Consider driving in North America.
Here we present a system where a 50 year plan for building a highway, such as Interstate 95 which runs the vertical length of the US east coast, is not unheard of. Where distances of thousands of miles are undertaken in a commercially available Hummer (miles per gallon, highway: 13). Where drivers on the road at a given moment are counted in the hundreds of thousands. Where an auto industry isn’t just a part of the economy, but a motive in world events. In the 100-odd years since the automobile was invented, the infrastructure surrounding the horseless carriage is complex, carefully analyzed, and huge.
I think it’s important for every designer to think about the macro as well as the micro. To zoom out for a moment and consider the larger whole that we are taking part of, so that we can better understand our small part. In the case of road transport in the US, it is fair to say that a heady mix of safety concerns, development initiatives, politics, and the blessed right of all Americans to drive a car (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/briefings/20010507.html), equally influence the driving force of our economy.
And yet in this tremendous iron-clad world of the auto industry, it is the signage that tells us what we need to know: where we are going, what kind of car we are driving, and indeed, through a code of letters and numbers and a geographic designation, who we are.
Imagine the sense of lawlessness on the road in those early days of driving, with loud, expensive vehicles roaring by horse-and-buggies and people on foot. How it must have completely disrupted the system, sped it up, and changed the way we operate. Naturally, we opted to legislate our automobiles and their owners into order.
Vermont’s first law legislating motor vehicles went like this:
The owner or person in charge of a carriage, vehicle or engine propelled by steam, except road rollers, shall not cause or permit the same to pass over, through or upon any public street or highway, except on railroad tracks, unless he sends, at least one-eighth of a mile in advance of the same, a person of mature age to notify and warn all persons traveling upon or using the street or highway with horses or other domestic animals; and at night such person shall, except in an incorporated village or city, carry a red light.
The practice of registering drivers and vehicles began relatively early in the history of the automobile. New York was the first of the 48 states to register vehicles, and require that vehicle owners make their own plates, in 1901. Florida was the last, in 1918.
At that point, cars were required to post their registered number somewhere on their vehicle, but they made the signage themselves, often painting on leather or porcelain. Eventually, predictably, license plate kits were manufactured and sold from department stores like Montgomery Ward or Sears & Roebuck. Finally, issues of readability took over. Massachusetts, ahead of the curve, was the first state in the Union to register vehicles with a license plate, in 1903. The remaining 47 states soon followed.
Those were the days for the design of license plates. Each State designed and manufactured its own. License plates were a lovely, functional, geographically personal representation of a place. Of particular note are the Arizona license plates from the 1930s. These patented plates were the only plates in the history of US license plate manufacture to be made of copper. They were unpainted.
No matter which state, a license plate had to be readable from a distance, and durable enough to withstand weather, the elements, and crashes. These parameters evolved into a similar manufacturing process across North America, which involves coating a heavy-duty material such as porcelain, and later, aluminum or steel, with paint. Letters were debossed to make them more distinct from the background, while in some states the rim is embossed to make the plate stronger. Holes were punched so that they could be affixed to a vehicle.
Beyond these similarities, variations of size and color ran the gamut, often including icon-shaped dies alongside the identifying letters and numbers.
One can view the trajectory of change in one state over time. In the fifties, the Society of Automotive Engineers recommended that all license plates comply with a standard size of six by twelve inches in order to make the manufacture of car bumpers easier. The states complied by 1956, and not by an act of Congress, either.
In the old days, fonts for license plates were drawn by hand, then traced onto the steel dies and cut by hand. Now this system is automated, and the people who knew about the process have more or less passed on. Letter and number stamps for all states are manufactured out of steel by just two companies – Pannier Corporation and John R Wald Company. Stamps can be made in any font specified, therefore each state imprints its license plates in its own font. Often the number zero was left out to eliminate confusion with the letter O in the registration number for the vehicle.
To this day, states keep lists of license plates combinations that are either too difficult to read or socially unacceptable. It can get to be something of a challenge to think of a risqué vanity plate that makes it through the government ringer.
Despite glimmers of visual diversity, license plates were still State-made and State-issued objects. Cost of manufacture was and always has been a major factor in their design and distribution. Therefore it seems to be a natural step that early on in the life history of license plate manufacture, states would invest a significant amount of time into cost-saving research, and eventually look to a largely untapped labor force to build their plates. The problem was, each plate, or pair of plates, having a unique number, has to be printed individually. The manufacturing process could only be automated to a point, at which juncture human hands and eyes had to come into play.
Today the majority of plates are made using a process similar to the example provided by this Rhode Island facility.
Afterwards, plates are proof read for typographic errors, paint smears, or upside down placement.
To this day, it’s a repetitive, detail-oriented job involving the ability to operate heavy equipment. An audience of typophiles may need to be gently reminded, it takes a certain kind of person to want to do this work. There is no possible way that the US could produce more than 16.6 million pairs of plates per year without the partially unwilling labor force that comes from the US prison system.
License plates are part of a prison industries program that was developed to reduce recidivism by teaching prisoners a skill while at the same time producing low cost manufactured goods. Prison industries programs are dictated by a series of mysterious laws that allow the manufacturing facility to provide government-issued goods, such as license plates, at rock bottom prices. But to encourage in-state industry, the state can only sell its commercial goods to buyers in other states and overseas.
Because prison workers are paid in small sums that essentially operate as spending accounts at the prison commissary, anything made in a prison from license plates to soap to office furniture is terribly inexpensive. However, both government and commercial customers are presented with an unusual set of conditions. Manufacture at the prisons is dictated by the peculiar circumstances of a mostly unwilling workforce. For instance, if there is a prison riot, the prison goes into lockdown and the manufacturing facility can fall behind by months.
