America’s form of government ensures that certain matters are left up to the states. The regulation of motor vehicles is one of those areas, and as a result, there are currently fifty unique license plates given out by every state in the union. New York is obviously one of those states, and until September 2, NY drivers have the ability to vote for the successor to the current “Empire Gold” plates. Although the change happens every ten years or so, it was still unexpected, and the choices are all vastly superior to the current design.
The next “base” plate will be the fourth changeover in my lifetime. From 1986 to late 2000 the Liberty plates were fastened to almost every car in the state. This design is elegant in its simplicity. The red, white, and blue all complement each other well and the prominent position of the Statue of Liberty is justified. My 1986 Taurus had these plates because it was registered to dad.
The Empire Blue plates replaced the Liberty design in 2000 and ran until 2010. This plate was a little more complex due to the addition of the NYC skyline and Niagara Falls, plus the motto at the bottom. Despite the more complicated design, the plate itself looks fantastic. The blues really complement each other and the overall layout is pleasing. I had Empire Blue plates on the Sable and regret not transferring them over to the Focus when I had the chance.
New York returned to a more simplistic design with the Empire Gold plates, but these were controversial for several reasons. For starters, the design didn’t capture the hearts and minds of New Yorkers like the previous plates did. It was an understandable reaction, as drivers had become accustomed to the mostly white plates that adorned their cars for about 24 years. I remember being horrified the first time I laid eyes on the new plates. There was another reason to dislike the change, and that was the mandatory requirement that drivers get new plates upon expiration of their current ones. Forced to pay for new plates with a design decided by the state? Not a good look. There’s a similar situation happening now over the new plates, unfortunately. But at least this time New Yorkers get a say in the new design.
Regardless of the circumstances that surround these plates, I’m glad the Empire Gold era is over. To that end, let’s take a look at the five choices.
Plate number one is a pretty decent design. Unfortunately, it has one fatal flaw. If the blue and gold band that runs across the top and the “Excelsior” from the bottom were removed, this plate could have been a contender.
Number two suffers from the same faults as one, but all would have been forgiven if the Statue of Liberty was moved to the middle of the plate. Seriously, how did they not do that? It would have been a great throwback to the Liberty plates. 
Number three is interesting because it’s the biggest departure from the other entries in the contest. I like how the entire plate is filled with color. My issue is with the background image. The Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge (aka the new Tappan Zee Bridge) is perfectly fine and I understand why the state is proud of it, but it is not representative of the entire state. An image like the one featured here could never speak for all of New York, and that’s precisely why it doesn’t get my vote.
Number four comes so close to greatness, and that’s why it’s the most disappointing. My issue is with the top corners of plate. E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One) is the perfect motto for America, not New York. And I think most New Yorkers feel the same way. Plus, I think the area would look fine with some white space. Ditto for the right side, which features a cutout of the entire state. Why is it necessary? I’m totally fine with the cutout as it exists on the current plate, which is right between the plate number, but in this particular design it’s unwelcome. This plate really should have had a top strip configured like the Empire Blue plate, with various images of famous New York landmarks featured on both sides. That would have qualified it for GOAT status. Just look at the Liberty’s torch! It’s beautiful. But it wasn’t enough to sway me.
I didn’t purposely keep my preferred plate till the end. This is the state’s fifth choice. Why did number five win out? For one, it’s got landmarks from different areas of the state. And it doesn’t have any clutter on the top corners. It’s a nice amalgamation of the other two entries. This is the plate that I will gladly affix to my current or future car.
As for my favorite plate, that would be the Empire Blue design. The top and bottom strips of blue give it some nice flair, and the blue contrasts well with the white.
And that’s my take on the plate situation. What’s your pick among the five? And what is your favorite plate of all time?
Not a New Yorker, so I’ll stay out of the fray. I will observe however, that many modern state license plate designs A) look like there was no professional graphic designer involved, just some folks with clip art and 20 year old desktop publishing SW, and B) have so much visual clutter on them that they’re hard to read and end up with parts of the design obscured by even slim license plate frames. I think the popularity of the fairly new “retro” yellow on black plates, which have only letters and numbers, here in California highlights just how bad some other plates are.
some folks with clip art and 20 year old desktop publishing SW
Amen to that! As a visual communication designer for many years, I cringe at lot of script fonts that the folks thought was so awesome. Don’t get me started on Comic Sans! Thank you.
Could not agree more with your A) and B). Perhaps the people choosing a new plate have no inherent design abilities, either.
I don’t live in New York but if I did I’d want King Kong on my license plates.
I am not going to pick as I don’t live in New York, but I do like any of the 5 over specialty plates. We have over 120 specialty plates in Florida, and I think we need to go back to just one. I really like the international ones, as they are easy to read and easy to identify country and city codes, showing if a car is local or not.
When something is mandated, then simplicity should be the rule. The more simple the design of a plate, the better.
This is hard to understand. In Germany we have only one sort of very boring license plates which hardly allow any personalization. I have looked up your wonderful Florida speciality plates. I am impressed and can absolutely not understand you.
Yes, they can be personalised to a certain degree. You can select the letter and number combinations if you like. For instance, M – TX 666 (the latter number combination seems to be puzzlingly popular with Germans). Or initials and birth year: M – JM 1988.
If you live in Fürth (Bayern), you can order FÜ – CK 500. Like the owner of this Fiat 500 Abarth. FÜ – CK combination is popular in Fürth, a small quainty Bavarian town outside Nuremberg…
Of course, there are certain letter and number combinations not allowed due to Nazi connection: NS, HH (except for Hanseatic City of Hamburg), 88, etc.
