Proving that its content is Lucky Charms and not eggs and sausage, USA Today chooses to feature South Dakota’s biggest non-story of the week, the alleged misrepresentation of Mount Rushmore on our new license plates, on its “State by State” page:
I’m always happy to see the South Dakota press get national ink. But with Dana Ferguson reporting on multiple pieces of important legislation in Pierre, USA Today picks up Patrick Anderson’s story about a couple of South Dakotans who represent our inability to see things from different perspectives?
Drivers are expressing their frustration: They’re too dark. They look dirty. George Washington is facing the wrong way.
…That’s what upset Kay Nelson. The 64-year-old Sioux Falls resident lived in Keystone for years and worked at a hotel with a clear view of the memorial.
Washington is facing the wrong direction, Nelson said.
“Oh, I hate them,” Nelson said of the new license plates. “They’re disgusting” [Patrick Anderson, “Did New License Plates Get Rushmore Wrong?” that Sioux Falls paper, 2016.03.07].
I don’t like the new plates, but “disgusting” is as much of an exaggeration as USA Today‘s “slap in the face”. Anyone who’s walked around Mount Rushmore or just looked at the photo Bob Mercer posts from Gutzon Borglum’s studio can tell you the arrangement of the famous faces on our new license plate is realistic.
Entirely missing from the reported complaints are more rational concerns that the symbols on the new plates are smaller and less legible than in the previous design, as well as the odd impression I get from first glance on the highway—at least as accurate as the idea that Washington is facing too far to his right—that our plates now look more like Iowa’s plates. More like Iowa—now that’s disgusting!
I made a similar observation about the similarity between the new plates and the Iowa plates. This is a serious issue for anyone who drives in Sioux Falls because it is much harder to identify and avoid those Iowa drivers now!
But seriously… did they need to use the same color scheme as Iowa and Minnesota? The old plates are so much more vibrant and visible. The new plates are a massive disappointment.
The truly ugly plates were the ones from the 90’s with Mt Rushmore rendered in an ugly mustard with green numbers and letters overlay making Mt Rushmore unrecognizable even closeup. Interesting to note though, Washington was looking to his right just like on the new plates.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/tagdr/photos/3930/pagesize.jpg
Don C, what is it about our license plate designers that make them return to this “dirty” design every 20 years? Who thinks a dirt-colored background on a license plate is a good idea?
Why not give South Dakota folks many choices for many different looks for many more dollars to be spent on education??
I’m guessing there are souvenir shops in Keystone that sell renditions of Mt Rushmore that look like this:
http://jason-cochran.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/RushmoreBoxers-650×485.jpg
and no one yelps, especially the shopkeeper. I remember the brouhaha caused by the plates that Don mentions, but I think we all somehow survived. I’m sure when I purchase my plates, I’m going to have this never ending urge to wash my car, because they do look dirty. We’ll just have to get used to it, I guess.
Leave iowa out of this discussion!
I think it’s a marketing ploy to get you to buy the more expensive vanity plates because they look better. I do not like the standard plate because of they always look dirty.
http://dor.sd.gov/Motor_Vehicles/License_Plates/
The problem is, Old Guy, that South Dakota doesn’t offer vanity plates like other states do. Others states have a wide variety of options for people to select different plates. Aside from tribal plates though, SD only has the ones with a blank spot on the left where people can put the approved sticker of their choice. Plates that have been used for the governor’s hunt with pheasants on them are much better looking than these gawd awful things, but only the governor’s cronies can get those as a souvenir.
This horrible design could only have been designed at a high price by Lawrence and Schiller. Nobody else is as incompetent as L&S so it must have been them, and they probably got paid $1 million for this design. If the state won’t disclose who f***d up our plates it’s because it’s L&S.
W R Old Guy – you can get the emblem plates for the same price as the regular plates. Bonus – no one knows what county you are from, and you don’t actually have to put an emblem on them.
This is a first world problem. People should just be thankful they can afford to drive a car. Washington is not facing the wrong way – it just portrays the monument from a different angle. Just because they have blue in them doesn’t make them like IA or MN.
