Let’s fix South Carolina’s ugly license plates
Can we fix South Carolina's ugly, standardized boring specialty license plates?
I know this is a deeply serious matter of public importance 😂, but hear me out.
South Carolina has a ton of specialty license plates, but almost all of them are forced into the same generic template: white background, red-and-blue stripe across the top, organization name in a banner, and "South Carolina" in boring Times New Roman font in another banner.
The result is that plates representing completely different organizations, universities, causes, and communities all look basically the same. And they are ugly.
I think we should change that.
South Carolina law requires SCDMV to develop a "basic plate design" for special plates, and SCDMV's current requirements put organizations into the standardized template. So this is a policy choice that can be changed.
The important question is: does standardization for law enforcement actually require every plate to have the same visual design? No! Look at Georgia and North Carolina.
Let professional designers and the sponsoring organizations determine the actual visual design. That would mean a USC plate could look like USC. A conservation plate could actually look like a conservation plate. A military plate could have a distinctive military design. A charitable organization could have an attractive plate that actually represents what it does.
They would still be unmistakably South Carolina plates and meet all the technical requirements.
Do you agree?
If enough people are interested, we could put together a specific proposal for SCDMV and the Legislature rather than just complaining about plates on Reddit.