The first two have the letters and numbers squished to one side (I know it’s because they don’t want to block the statue but it just looks weird). The third is nice I guess, but it’s just a bridge that nobody outside of the state knows about. I mean, I’ve never heard of it. It’s not like it’s the Mackinac Island bridge that Michigan puts on their license plates. And like you, I like the fifth design better than the fourth so my non-NY vote goes to that.
And that yellow license plate is just ugly! Who comes up with this stuff? The license plates of the state of Ohio are pretty bad too – apparently they put a bunch of slogans and phrases associated with the state on the plate but you can’t actually see them unless you’re within about a yard.
As a former Buckeye, I rather like this iteration of the Ohio license plate. Like you, I’m not nuts about the slogans in the backgrounds, either. But, they’re inconspicuous enough at normal viewing range (i.e. in traffic), that they just look like a gray field. I really like the way they incorporated the red triangle at the top to include the state name and the letters and numbers are clear and legible.
Other than the slight miss with the background, this is a great design.
Agree that the basic design is attractive. I didn’t know what the fuzz was about until I enlarged the pic, I thought those phrases were watermarks in the picture lol
It’s ironic that gov. Cuomo is all about global warming and get every vehicle in New York state will have to get 2new licence plates per car
How much energy will this use !
It’s not because the plates are rusting , they are aluminum , it’s because some politician thinks the current ones aren’t pretty .
Hypocrites all !
Michigan has a nice sunset bridge license plate…
The bridge plate is an optional alternative to the standard plate (the only one without an upcharge), and I chose it for my replacement plates this year because the bridge is such an icon of Michigan and I thought it looks pretty cool on its own terms.
The later Mackinac Bridge plate looks much better than this original effort. It costs $5 more than the original plate, but you only pay once.
…while Kentucky used to have this at some point. They called it “Mr. Smiley”. This is pretty bad.
Our two worst ones: One had a slogan of “Wander Indiana” – as if “oh, there’s no reason to really be here, so it doesn’t really matter if you are going anywhere in particular.”
The other had the silhouette of a farmscape, with the phrase “Amber Waves Of Grain” at the bottom. But, um, we grow corn and soybeans which are never amber. That’s wheat. (headsmack)
For a long time, Indiana did more frequent license plate redesigns/reissues than anyone else, and came up with a new slogan every time. I suppose “Wander Indiana” was better than “Drive Straight Through Indiana As Fast As Possible Without Stopping.”
Stranger Things again; https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1015/7033/products/003_d3a3cfd3-63cc-4d89-8b47-737d4f5eafc6.jpg?v=1564073656
This was literally designed by the governor’s wife.
Anyway, not a New Yorker but all of the submissions are pretty bad and none have the, um, stateliness of the existing yellow and black plates. The terrible typefaces alone should be enough to disqualify options 1-3 and 4 and 5 are both generic and weak. I’d pick option 4 but not out of love for the design.
Others have mentioned the problems inherent with current plates such as amateur attempts without a graphic designer being involved, overcomplication and busy designs that are both hard to read and ugly, and proliferation of alternate plates making the standard base just another in a series of bad ideas but one should save some ire for 3M’s horrible flat printed plates with a single, terrible typeface. Obviously the limitation is there to prevent some dumb state from putting Papyrus on there but to have such blandness when you could have Virginia’s really nice serifs or even something as nice as the older embossed plates is a real travesty in most modern plates.
So…now I know the Teletubbies hail from Kentucky.
We’re talking about license plates, for crying out loud. For once, try to stay serious and keep them utterly simple, uniform and easily readable from far.
All of them look like souvenirs to stick on your kid’s pedal car.
Johannes wins!!! But I think the Teletubbies plate is an extra $35. 😁
Apparently the residents of Kentucky weren’t big fans of Mr. Smiley, and sales of pricier “specialty plates” surged during Smiley’s reign. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but maybe, just maybe, the KY government knew what they were doing after all!
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8598104/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/kentucky-frowns-smiley-license-plates/#.XWR75W5Kjrc
The statue is geographically in Jersey. Niagara Falls is half Canadian.
Why not find a strictly NY connection to cars? The Chrysler Building, or a Pierce Arrow.
Technically the statue is in New York, but the island is in Jersey.
The island and the thus the statue are indeed in New Jersey and more important, it was gifted and belongs to the entire country.
How about the Freedom tower, Empire State building or other NY specific landmarks…
When I was in college in the 80s, I seem to remember, New Jersey filed a lawsuit arguing that on the basis of historical evidence, the Statue of Liberty belonged to New Jersey. It failed. But I remember bumper stickers with the Statue of Liberty, saying, “New Jersey stands behind the Lady.”
Sorry, but you all have it wrong.
Liberty (formerly Bedloe’s) Island is in New York State and always has been although the official border between the states puts it in New Jersey water. Ellis Island is close to the New Jersey shore and in also Jersey water, but the original island was officially in New York. It is in fairly shallow water.
I think the border was probably established after the islands were considered to be in New York.
Over the years since the opening of the immigration building on Ellis Island the original island was extended several times with connected islands made with landfill. Conveniently, this was when the subways in Manhattan were being built, so New York City rocks and soil were used to build the extensions.
The court case was in particular about sales taxes from food and souvenirs sold at Ellis Island. The court decided that the original island was in New York State and the extended parts were in New Jersey. All the concessions are thus in New York and subject to New York State sales taxes.
