License Plate Fonts of the United States, Canada, and Mexico

Background and History

Differences in design between North American and European fonts. License plate fonts used in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico tend to be narrower with a more tallish appearance than those in Europe. The narrowness in width is a necessity brought on by the standardized license plate size of 12x6” (305 mm by 152 mm) in North America. It’s more boxy (taller in proportion) than the horizontally elongated 20.5x4.5” standard used in most of Europe (520 mm by about 110 to 120 mm, usually about 112 mm). This leaves less horizontal room for characters to fit. Consequently, more condensed characters to make the best use of the available space have been the inevitable result.

Oval and/or hand-wrought shapes vs. more constructivist European forms. North Amercian fonts tend to share similar character designs across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, due to commonality in equipment suppliers and/or plate manufacturers. The look of North American license plate fonts is often more oval (as opposed to circular) for curved character strokes and less squarish in overall letterform construction than that of Europe. Although this is not an invariable rule, even where the fonts may be more squarish in appearance, they may have somewhat more organic, hand-wrought shapes compared to the more strongly geometric or constructivist look of European characters.

One common design characteristic of North American fonts used for license plates that tends to earmark them as such is monospaced font design. This mean all characters share a common character width, or perhaps in a very few cases at least a narrow range of widths. (European number plate fonts are often monospaced or near-monospaced. However, the greater width of European plates makes it easier to accommodate proportionally spaced fonts, and some countries have done so with their font designs.) This is an accommodation to the need for a predictable amount of space that a license plate number will take up on the plate, and it gives fonts the more “regimented” look that tends to telegraph an “official” feel. Also for this same reason, the M and W characters, which are normally the widest characters in a normal font, look very crunched in order to fit the common monospaced width shared by all characters in a license plate font.

Lack of centralized government control over font design, and commercial influences. Unlike much of Europe, governments in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico have not legislated any particular fonts for use on tags. Further, in the U.S. and Canada, since the individual states rather than the federal government determine how license plates look, varying fonts around a similar overall theme, as well as a polyglot of graphics, have resulted. (Mexico’s state plates all used to share a common design determined by the federal government until 1998, after which time the states have taken over that function.)

Prison industries in the U.S. Another large factor shaping how license plate fonts look in the U.S. is the fact that historically license plate production has been a prison/ correctional industry. (Most U.S. plates are still produced in prisons.) In this area, the J.R. Wald Company of Pennsylvania has had a large impact on font or embossed “die” use, since they established themselves early in the 20th century as the major vendor and consultant to prison industries in the area of license plate manufacturing equipment and production systems, a strong influence that continues to this day. (The Pannier corporation is the other major U.S. supplier of embossing dies for license plates, although they are not involved with plate production itself.)

Largest commercial producers. Aside from J.R. Wald’s role in the prison system, commercially only a few companies produce license plates for U.S. states. Waldale of Nova Scotia is the largest company, serving both Canada and the U.S., and Irwin-Hodson of Oregon has been the primary independent U.S.-based producer in recent years. A spate of mergers has been occurring among license plate manufacturers worldwide in the last decade, though, and there are rumors that Waldale and Irwin-Hodson may have merged (see comments near bottom of linked page for Oregon’s 2008 and 2009 plate issues), however we have not been able to confirm this. If you have information on this, let us know.

For an interesting historical discussion of how license plate manufacturing has evolved in the U.S. over the years, see License Plate Manufacture in the USA. (One interesting tidbit is that as of the article’s publication date of 2004, plates were still manufactured in prisons by 45 of the 50 states.)

Collectors’ examples. Thanks to the following sites on whose voluminous plate photos we relied for most of our research on North American license plates.

License Plates of North America, 1969–Present. Well-organized, well-written, concise, yet comprehensive chronological listing of each new general passenger plate issue for every state and territory of Canada, Mexico, and the United States since 1969. Good, nice-size photos of each plate issue, with accompanying commentary and pertinent tidbits of info about plate manufacturing details, embossing die changes, personal and/or public reactions to plate designs, legibility, etc.
Plate Shack. Largest publicly accessible repository of American — and perhaps Canadian — license plate photos on the planet, plus Mexico, Australia, and quite a few from other countries all over the world as well. Coverage is focused most comprehensively on the United States first, Canada second, and then Mexico and Australia third. The Y2K Page adds many more plate samples beyond the main base plate listings, including the latest state/ territory plate design changes and other plate samples that might be of interest. For the United States, these are usually up-to-date within about the last year for most of the 50 states.

North American License Plate Fonts

The “one-liner” font samples below intentionally show just key uppercase font characters and numerals, since those are the typical characters of interest with license plates. Note that the commercial replicas of license plate fonts shown here may not be strictly monospaced. I.e., character widths may be individually tailored for better letterfit more suited to general graphic design use. Click font name link or image for a full character showing, additional information, and download links.

Legend: Font Name | Year Designed, Designer, Permitted Use. Additional notes follow if applicable.

First USA | Mid-1990s, Brand Design Co./House Industries, discontinued, included for historical interest.

Garage Gothic | 1992, Tobias Frere-Jones, commercial. Three weights, Bold shown. Based on parking garage ticket lettering but very reminiscent of license plate characters.

Keystone State | 1999, Anuthin Wongsunkakon, commercial. One of two fonts in this list based on Pennsylvania’s license plate font (see also “Pennsylvania” a littler further below). Keystone State “Relative” (shown immediately below) is a cleaned-up version of the typeface, while the original “Native” style is rougher and more idiosyncratic to realistically replicate the actual plate lettering.

License Plate | 2005, Dave Hansen, free. Replica of Washington state’s font, and also similar to font designs of other U.S. states and Canadian provinces that exhibit more “boxy” curves as opposed to oval-shaped ones.

Misproject | 2001, Eduardo Recife, free. Grunge font made from scans of an assortment of license plate characters.

Motorway | 2004, Vic Fieger, free. Semi-grunge font with built-in relief shadow to simulate embossing.

Penitentiary Gothic | 2003, Andrew Leman and Richard Lucas, commercial. Replica of California’s font. Five styles including three-dimensional embossing effects. Plain “Fill” weight shown here (embossing effects reproduce well only at larger sizes).

Pennsylvania | 2000, Christian Schwartz, commercial. Based on Pennsylvania’s license plate font. Four weights including lowercase plus corresponding small-caps styles, and suitable for use in both text and display. Regular weight shown.

Plate.fsh | 1999, John Arnstrom (aka Zacadeb), free. For use with the Need for Speed: High Stakes auto racing video game for Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Windows.

No alphabet sample available. Click font name above for further explanation and link to screenshot of font depiction within the game environment.

SAA Series “A” | 1980, designer unknown, digitized by URW staff, commercial. Very similar in design to the various fonts based on oval-shaped curves used by many U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Seven weights, “Series A” shown.

SNV Extra Condensed | 1972, designed by Verein Schweizer Straßenfachmänner foundry, distributed by URW, commercial. Similar to fonts of U.S. states that use straight strokes for the left and right sides of characters that would otherwise be curved, as used by various U.S. and Canadian states. Three weights, Extra Condensed shown.

Zurich Extra Condensed | 1990, Bitstream staff, commercial. A slightly modified clone of Adrian Frutiger's well-known Univers from 1956, utilized by 3M corporation as the basis for the default fonts for its digital license plate system sold to U.S. prisons. Two weights as used by 3M, Extra Condensed shown here.

Next: Flat Digital Plates in the U.S. — End of the Embossed Era? (North America, cont.)

Previous: License Plate Fonts of the Western World — Intro