Illinois Has the Single Worst License Plate in the Country
SO WE DESIGNED 8 BETTER OPTIONS IN 8 HOURS
Ivor Andrew is a B2B marketing agency in Chicago’s west suburbs. For you geography buffs, this means we’re in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln. Our beloved flyover state, by the way, has a brand new license plate. Cool!
And it’s…uh…
It’s not good. Take a look.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ILLINOIS PLATE?
Abraham Lincoln’s half-cropped face.
Utterly brutal typography. It’s stretched not only horizontally on the state title, but vertically on “LAND OF LINCOLN.” And if it wasn’t bad enough type already, they used it as small caps, which distorts it even further.
Most cars have license plate frames, and those frames completely hide the “ILLINOIS” section. Not ideal, but not a game-breaker.
Thanks to Lincoln’s dark, half-cropped face, reading the first letter of an Illinois license plate is often a guessing game. Legibility seems rather important when it comes to license plates, no?
Finally, there are skylines from Springfield AND Chicago in the background. Gotta make everyone happy!
Every part of the Illinois license plate reeks of design-by-committee. There were too many cooks in the kitchen who added too many ingredients, and the result is an ugly, illegible mess. It’s currently the worst license plate in America (with apologies to Ohio’s word cloud and Maryland’s state flag monstrosity).
WE CAN FIX THIS.
Our Creative Director decided that the Ivor Andrew design team could come up with 8 better options in 8 hours. Here they are. But first…
TO THE TEAM WHO APPROVED THE HALF LINCOLN ILLINOIS PLATE:
You tried your best, but the Half Lincoln plate is broken. Truly.
Please take one of these 8 options. We beg of you.
1. “Centennial Flag” by Doug Carter
2. “Meadow” by Doug Carter
3. “Yellow & Blue” by Doug Carter
4. “Tree of Life” by Doug Carter
5. “Other Half of Lincoln” by Alex Laniosz
6. “Misty Sunrise Over a Field of Wheat on a Lazy Sunday Morning with Coffee in Hand and a Good Book on Your Lap and a Warm Breeze Kissing Your Face” by Alex Laniosz
7. “Blue” by Rafal Zielinski
8. “Barn” by Rafal Zielinski