Niagara Falls is all USA while the Horseshoe Falls is shared. The view of both is better from Canada tho, so there’s that.
The Horseshoe Falls are in Canada and the American Falls are in the US. Together they constitute “Niagara Falls”.
Studebaker guy is right.
As a former western New Yorker, I kinda like the Empire Gold plates, for their simplicity. It harkens back to the simplistic plates of my youth from the 70s. Blue on gold, or gold on blue, no adornments, replaced every 4 years due to rust. As for the new plates, I’ll take number 2. I actually like number 3 best for the simplicity, but one lousy bridge dies not not represent all of New York, especially those of us from the shore of Lake Erie; and especially not anything “Cuomo” related.
That’s my take.
As a midwesterner, I’ve found myself explaining to people in this part of the country that New York state is so much more than the megalopolis. I laugh heartily when they call Buffalo “upstate” and forget that the state borders like 15 states (just kidding).
I think about my interactions with folks from New York City, to my wife’s childhood friends in Schenectady to friends/classmates I made from Buffalo. To say that New York is diverse, is a bit on the mild side.
I don’t know what would be a good icon for New York state.
They had a contest in Texas to choose a plate. The winner was a plate that no one I knew liked. Didn’t matter anyway, after a couple of years there was some problem with the plates and we ended up with white plates with black letters.
Law enforcement found those circa 2010 plates hard to read and the format was confusing.
Several years ago, Nebraska had a similar contest. There were several interesting-looking graphic plates, and then one boring-looking plain plate. At some point, the website collegehumor.com publicized the contest and urged people to vote for the boring plain plate as a sort of practical joke.
Well, the boring plate won the contest, and the State of Nebraska proudly reported the results. Only later did it come out that the results were influenced by a humor website, and State IT personnel verified that mostly out-of-state IP addresses voted for the winner.
The State was quite embarrassed, and they ultimately chose another plate. But that goes down as a great way how not to conduct a New License Plate Contest.
I like the Empire blue design as well. It’s very clean and attractive. I agree, the best laid out of all the designs.
I find of the five choices, the one with the liberty torch the most graphic and memorable. Much cleaner if they would remove the motto and state outline. From 15 feet away the motto and outline just make the design busier. They won’t be that visible, so they shouldn’t detract too much from the design if it is chosen. No sure why they want to highlight the state outline so much, as it’s not that elegant in its shape.
Given all the design talent in NYC, I’m sure the public would have come up with better designs. Perhaps if they had public submissions and a team of art directors picking the winner.
My all time favourite for years has been the polar bear design used by the Northwest Territories.
I like that bear license plate. I mean, what a neat idea! Who said all license plates must be the same shape?
They’ve used that unique shape for years. For me, what made it especially cool, was spotting it somewhere else far away in North America. Knowing that car drove all that distance, plus given the population of the Northwest Territories is quite low as well. The licence plate equivalent of finding a four leaf clover.
I’d agree to that. Being in Alberta which is relatively speaking sort of close by we get to see them every once and a while but it is always a treat.
I would imagine the production costs are higher … but worth it.
OK, I feel a geezer rant coming on here. Its. A. License. Plate. Two points.
1. Drivers need to get over what the state license plate looks like. My state (Indiana) replaces plates periodically, and old ones go away. Some I like better than others, but in the end everyone else has to put up with it too, so . . . .
2. My gripe with states is about why there is a perceived need to get all artsy on license plates. States went for decades and decades with simple designs of characters of one color on a background of another. Indiana used to change colors every year, others kept a design with colors that resonated with the State somehow. My vote (if I lived in NY) would be a write-in:
Wait – Part 3 of rant – in my state the plate design doesn’t matter because there are so many “Distinctive plates” that you can pay extra for. Probably 80 of them, all with different colors and designs. Do you want everyone to know your favorite university? Favorite cause (like the Indiana Diabetes Assn)? Or some group you belong to (Indiana Association of Nurse Executives)? There is a plate for you.
There are loads of these out on cars, but I have never seen the benefit of paying extra to register my car.
I’m too lazy to go and look but I would bet that Indiana has a lot more than 80 distinctive plates. Several years ago the number was approaching 200 and I’m sure that more get added all of the time. As you might guess most law enforcement personnel are not fond of all the variations, they like to be able to quickly glance at a plate and determine if it is local or not.
Those of us who are old enough can remember when many states issued a new plate on an annual basis, none of that placing a sticker in the corner nonsense. In Kentucky, where I grew up, the plates alternated, one year blue lettering on white and the next year white on blue.
You are probably right on the number. I didn’t want to take time to look it up but didn’t want to exaggerate.
And yes, the annual license plate was a big deal at home. I still remember how excited my mother was that the first new plate she got after buying their dark green 64 Olds Cutlass that the 1965 plate matched the car!
I think the rationale behind the more graphic plates, is they are low cost brand ambassadors for the state or province. I will admit, the design on a unique plate that I haven’t seen recently, might have me quickly looking up tourism info on that state or province.
I find some ‘graphic’ plates fairly attractive if tastefully done.
I might be persuaded that there’s marketing value for relatively small, out-of-the-way places, like Rhode Island, Delaware or PEI. But New York? I have a hard time believing someone might think of New York as a tourist destination because of a license plate!
As I said, it’s a simple, low cost way to promote the state in adjacent states and into Canada.
The ‘I Love New York’ marketing campaign targeted Ontario (and other surrounding states) starting back in the 1970s. There wasn’t much to the campaign. The jingle was simple, and it made the state hundreds of millions in tourism.
