An unexpected design subject: license plates

You might not have paid attention but we have been having these absolutely ridiculous discussions in Belgium on migrating the Belgian white-plate-red-digits license plate  towards the European format (7 digits, area for European flag and country code, black digits on a white background). And instead of just deciding to change, we are now fighting over which colours to use and it has become a language issue ...

Anyway.

How nice it must be to be able to design your own license plate (and I'm not talking vanity plates here) or have them designed by real designers.

Check out these cool designs for numberplates in the US.  Some of them are really over the top and some, like this one, are really quite cool. For the fans: an overview of designs going way back to 1969, when cars still looked great and so, apparently, did license plates.

Or at least they looked colourful.