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LICENSE PLATE FONTS OF NORTH AMERICA Refrigerator Deluxe | 2009, Mark Simonson, commercial.
Font set contains: Four weights including lowercase — Light, Regular (shown above), Bold, and Heavy — each with the same large complement of stylistic alternates. |
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About this typeface: One of today’s most accomplished and well-known independent type designers, Mark Simonson’s skills encompass a versatile repertoire from serif text typefaces, to elegant scripts and titling fonts, to industrial-strength sans serifs like Refrigerator Deluxe here. In his release notes for the font (as well as its predecessor, Refrigerator), Simonson mentions common everyday geometrically designed lettering styles from the mid-20th century as the influences behind the font’s construction. One of those was the mechanically derived letterforms seen on appliances of the day, suggesting the idea for the font’s name. Though not designed with license plates in mind, the underlying design “skeleton” for Refrigerator Deluxe — monoweight character strokes shaped into condensed rectangles connected by almost perfect 90-degree arcs — is basically identical to how some American license plate fonts that utilize squarish corners have also been fashioned. The end result is very similar to a few states’ fonts that utilize rounded corners on the same squarish underlying framework. Closest resemblance to North Carolina’s font. Although Refrigerator Deluxe isn’t quite as condensed, its letterforms (taking into account the stylistic alternates available for capital S and numeral 7) are otherwise very close in form to North Carolina’s. The exceptions are I, Q, M, and W, which are different due to the requirement on license plates either to fit the monospaced character grid or ensure legibility at a distance by preventing any possible confusion with similar characters. On Refrigerator Deluxe, the serifs on capital I (usually present on auto plates to prevent confusion with numeral 1) have been done without. The tail on Q in Refrigerator Deluxe hangs down from the baseline rather than crossing into the main bowl (on embossed fonts, the tail must remain above the baseline within the steel character matrix). And M and W are much wider in Refrigerator Deluxe (in license plate fonts they must be cramped to fit the monospaced grid). Refrigerator Deluxe is also generally similar to Colorado’s font which is based on the same overall design template. However, there are enough differences that the resemblance begins to break down when observed more than cursorily. In Colorado’s font the numeral zero is oval-shaped to distinguish it from capital O. B, D, and capital I have added serifs for ease in recognition vs. 8, capital O, and numeral 1. Letter Q’s tail crosses inside the bowl. And M and W are scrunched as commonly done to keep them monospaced. Extra versatility with 4 different weights. Extending its usefulness for mainstream graphic design use, Refrigerator comes in 4 weights including a lowercase and many stylistic alternates. See Mark Simonson’s page about Refrigerator Deluxe on his personal site for more background information. |
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License
Plate Fonts of the Western World
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