A nice licence plate visually, with a great slogan, can be very effective as those cars vacation beyond the state deeper into the mid-west and Canada. Especially, if it is a beautiful design with a great motto.
Though many tourists would come to Canada from Pennsylvania, I remember asking my dad about the keystone mentioned in the motto on the plate. I wasn’t the only kid curious about the state.
I always liked New Jersey’s plates because they are the simplest.
AND, you can keep your older ones as long as you like (transferring from the old car to the new car if desired). Here’s one from 1960, still in use!
Sounds like you’d appreciate the license plate of Delaware.
I’m with you. I grew up in Pennsylvania and saw my share of New York plates.
I was disappointed when the traditional green and white Washington plates, as on this car:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-cohort/cohort-outtake-1959-chevrolet-parkwood-wagon-lots-of-wood-but-no-woodie/
were replaced (ca. 1982 IIRC) by our current plates, which were designed by a college student. I used to be a typesetter, and the plates used Souvenir Bold Swash, a font that’s been run into the ground IMO, for “Washington” and “Evergreen State.” At least they changed the font to Helvetica some years later:
http://www.theus50.com/washington/license.php
I’ll grant that the design isn’t too busy as current license plates go.
Totally with you on all points. That godawful Souvenir Bold Swash can still be seen on some transit buses around Seattle; the Helvetica undid one of the lousy aspects of the plate design. But here again, “ABC1234” all crammed together like that is very difficult to read at any distance.
The award for the most dated license plate typeface of all has to go to the province of Alberta, Canada. That horrible, laughable Avant Garde—straight out of 1977. It appears they will never ever change it.
Herb Lubalin, designer of Avant Garde (and Souvenir), once said Avant Garde is more abused than used.
If it were me, I’d stick with the current Empire Gold. The color combination harks back to NY plates of the early 1960s, and gold is more interesting than white.
Careful what you wish for…watch ’em change it for Sand or Comic Sans or Papyrus or…well, actually Zapf Dingbats could be kind of fun…
[quote]Souvenir Bold Swash[/quote]
Why, yes, I would like my license plate to look like a Long John Silver’s, or a yacht rock album, perhaps.
Didn’t know the name of the font but yeah that was just plain bad. And yeah I was annoyed when they finally forced the replacement of the green and whites on some of my older vehicles. Of course one of the supposed reasons was they wanted uniform plate design and shortly there after started issuing the multiple special interest, additional cost, plates with a wide variety of designs.
Amen, hallelujah, preach it! A licence plate’s job is not to capture hearts and minds or win popularity contests, it’s to clearly identify the vehicle it’s attached to. To do that, it has to be quickly and easily legible. The small American plate size wasn’t such a problem with up to six-figure legends (ABC-123, 123-ABC, AB-1234, 1234-AB…) but with seven- and eight-figure legends the figures are necessarily smaller and/or all crammed together with no spaces or dashes (ABC1234, etc). About the only good way of handling this I’ve seen has been California’s expansion of available ABC123 legends by means of prefixes (1ABC123, 2ABC123, 3ABC123, etc). Still harder to read than ABC-123, but at least it’s somewhat more easily committed to memory; the ABC-123 part and the prefix part can be put in different memory “slots” the same way we might remember an area code and a phone number.
And then we worsen the situation with low-contrast background/legend colour pairs, artwork, URLs, interest group names, football team names, university names, and other such spurious crapola, pro-choice or pro-life slogans…why? Same reason a dog licks his balls: because we can.
But really, just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Texas’ plate is probably the best currently in use: ABC • 1234 in black on a plain white field. The legend is smaller than if it were ABC • 123, but high contrast and a plain field go a long way toward legibility.
It’s entirely possible to have a space, a hyphen, or a graphic (on a Georgia plate it’s a peach) between the alpha and numeric parts of the plate number.
Ontario uses 4 letters, 3 digits (ABCD-123). This should theoretically give 456,976,000 distinct numbers, but I suspect that not all possible 4-letter combinations will be used. 🙂
On thinking some more, I think Washington adopted the current design in 1989, the 100th anniversary of statehood.
“And then we worsen the situation with low-contrast background/legend colour pairs, artwork, URLs, interest group names, football team names, university names, and other such spurious crapola, pro-choice or pro-life slogans…why?”
And you don’t want to see the political infighting to get some of those plates pass the legislature. The nastiest ones in Virginia were pro-life (which went thru fairly easily after a lot of screaming), and then when the pro-choice side came up with a rebuttal, the pro-lifers went all out to torpedo the effort. You know, the old, “our side is good and correct, but your side must be stopped at all costs” attitude.
I am with you JPC. I like plates, simple there is no need for the artsy graphics. I like to look at the car, no some artsy colourful plate that in my opinion just looks tacky. There were lots of American tourist in my hometown when I was growing up and it used to be so easy to spot the different states. Now with all these graphic plates started and it just got so much harder to spot where they are from. It’s so strange to me that a state has so many variations of plates available.
The blue on yellow New York plate is a proper plate in my eyes, and it looks New York. I also didn’t mind the 1986-2000 design, still basicand easy to read. If I had to pick one of the new plate designs, I agree with Edward, the last is the best of them, and it certainly a lot better than some out there.
Here in Ontario, we’ve always had basic plates. Since 1972, they’ve been white backgrounds with blue writing. Prior to that they’d alternate blue on white and white on blue depending on the year (they had some other colours too if you go back far enough). Our commercial plates are simple black on white. They are also used by pickups, and some other personal use vehicles (some SUVs and El Caminos/Rancheros). Apparently Ontario is changing to a white letters/numbers on blue plate soon. These new plates will no longer have stamped numbers.