In 1924, the Virginia prison had a fire that destroyed its manufacturing facility. That year, Virginia plates were made at the New Jersey prison, and are identical in font and color to New Jersey’s plates from 1924. Illinois, one of the few states that have legislated against prison-made license plates, had a short run with prison industry despite the Depression-era cost of 6.4 cents per set. Due to poor paint quality of the license plates from 1933 to 1936, where the state reissued new plates to motorists at no cost, the Illinois Secretary of State ended the contract and accepted bids from private contractors.
Stories about contentious prison situations don’t get out much. My interviewees were unanimously protective of the prison industries program. Mostly there seems to be a general feeling that prison industry programs are upright endeavors, and people want to keep them going.
That said, the pursuit of perfection, even in the carefully monitored environment of a prison industries program, sometimes goes awry. Error plates are license plates that have somehow made it out of the manufacturing facility, and for whatever reason, are faulty. Plates that are inserted into the die machine upside down are common errors. Spelling errors, fits of dyslexia, are also common. More unusual are plates that have paint marks on them – or very rare circumstances where plates are released with obvious errors.
Some prisons are more willing to give error plates up to collectors than others. In internet plate collector’s folklore, Mississippi is known as the spelling error state. Perhaps, though, Mississippi just doesn’t care if its errors end up in the hands of collectors. The states in which plates are manufactured by the handicapped are noted amongst license plate collectors for their minimal number of error plates. It is reported by members of the ALPCA that this is because these states are proud of their program and protective of their workers.
Every ten years or so, most states will reissue every license plate in what is called a general issue. This effectively erases all plates that have been counterfeited and provides income for the states. It also equalizes a design if a state has to add a digit, which invariably involves a font redesign. For instance, New Hampshire had to have new fonts tooled when it added a digit to its Man in The Mountain plate. New fonts are also sometimes built when a state releases a special issue plate.
However in recent years, US states have suffered from federal budget cuts and the cycle of new license plate font orders have slowed slightly. The cost of altering their manufacturing equipment to fit a new design is too costly in the face of other high priority state budget items such as education and even road maintenance.
Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that vanity plates and specialty plates are widely available now. Vanity plates are license plates in which the owner can specify a letter-number combination for an additional cost. Specialty plates are license plates with special designs that herald a socio-political cause. From the salmon of the Northwest to the Boston Red Sox, every state offers several versions of specialty plates. These are available for a higher cost as well, and act partially as a fundraiser for the cause they advertise.
Due to their lower numbers, specialty plates are part of the development of new technologies that can output on-demand license plates. One such advancement gaining steam is a technique developed by 3M called DLP (Digital License Plate system). This system has merged online, round-the-clock registrations and inkjet printing advancements with fewer materials and faster turnarounds. It has the added bonus of elaborate backgrounds, because plates are not printed as flat screens. For example, a secondary school can now issue its own license plate as a fundraiser, in an edition of 200.
Early versions of this technology, which did not deboss the plates, drew two main arguments for the ‘old way’. The first was that the plates lacked substance: without the raised lettering, they looked cheap. The second, more practical reason was that plates would be harder to decipher if a plate were destroyed by fire or by some other chemical change. Thus the technology has been developed to punch the plates into three dimensions.
The condition of change is partly what makes license plates so appealing to so many people. Provide a common denominator, such as ‘every car in America must have a registration number’. Mix in well-documented state laws for research, a clarity of design, function, and a regional component: suddenly, you have the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association (ALPCA), chartered in 1954.
This organization, consisting of more than 9,000 members since its beginning, and 3,000 active members, is not just a hobby club, but also a reference organization and a social club. It is something of an influential lobby when it comes to license plates. Its members hold a scholarship infused with history, geography, typography, design, manufacture, and system organization. Most of them operate out of their garage.
The ALPCA has awarded the best new license plate of the year since 1970. This award is actually pretty well publicized. It is also rather contentious. It is infused with geographical pride and political intrigue, with doses of design and aesthetics mixed in. This year, the Winner was Kentucky, with Maine coming in a very close second.
With 100 years of history and 50 states that individually organized 50 different systems to reach a common goal, this research barely scratches the surface of U.S. license plate design. From materials to manufacture to producers to regional design tastes, there is a tremendous body of knowledge that runs parallel to American history over the last century. Linking technology with current events and social trends, pop culture suddenly figures prominently in this most functional and basic of registration practices.
When people start making birdhouses and purses and even what we could call high art out of license plates, one has to wonder about our society’s visual references, our common denominators, and how they color our place and time.
Which brings me around to the need to zoom in and inspect, to find out at least some of the details on a particular esoteric subject. This practice reminds us that a single object can follow a long, forked path backwards and forwards, that there are endless sources for inspiration, and that the possibilities of what we have to work with are exponentially greater than what we are presently working with.
It seems strange at first to think that a typographer can be someone who never once considered that there are different ways to draw a letterform. And yet that is maybe part of my own limited working mind. Because the fact remains that in forty-five of the fifty U.S. states, license plates are manufactured by prisoners.
That would make the members of the United States prison industries programs the baddest typographers on that side of the Atlantic.
Emily Luce was born in Boston and raised in States across the US. She received her BA from Connecticut College in 1997 and her MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in 2000. She divides her time between her design clients, her art practice, and teaching. In 2004, in honour of the Bad Type conference, Emily has joined the ranks of the Automobile License Plate Collector’s Association, although she is more interested in collecting information than license plates.