Pop quiz: What's the most important feature of a license plate, by far? 1) ṚЁÄḊÄḄЇḶЇṪŸ 2) ɌɆȺĐȺɃƗŁƗŦɎ 3) READABILITY Hmm, kind of hard to read options 1 and

Pop quiz: What's the most important feature of a license plate, by far? 1) ṚЁÄḊÄḄЇḶЇṪŸ 2) ɌɆȺĐȺɃƗŁƗŦɎ 3) READABILITY Hmm, kind of hard to read options 1 and 2 because there are a bunch of distracting elements over or near the text, huh? As far as readability goes, these designs are sore on the eyes. The backgrounds need to be significantly toned down to keep from overwhelming the tag numbers. Right now, for instance, Abraham Lincoln's giant head is competing with the tag number for my attention, and if the plate is on a vehicle that's fleeing the scene of a crime, that's not going to help me discern the most important information on the plate. I do, however, like the idea of trying to come up with some design uniformity across all 50 states (e.g. using the same fonts for the same elements, and using the same layout). I know it's probably too much to ask to have boring plain text on a boring plain, high-contrast background -- which would be the easiest to read. But there are some easy ways to tone down the busy-ness. Two suggestions immediately come to mind: Make the tags letters/numbers completely opaque, rather than translucent. And try to keep the most detailed portions of the background images away from the center (as with the Arizona plate).