I’d just be happy if they could make a plate that would last longer than 5 or 6 years before it delaminates. Ever since we switched from steel to aluminum plates (about 1997), there have been lots of quality issues. The latest batch over the past 8 or 9 years will delaminate and off course you have to pay to get a new plate or face a ticket. They are warrantied for 5 years, and they seem to fail just outside of warranty (or at least for me and others I know).
That one is from 1966-73. The current orange-yellow with black NY plates are a modern design referring to the previous ones from the fifties. I assume the yellow-orange stripes etc. on most of the new proposals are also referring to those.
Graphically I like the #1 choice, but to represent both ends of the state I’m voting for #5. The Empire Blue one from the 2000’s is maybe a somewhat better version of the idea. What I don’t get is the “Excelsior” instead of “Empire State”. I guess it’s the state motto that no one knows instead of the phrase everyone does know, at least if they were around during all the “Empire State” years.
In California the plates stay with the car and they never make you get new ones. The 1962 Lincoln I had in the nineties had the original plates which were nothing like the later ones.
NY’ers, vote now. Ends at 11:59 pm Sept 2.
https://now.ny.gov/page/s/vote-for-the-next-nys-license-plate-design
(If my vote counted), I vote for #4. You have to ask yourself, “What looks best at a distance?”
These blue & yellow NJ plates from the ’80s had nice colors, but were hard to read (especially when the paint wore thin).
To me a plate is like a (mandated) accessory on a car. As such, it should be a neutral color like black or white so that it doesn’t clash with the color of the car. Just my opinion.
In the 90’s Indiana had a yellow and brown thing that just looked gross on everything. It said “amber waves of grain” on it, which may represent much of Indiana, but not here in Northwest Indiana where the motto should be “rainbow waves of oil spill (again)” as the steel mill next to Portage Lakeshore has again contaminated the beachfront for the second time in five years.
“Mommy, the water is burning me!”
Guess I got off topic there. Just pisses me off. Can’t have anything nice here.
But at least we have that pretty blue Environment plate that folks can put on the backs of their Suburbans and coal-rolling diesels. Because nothing says “I support the environment” more than a nice license plate on the back of a 4×4 Excursion. 🙂
JPC,
LOL! I have actually seen that on a smoky diesel pickup.
it should be a neutral color like black or white so that it doesn’t clash with the color of the car.
You’d think with the self imposed glut of neutral colored cars now a days we’d have MORE color in lisence plates…
The vast majority of states with these graphic plates are on white backgrounds. I think the rise of graphic plates is actually correlated to more neutral backgrounds. Rather than having a basic solid solid color to tell states apart they all are based on boring white and get a cheesy multicolor graphic to differentiate. States had it right in the 60s-70s, they should have stuck with the formula.
Color is fine, the old California Blue/Gold plates look good on literally everything in every color based on my watching of CHiPs on Me TV
XR7Matt,
Well, I gotta admit…
I agree with you.
Changing my mind doesn’t happen often.
Is this growth?
Feels weird.
My all time favourite American plate, for sentimental reasons, was the 1976 Michigan Bicentennial plate. The colours were pure, and the design was simple and graphic. Plus, it looked good in the the left front corner of the various Cordobas visiting Ontario from Michigan.
Like so…
The plate on my first car, the original blue on gold NY plate, still hangs on my wall.
This grumpy old man still thinks each state should have ONE plate design. Nevada has probably 30-40 to choose from now.
Is it still possible for kids to play “the license plate game” on road trips now? Sometimes I have to crawl up to the car in front of me at traffic lights just to see what state a plate is from.
Im old enough to remember the yellow on blue from the 60’s and the blue on yellow from the 70’s, so the current plates are appropriate from a nostalgic sense.
One of the reasons NYS is updating the plates is to make them easier to read for toll collection and I’m sure also electronic traffic surveillance. The greatest contrast is best. Plus NYS plates take a beating with salt…Here in Buffalo I see plates that are so badly rusted or peeled there is no way you can read them.
I prefer the second choice. I like the large ghosted liberty, the typeface and the Excelsior. The fourth is horrid. The torch is way to fussy, the typeface lettering is inconsistent and unreadable….A real mishmash
I really think Governor Cuomo is a prick and I am glad I escaped Tompkins County when I did.
The Tappen Zee Bridge plate is just trying to stroke the ego of Cuomo and the first three designs are so similar so that way the Tappen Zee plate becomes the winner. Plate number five is my favorite.
He’s not a prick, he’s a politician…….oh wait….
Is it too old-fashioned to suggest that any plate design should be rejected if it fails at its primary mandate (ie: legibility at a distance)?
Perhaps the vote should be given to the police.
Because I’m bored, I’ve been looking at license plates from other states just to see what they look like. I like this one from North Dakota.
There must be thousands of superb graphic designers in NY working in the advertising industry. I wish they would get the very best talent available to do a superb plate.
I personally thing the Statue of Liberty belongs on the plate by the way.
Like simple plates? Here’s one from the UK. No slogans or fancy designs here!
Yeah, but the shape’s a wrong… ;o)
yeah, but they’re gonna have to redesign that left edge soon.
Too much effort put into making the different parts of the “code” mean something (first two letters=region where first registered in. This in a jurisdiction where the number stays with the car from showroom to scrapyard. Two-digit number=year of first registration. No, it doesn’t agree with the official model year as declared by the manufacturer. And “52” means the second half of calendar 2012, not 1952.)
