Controversy hounds the new car plates the Land Transportation Office required not just for new car owners but also for those using the old ones. The latter questioned the need for and cost of replacement. Critics found loopholes in the bidding process and raised the usual issue of kickbacks.
The new plate looks flimsy in thinner metal and some users complained that the paint, with its security watermarks, could easily be scratched. The screws, too, which are meant for permanent attachment, require special tools to apply (which is the point!), so you end up using the ordinary ones anyway.
There was that photo circulating in the social network of vehicles parked at the LTO with their owners using ordinary screws on the new car plate. Another one, posted on Facebook, came from a user showing how the new car plate bent after his vehicle ran through flooded streets.
Others complain that the new design is too simple. It’s not like those colorful plates from different cities that pub owners use to decorate a wall to remind their expat habitués of home. Perhaps, the designer of the old LTO plate was thinking of pub décor when he added a vanishing blue sky background and a photo of the Rizal monument right in the middle of the alpha-numeric combination.
With renewal stickers already crowding the old plate, the blue sky and Rizal monument only add clutter to the design. Visual clutter happens when our eyes cannot find something to focus on, when all the elements in a design compete for our attention.
Designers are conscious of this mental inclination to center on at least one element and make it the focal point. They apply the principle of emphasis and subordination, which means that one element must rule over the others. The designer chooses the most important element and gives it the biggest “visual weight,” which is determined by how effectively it grabs our attention.
Emphasis is usually achieved by sizing. In Medieval art, position and rank of people are suggested by their relative sizes. Christ is simply shown as the biggest figure, followed by the Emperor and his subordinates in diminishing sizes.
Different strategies may be used, such as a change of color, texture, or—in the case of film—movement, in order to increase the gravity of one object. A small red house in vast green meadows automatically draws attention. So would a smooth pebble on a bed of twigs and dry grass. Or a shot of a distant figure walking towards an army frozen in formation.
When no object is emphasized, or when the composition is a level playing field, the eyes are strained as they find nothing to focus on. There’s just too much going on. We are mentally exhausted and thus abandon the picture for something else. This is the reason why we don’t want anything to crowd the view of our historic or sacred buildings. This is the reason why we hate photobombers.
This becomes critical when emphasis is used not simply for aesthetic purposes but for more practical reasons, as in the case of informational graphics. Sometime in the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s, efforts were taken to standardize and internationalize the design of traffic signs, emergency warnings and other public signages.
The sleek, neutral, and highly readable Helvetica was used as the universal font to go with the nearly abstract symbols, such as the restroom male and female icons that we are now accustomed to.
Because these signs address everyone regardless of background, efforts are made to make them legible and understandable, even to the illiterate. As they are made for the pedestrian and commuter, they should be grasped in a glance. This calls for a reductive, universalist aesthetic.
Imagine how many traffic accidents would result if we just leave it to any sign painter to make traffic signs. Those restroom symbols in artsy cafés can be witty, but it’s not funny having to figure out which door to get into when you have to relieve yourself minutes before your flight in a crowded airport.
One may rebel against the loss of cultural identity in a world of standardized signs. The Parisians and the New Yorkers, for instance, fought to retain their distinct Victorian era street signs.
But where safety is priority, form should follow function. Ornamentation in such things as IDs, traffic signs and car plates is a crime. Indeed, in this case, “the best design is the least design.” As to the old LTO car plate, it is unfortunate that we had to remove Rizal from the picture. In this case, he was the photobomber.
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