Matriculas
Bicycle Registration Plates
While this convention only usually happens in nations with authoritarian control over its citizens (such as Francoist Spain), I really like the idea of bicycles having registration plates. It's not a practical idea, nor is it democratic, but since this project goes nowhere, I think I can afford to be a little authoritarian sometimes.
Over the last few years, I've been developing designs for bike registration plates to use on my own bikes in Canada and Spain. With each iteration, I refined the design and made it more practical, as well as legible.
Type 1 (original Idea)
When developing the idea as I had it in my mind (surprisingly, things always look the best there) I started with the most basic layout of any European standard two-level vehicle registration plate. I encountered a rather disappointing problem: I tried to use DIN Alternate for the typeface, however I was unable to due to the width constraints. I had to make sure that the widest series would be able to fit (MA-W 444 WW). I was forced to use DIN Condensed. One of the other core ideas behind these plates are that I could try to conserve the use of the provincial identifier. After 2000, Spanish licence plates use a format of 1234-ABC, with no way to identify which province the car is registered in. Before this change the format was [code] 1234 AB.
To make the plate more human-friendly in its design, I added a light silhouette of the Spanish mainland.
Type 2
After rejecting the use of DIN Condensed, I switched to Google's Roboto. It's a very geometric font, but has more organic curves. In addition, I added a sidebar that had the ISO code of Spain, the month and year the bike was registered, and the birthday of the user.
This plate was actually in use and after a while I thought it looked very unprofessional. I love Roboto, but it simply doesn't work in the way I've used it.
Type 2.1: A similar design, still using DIN Condensed.
Type 3
While developing plates for another minor project, I tried using the design I created there for this project. I tried using the old style of having a dark background but modernizing it.
It turned out to be overly spacious and didn't work out proportionally. It looked great at a small scale, but at the size of an iPhone, not as much. However, this concept was redeveloped and transformed into a cleaner variant (see Iteration 4).
For this iteration, I used Andreas Larsen's Gidole. It's a great typeface, and it wasn't its fault for the iteration failing.
This was also used as the first iteration for Canadian plates.
Type 4
This one is similar stylistically similar to Iteration 2 but has a few noticeable changes.
First of all, there's a new typeface in use: Miso. It's a geometric, almost-monospace, DIN-style, rounded font that worked magically for this purpose.
The problem here became apparent after realizing the the proportions that work the best are ones where the length is greater than the height.
This iteration was also used for Canada's plates.
Type 5
This iteration is simple. Reconsidered proportions, reorganization of elements.
This iteration was also used for Canada's plates.
Type 6c (Canada)
This was a variant that was never used with Spanish plates. I tried experimenting with a typeface called Bebas Neue. It worked alright, but not very appealing.
Type 6e (España)
After a long while, I reviewed the style I had for last 3 iterations and thought about imitating the old style of Spanish licence plates, back when they didn't have the European sticker on the side. It's cleaner, easier on the eyes and looks more official. I added a Spanish flag to the frame just as a national touch.
BONUS: bicycle trailer plate (remolque)
Type 7e (Canada)
After not working on this project for a long time, I decided to come back to it. I was not fully satisfied with Canada's bicycle plates.
Taking inspiration from Canada Federal Identity Program (FIP) that was developed in 1970, I designed a plate reflecting the style. I condensed the famous Canada wordmark, as I have seen motorcycle plates do in Ontario and other regions.
I used DIN Condensed as the plate typeface because I've seen it used in Canadian overseas military plates. I added the year of issue, a flag, and the title below the number stating the vehicle type in both English and French.
In terms of plate combinations, I researched into the matter and found out that another way of doing plate combinations is allowing the position of numerals and characters to change (versus the classic x letters times y numbers = xy combinations). This new way allows for so many more combinations to exist. The format I decided to use was one where the first two digits don't change and the following four characters can all be either letters or digits (for a starting format, I chose 00 AA00). Bicycles are only going to become popular that having many combinations available is key to this design.
These plates would be issued as a national registration, without any provincial identifier. This is done for practical reasons, as well as to unite Canadians through cycling.
Type 7e (España)
For the seventh iteration of the Spanish bicycle plates, I managed to find the proper typeface that is used on actual Spanish licence plates. It’s based on DIN and doesn’t really have a name, so I just call it TPM (Tipografía de placas de matrículas).
After experimenting with the TPM font, I encounterd the fact that in 1999 it was developed in three height formats: 77, 60, and 30 mm. I recognized the fact that my previously-used Miso looked very much like the 30 mm version of the TPM.
The three types of TPM fonts (1999). The 77 mm one was actually developed in 1986.
I first converted Type 6e to use the 77 mm TPM font. I concluded that is was not going to work as the small provincial code looked awkward. It would have to be all the same. Also, it was at this point I decided to add the word "BICICLETA" to the plate to designate it's purpose, something that was absent since Type 4 with the letter 'B'. I called this version Type 6.1e.
When developing Type 7e using the 77 mm TPM font, I added what I never had before: an official-dimension blue European band, courtesy of a special glyph in the font.
However I still wasn't fully satisfied with the way the European band was sized. Speaking in absolute terms, it was still relatively small, only 0.6 inches. So I tried to increase as much as I could it without changing the plate width. This is where I tried returning back to the 1999-lookalike font, Miso.
Ultimately, I developed three types of Type 7e plates: 7e, 7.1e, and 7.2e. All of them are four by three inches except for Type 7.1e, which is four by two and three quarters inches.