It should identify the individual car, nothing more.
And the back one is YELLOW. If there are two plates, they should match!
I like the general design of the Bridge plate, largely because it doesn’t have a white background. So many states & provinces have white-background plates, that it’s awfully nice to see one that’s different. That’s why I like the current gold/blue New York plates… because they’re distinctive. However, like you said, I don’t like that it’s yet another NYC-centric plate. If I were a New York resident, I’d say Enough Already! If that background were instead something like the Adirondacks, or Finger Lakes, or anything else other than NYC, that would be my first choice.
But otherwise, I’m kind of ambivalent with the rest. Most have too many busy details, and the last on, which isn’t unnecessarily busy, just leaves me uninspired. But uninspired is better than annoying, so ultimately I guess that would be my vote.
Not a New Yorker, but the entire country needs to stop with these cheap flat tacky graphic plates. Two colors, stamped numbers and letters in the traditional font made for more distinctive and identifiable lisence plates than any of these cheesy postcard ideas. I cannot imagine even 1% of the population votes on these design choices and I can’t understand how such a teeny tiny segment of the population can dictate that I put a really bad graphic design they thought was “cute” on MY property. Get off my lawn!
This is one of the very few things I say should be left to law enforcement to design. They want simple and legible to do their jobs, I want simple and ledgible to not distract from the styling of my car
In Maryland, we have a few choices, which allows you to color coordinate with your car if you like. There is an agricultural plate that is yellow with a barn on it, but it didn’t fit my needs. On the ’07 Mustang, I have this one. It’s called the Maryland Pride Plate. It is the new basic tag here in Maryland starting in 2016, about three weeks after…..
…I bought my Civic, which came with our last standard plate celebrating the writing of our national anthem. I got one of the very last ones of these issued.
My wife’s Lancer sports the second generation (of 3 now) “Treasure the Chesapeake” plates…
And finally, a first generation “BAY” plate that used to be on my Mustang, but was originally obtained for a teal colored ’97 T-Bird, and transferred to a similarly colored ’97 Grand Prix GTP…
My vote for best looking NY plate though? Go with Number 4 (the torch) or maybe No. 5. I like the font on “NEW YORK” on either one of those.
I remember switching out that ugly War of 1812 License plate off my truck as soon as these MD Pride plates came out. However In the MVA’s haste to get me these tags, they forgot to put them into the system. Though I got a registration card with numbers that matched the ones on the plate, nobody bothered putting them in the system so I was driving an unregistered truck for almost a year before I found out (when I went to renew the tags)
But all in the minor tag trouble was still better then having those ugly war of 1812 plates.
When I took over my folks 2003 Sable when they got a 2018 Escape, because I am a close relative, I not only did not have to MD inspect the car but I got the tags also. All I needed to do was transfer them to me.
These tags are the older MD crest tags that were originally a MD 350th anniversary design that crossed over to the base tag from around 1987.
The one on this Sable is the pre http://www.Maryland.gov version. This tag has been on several cars since 1993 and has been transferred over to the next car each time the current car was replaced
I had the 350th Anniversary plates on my ‘83 T-Bird, and they went away the last time that Maryland replated everyone in the state in 1987 (it hasn’t happened since, BTW for those of you reading from other states). I liked the fact they kept that design for the new standard plates, sans the “350th” script.
I’m actually with you on the Star Spangled Banner (War of 1812) plates. I really don’t like them, but they went so well with my red Civic, I decided to keep them. Since my original “BAY” plates were getting long in the tooth, I reluctantly removed them from my Mustang, knowing those new Maryland Pride plates would look awesome on a black car.
The first time I saw them though, I thought to myself, ‘What? Are we going all California here?’ The format reminds me of the Cali plates.
To me, Maryland’s War of 1812 plate looked like it was designed using 1980s Clip Art images.
It probably was… 😂 LOL
As a native New Yorker (left the place in 1963) I grew up with the orangy (gold?) plates with blue letters, similar to the current plate, but without the black band at top. That’s what I put on my first car, a ’53 Chevy.
New York plates of that era included at least 2 letters with a geographical reference, so you could tell pretty closely what part of the state other New Yorkers came from.
Must say I am not impressed by the Tappan Zee bridge plate. However, I am probably the only one here who, during high school, actually walked to the center of the ORIGINAL Tappan Zee bridge before it was open for business. Cops came out and told us we couldn’t continue all the way across.
Fortunately, those were the days when they didn’t automatically shoot you. Suspicious that you had dynamite in your jeans.
Good to be alive.
The yellow and blue plates (the current ones) have grown on me, didn’t use to like them, now I do. The old blue one was kind of meh and the red, white and blue with the Statue of Liberty (SOL?)was pretty good.
Of the new ones. the fourth with the torch in the middle is probably my favorite if it has to be one of those.
We have a weird (to me) situation here in CO where the regular and optional plates are all stamped metal plates but of you get a personalized one it goes through some kind of digital print method wherein the graphics and letters are all flat, i.e. one plane. Seems fine and “modern” but the issue arises in the winter when they invariably get filthy after driving a few miles in the slush and dirty roads so that they are completely illegible; the regular plates are still legible since there is a relief surface even if it is monochrome dirt.
But whatever, if someone doesn’t like the optional ones don’t get one. If they don’t like the design their state offers, they should/could figure out how to get involved so the next time they have input if it’s that important to them. Or in this case (NY) actually vote for one if an eligible person. At least they give the populace a chance to vote.
