Liking all things cars, I have a decent collection of old license plates, some less old (NY 2001) some very old (CT 1936). Other than the obvious connection to vehicles, I like the typography (interesting letterforms) and the tactile phsicialness (you get an interesting soft edge with embossed characters). You may have noticed recent plates have more detailed 'designs'. The new New York plates for instance, sport an illustration of Niagara Falls and tall buildings, it's very complicated for a 12" x 6" metal sign that is meant only to identify your vehicle. These have become very small billboards advertising the state you already live in. You can imagine the creative meeting for that: client: what we need here is to represent ALL of New York (the previous design was the Statue of Liberty, clearly it did not represent upstate NY), can you do that? Well, they did it alright and it's almost illegible and certainly most distracting. It may be interesting to do an audit of plates, perhaps even a coffee table book? I"m on it.O, my 7 year old, also likes the plates, so we just hung a few on his bedroom wall. He chose the sequence - big-small-big-small - and here's what he says about the plates: "sometimes you notice, or don't notice some of them are the same" and "i like the metalness and what they feel like and I like the colors and letters."
Finally, check out the 1956 CT plate and how they displayed registration for that year. The red metal field with punched out numbers looks amazing against the golden field of the plate. You don't see that interesting color combination driving around more anymore. One last note, O wants to make these hanging combo-plates and sell them, any interested parties?