and it shows. Some look like they came out of a serious design studio (see Alaska), others out of a Photoshop course for beginners (Florida, I'm looking at you). The best ones are true works of art: the Hawaii license plate, with its pastel rainbow, is a timeless classic. Then there are those where the designer has clearly lost it: the Oklahoma license plate looks like an advertisement for a rodeo (it makes me laugh a lot), while the New Jersey one has the sad charm of a 1970s highway billboard. Then I would like to know who chose the California font; I suspect it was a surfer after three beers.Anyway, American license plates deserve more space, I think some of them really need to be studied in graphic design courses, the name of the course could be “what to do and especially what not to do if you want to work in the graphic design world”
United Kingdom: Helvetica and bureaucracy.British license plates are the perfect example of graphic functionalism: white in front, yellow in back, black lettering. Simple, legible, no frills. It's all designed for practicality; they don't have time to think about such things. Except for those who love customization: the market for personalized license plates is vast, a mix of self-centeredness and unrestrained capitalism leads the rich to spend millions on vaguely recognizable letter combinations. The result? A Jaguar with the license plate “L0RD” belonging to an oligarch vacationing in Mayfair. I always thought that the British are crazy.
UAE: the design of power (and money)The UAE's license plates are the emblem of luxury stripped down to the essentials: huge numbers, elegant Arabic characters, and hyper-clean design. Here the real design is not on the license plate, but in the number you choose. The lower it is, the higher the bank account. The concept of branding pushed to the extreme: the message is thus not in the graphics, but in the value of the object. And in fact, while the poor designer was trying to create something beautiful, the sheiks were having million-dollar auctions ($8 million to be precise) just to have the license plate with only the number 1 on it.Anyway this seems to me a great way to aim for the rich husband, I am writing this to the material girls listening, watch for license plates with low numbers if you are aiming for money.
Liechtenstein: where designers decided not to work too hard, maybeLiechtenstein, one of the smallest countries in the world, chose a simple but very elegant design: black background, white lettering, national emblem. Here the designer did the bare minimum, but with impeccable taste. It looks like an Armani suit: nothing flashy, but every detail in the right place. What's more, the plates are heritable: basically, a Liechtenstein plate is more stable than many currencies.I would like to dispel a myth: the simplest things with the fewest elements are the hardest to design. And my work as an ex-graphic designer can end here for today.
Switzerland: Swiss design applied to license platesSwiss license plates look like they were designed by one of the great masters of Swiss design, by someone who studied at the Bauhaus school. Everything is perfectly balanced: precise lettering, cantonal emblem in plain sight, perfect proportions. If Dieter Rams had had to design a plate, it probably would have looked like this. Here each canton has its own coat of arms, which means that, with the right license plate, you can flaunt your parochialism even on the highway. A brilliant idea, considering that in Switzerland the rivalry between cantons is stronger than that between Italian soccer fans.
Monaco: monochromatic luxuryMonaco has license plates that look like the logo of a bank for the ultra-rich: white, with blue numbers and the royal emblem. Elegant? Absolutely. Original? Not really. But then again, here the license plate is just an accessory for the Ferrari parked in front of the casino. The real nice touch? The old black license plates with white numbers, now extremely rare, which give the car a “I've been here since before you were born” aura. I feel in awe just writing about them.
License plates are not just numbers and letters on metal, but little masterpieces (or disasters) of design. Some countries have turned them into icons, others into missed opportunities. But in the end, whether they are minimalist or tacky, super luxurious or brutally functional, they tell so much about the culture and society of the wearer.What about you, which designer do you think did the best job? Or worst? Let us know without hesitation, no one reads license plates while driving anyway!