As a non-NYer when I see “Excelsior” I only think of Stan Lee.
He did set most of Marvel’s work in NYC, whereas DC Comics primarily uses fictional cities.
That is true! I honestly didn’t know until this article that Exclesior was the state motto.
I thought it was a county. Like Florida plates that say DUDE or DADE or whatever… LOL 😂
I think of wood shavings used for packing material. Probably most readers have no idea of what that stuff is. But from Mirriam-Webster, including the Stan Lee connection:
In 1778 the state of New York adopted a coat of arms incorporating the motto “Excelsior,” Latin for “Higher.” Decades later, the motto sparked the imagination of the young Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and in 1842 he used it as the title of an allegorical poem of doomed idealism. The poem begins, “The shades of night were falling fast, / As through an Alpine village passed / A youth, who bore, ‘mid snow and ice, / A banner with the strange device, / Excelsior!” and follows the young man as he forges upward on his inscrutable mission, ignoring all warnings, before eventually perishing in the snow. It became so popular that, in its wake, the word was adopted as a brand name by numerous businesses; one manufactured wood shavings for use as packing material, and the term is still used for shavings today. But though Longfellow was an eminent linguist, he, like the founders of New York, failed to reflect that the adjective excelsior was perhaps less appropriate to his purpose than the adverb sursum (“upwards”). But the world hasn’t minded–and certainly not the great comic-book artist Stan Lee, who for decades closed his popular magazine columns and speeches with the heartening exclamation.
Thanks for that. I will say that “Excelsior!” Is a much better motto than “Sursum!”
Excelsior – because every car in New York State should commemorate a prewar British motorcycle?
I’m way late to this thread, but just to complete the record:
The late, great Jean Shepherd (you know him as the writer/narrator of the movie A Christmas Story) used to sign off his radio broadcasts with “Excelsior, you fatheads!”
Also, the “New York” typeface for number four looks like someone just got their first PostScript printer in 1987 and is messing with the fonts.
All of these, though, are better than the default Illinois plate. Maybe there’s a method to the madness, though- I bought White Sox plates just so I didn’t have to see these on my car every time I drove it.
Amen. I wasn’t that fond of the previous plate design but at least they were relatively uncluttered, these new ones are a mess. Poor Abe’s head was more intact at Ford’s theatre!
Sox plates are definitely nice looking, but since I don’t watch sport I fear those would be a potential conversation starter I’m unprepared to engage in. My Cougar is eligible for AV plates now and am mighty tempted to pull the trigger come renewal time
“Poor Abe’s head was more intact at Ford’s theatre!”
I’m trying very, very hard not to laugh at my desk, here.
Speaking of Sox plates, I once saw a black sports car of some sort with the Sox plates, but the owner had taped over the Sox logo on the left. I suppose he wanted the black plates to match, but wasn’t much of a baseball fan.
Those AV plates look great. I say as long as you’re eligible and there aren’t any driving/insurance restrictions that would be harmful, go for it!
In reading more about this, It seems you New Yorkers get to pay for the “pleasure” of new tags. That those with the previous tags have to get the new plates rather then keeping the old plates. In Maryland the law was changed to allow the older tag to still be in use when there is a new tag and these older tags transferred to a new car as long as the vehicle was of the same class (i.e. passenger car to passenger car) If you got a different class of vehicle(like a truck) they could not be transferred .There are original 1986-1987 plates still on cars in 2019.
For a few weeks in 2006, the “famous” Mar-Jersey tags were created.For about a month the license plate division was hit with prisoner unrest and plates were made in New Jersey so they have letters and numbers that look like ones on NJ tags. I saw one of those the other day so they are still on the road.
I wish NY would go back to the liberty in the middle plates. I heard it was changed because non NYC New Yorkers complained because they felt there was so much more to New York besides NYC but true be told, to most outside folks NYC is New York (it sure is not Buffalo)
Cool!!!! I’m not the only one who remembers the “Jersey Font” Maryland Plates.
I hated those… no offense to our friends in New Jersey, but that font did NOT belong on a Maryland plate. Like you immediately swapped out your 1812 plates as soon as you could, had I gotten stuck with a pair of those (seems to me the tags were in the “CN” sequence if memory serves i.e. “3CN-A23”), I would’ve dumped them as soon as the Maryland Tag Makers strike was over.
Ok, I’m a bit of a tag geek. 😉
I think the Maryland plates using New Jersey dies are quite neat due to their rariety.
The Maine loon plate is my favorite out of any that I’ve seen. The fact that “Maine” is not centered at the top so that it can accommodate a mountain just adds to it. It really captures the essence of Maine. Sorry but I don’t know how to post pictures.
+1 on the Maine Loon Plates.
I also like the ones featuring the Chickadee….
To post a picture from a desktop/laptop you just leave a comment as usual but at the bottom click the “Choose File” button and then select the image you want from your hard drive.
Sometimes it won’t post and that is usually due to it being too large. An image taken on an iPhone 8 for example is usually too large, in that case I save a copy of it at a lower resolution and that works (and looks just fine on a monitor)
Thanks for the info. I’ll give it a try.
One more try.
Thanks again Jim Klein for sharing your knowledge. It’s a good day when you learn something new!
It’s a good day when I can explain something tech related and it actually works for whoever I explained it to! Thank for posting the plate, that one is pretty.
