Why is Canada's northern territory of Nunavut the only place I've heard of that has unusually-shaped license plates? Is it because the rest of us lack roughly-rectangle-shaped indigenous animals?

I'm not sure what, given the leeway, my native New York's plates would be shaped like, anyway--we invented air conditioning and hip hop, but we also invented crack. I guess an A/C unit or a turntable doesn't make such a compelling shape, and a crack vial would be too skinny to fit any letters on.

In other license plate news, I was surprised to learn that the things are still manufactured in prisons, at least they were as of last year in Michigan. The Detroit News has an article up detailing the process at Gus Harrison Correctional Facility, which involves stamping machines, 2,000-pound coils of aluminum and "low-risk inmates." I guess one of the things Michigan license plates will not be shaped like is prison shanks, as this photo proves.

And lastly--yes, I have additional design-y tidbits I can wring out of the subject of metal rectangles with letters stamped into them--I came across an interesting article called "License plate typography" posted in the FontShop blog a few years ago. The piece was written in response to queries coming in on the Type Identification Board as to what font a particular region's license plate uses. The article's unknown author, whose handle is "Unzipper," points out that "They have been specifically made - custom designed as it were - for the plate-making machines that produce the license plates. So they are not based on fonts designed for conventional typesetting."

Unzipper goes on to express passion for license plate type designs:

There's something about their mechanical aesthetic: the characters that are stamped into the metal, resulting in those typical rounded corners; the shapes that are defined by technical requirements rather than by aesthetic considerations. Also the need for differentiation to avoid confusion between similar characters usually leads to somewhat awkward, and in some cases downright bizarre character shapes.

The rest of the lengthy article looks at some font designers who were actually inspired by license plates to create complete designs of their own. Give it a read here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to work on my next piece, about ditch-digging.