Simpler is better. No political slogans, no stupid shapes of the State or Province, the less cute pictures the better. If I lived in New York, I would want it straightforward, and easy to read. Oh and while we’re at it, no dealer frames that cover up the name of the state, and no dark coloured cover so you can’t read the plate number from greater than five feet away, or at any angle. Just the plate please.
Except Colorado. But other states should not be allowed to put Colorado in the centre of theirs.
I live in NY. have since well before I could drive. back in the day, NY plates were orange/yellow and blue, (and california plates were black with yellow letters). i disliked the change to the NY white plate. the statue of liberty was too hard to discern at any distance. I do like the new update to the classic orange plate. and the update to the white design that has the state shape as the hyphen in the plate number is OK. There has not been a requirement that we must change over to the newest design. I have a registered,roaded car that still wears white NY plates. and another one that has the updated orange/yellow & and blue version. As things now stand, you can keep your current plate or pay extra to get new replacements with a new number or even more $ to get a new plate with your current number. I tend to choose the cheapest option. if there must be a new design, please let it be one with raised letters and painted information. i have seen many recent NY plates with “melting” graphics. they all look lousy. that wouldn’t happen with a real painted plate.
Plates here used to change every 5 years but in 64 permanent plates were issued and an annual registration fee is just paid every year, the plates stay on the vehicle for life unless they are lost stolen or the vehicle deregistered and revinned and reregistered, personal plates are allowed within certain boundaries and a lot extra is charged for them
It’s a real shame the weak choices they are giving the public. The 1986 to 2000 design, and the 2000 Empire design are vastly more attractive and elegant..
New Yorkers have been able to keep their own plates and transfer them to a new vehicle…The problem is many of the plates are almost 20 years old and have become corroded, mangled or just plain unreadable. With toll readers and cameras becoming ubiquitous NY needs new plates….I’m a New Yorker and I’m in favor of the changeover
I’m suggesting the aim being the new design should at least be as attractive as the earlier designs.
As a “central New Yorker”, they all suck, they really have nothing to do with the state. They reflect that #&$^!#& city (sorry), there is more to the state than that #&$^!#& city (sorry again), that city is ruined the rest of the state, there is so much more to New York, the city is just a small part & most central New York people just soon that place just slip into the ocean/disappear or become its own state. Commo does not represent the state (which is mostly ignored by him & his cohorts) (rant over, sorry) Anyway, you’ve got the “Finger Lakes” region, Watkins Glen, Wine region that runs long the Finger Lakes, Adirondacks, to name a few great places in New York (there is so much more), how about representing some of those places instead
Bob Lonsberry did a good rant about this:
http://lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=4295&go=4
He’s in Rochester, hence the reference to “garbage” plates.
Maybe we all tend to like our own. British Columbia’s plates have been basically unchanged since 1985, with different number/letter sequences introduced every 10 years or so. I like the simplicity, the ‘quiet’ upper & lower case lettering, the use of the word Beautiful as if it were part of the name of the province, the stylized flag in the centre. My only quibble would be the font of the letters/numbers. 🙂
I’m no conspiracy theorist but I’m inclined to believe a recent NY Post artice had the right idea about this “competition.” A whole bunch of mediocre statue of liberty designs will split the votes between them so that the eventual winner will be the plate with the bridge named after the Governor’s dad. I did not think of that myself but once I read the article it seems painfully obvious.
I had the Empire Blue plates when I lived in upstate New York. I had to return them to the NYDMV when I returned to the Deep South. The Empire Blue plates were the best!!
I’m not impressed with any of the new NY candidates.
Found this at a Quaker Steak and Lube in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this spring…
My favorite would be an Indiana plate that honors the great Hoosier writer and storyteller Jean Shepherd. Excelsior!
With the gazillion plates on offer through our BMV it is hard to know for sure, but I believe this one is a gag. There has been a “In God We Trust” plate offered for quite a few years. Some who choose this one are quite religious, others use it as a way to avoid getting the standard license plate because they find it ugly or stupid and it doesn’t cost extra money like all of the plates that promote organizations or colleges.
As a New Yorker I only can see this for what it is, a back door tax.
Enough already fix the roads and stop with the excessive fees on everything.
In my county (Nassau) they raised the fee to satisfy a mortgage on the county books from $68 to $450 over the past 4 years. They also reassessed the county with a mystery formula and my taxes are going up $3200 over the next three years
I could care less what plate we have on the cars, I’m grumpy and fed up with the taxes and fees here.
With all this the roads are still awful!
From the Portrait Gallery/American Arts Museum DC
As an ex New Yorker, the blue on orange wasn’t that jarring because it was the standard plate in the 70s and early 80s before the Statue of Liberty plate. I really like that design and think it should be revived.
I’m also a fan of special edition plates like Oregon’s Salmon, Crater Lake and Oregon Trail plates.
In 1962, VW advertised the Beetle as the 1st civilian car on Antarctica. It was a RHD model that originated in Australia.
Click/enlarge the photo & check out the licence plate —
I’d prefer this one : just imagine the traffic warden trying to give you a parking ticket of if your flashed by a camera for speeding….
Queensland has release these horrid emoji themed plates, so far I’ve not seen one on the road.
Actually only plates over 10 yrs old will be mandated for replacement in NY, as it’s all about the elimination of toll plazas and plate reading cameras working properly supposedly. As NY’ers my wife and I voted for design 5 of the ones presented, we both like Niagra being represented, and Buffalo is really more Mid-western than East Coast, though our favorite areas are the Finger Lakes, where we live, and the Adirondacks. We’ll regret losing our old 2006 blue/white plate, but won’t miss the current Empire Gold design.