The governor’s office must be telling itself that having these plates is better than dying on Mars, because that’s the best thing anybody can say about them.
Come on, Mike! Defend your homeland’s honor! :-)
The good news is that you can save water by not thinking of washing your vehicle as it will look like crap anyway with these redneck hillbilly plates on the front and back. Ever the conservationist, go Daugaard for the chair of the EPA! Now, if he can remove Mike’s castle from the flood plain, he will show his chops.
Nationally,our wingnuts are even wingnuttier than your national wingnuts. State wide,they aren’t no ways near as bad as yours because we have a viable and strong Democrat party. I will gladly trade you worn out,tired old Grassley,Ivana Kuturnutzov and dipshat “Cantaloupe Calves” King for a woman to be named much later.
iowa’s license plates suck,too.
Mike’s castle will be removed from the flood plain when Mike gets the government to buy him out. For now, the government will continue bailing him out – not buying him out. Same for Marion’s Gardens and Dakota Dunes. The gubmint exists to subsidize rich folks who make bad decisions.
Mike, is Grassley vulnerable to challenge based on his advanced age, career politician status, and refusal to work?
I’d like some intrepid reporter to determine whether we can add these plates to the long list of Lawrence & Schiller debacles for which the public paid a great deal of good money – much of which was kicked back to the GOP party in the form of campaign contributions while the Governor’s offspring was employed by L&S. AKA Crony capitalism gone awry.
Apparently I’m in the small minority that actually likes the new plates–I think the color scheme is a little easier on the eyes than the old plates and generally pleasing. But as many others have said, harder to imagine an issue that is smaller potatoes than this one.
I am, however, enjoying the discussion as an extended metaphor for our state’s general inability to see anything from more than one perspective. The idea that something might look a little different depending on which angle it’s viewed from…this revelation is a bridge too far for many of our fine citizens.
Ror- As of October 1, the Iowa Secretary of State’s office reports that Democrats retain a voter registration advantage over Republicans of 105,447. The latest Iowa Poll shows his support with the Republican base is stronger than ever at 80 percent. What has to be troubling is that his approval among independents has dropped 11 points to 55% and dropped 24 points for Democrats leaving him at 42 percent approval. Those last two figures are key. While a majority of independents still narrowly approve of Senator Grassley, his approval among Democrats once net positive is now negative.
That is the kind of statistical landscape that makes people in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee stop thinking about the Grassley seat as permanently ungettable and perk up and go, “with the right candidate, this is in play.”
From the Des Moines Register. Grassley is in his 80s. Past time to go.
they are ugly! and the USA Today picks this story? no wonder their readership is declining.
@Rohrschach: Not sure if L&S had anything to do with it. The Argus story says the licenses were a “result of a collaborative effort between the governor’s office, the Department of Tourism, the Department of Revenue and South Dakota law enforcement, said Jonathan Harms, a spokesman for the Revenue Department.”
And the always secretive State government won’t even reveal the final designer’s identity
“So who designed Rushmore’s image? ‘That’s not something I’m willing to talk about,’ Harms said.”
Evidently the State has a “$16.7 million contract with California-based manufacturer Intellectual Technology Inc. to produce the plates for the next five years. The firm has an in-house graphic design team, according to the 249-page contract, and was willing to work with state representatives on the final product.”
http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2016/03/07/did-new-license-plates-get-rushmore-wrong/81447072/
Huh? New plates for the next five years? I thought new plates were only issued every 10 years or so to save on costs and materials.
Dirty license plates? Maybe it is representative of the dirty politics in our state.
I got a better look at some personalized plates this morning in RC. They look like North Dakota plates until you get close enough to see “South Dakota”.
I read that article too, Coyote. It does not say that the California company designed the plate. The fact the state won’t say who designed it leads me to believe it was L&S – the governor’s favorite ad agency which employs his child and donates to the GOP party. The designer of the plate should not be some state secret. Nor should it be a secret how much the designer got paid.
Regardless of other objections, there’s one thing about the new plates that’s better than the previous ones: We no longer have BRIGHT RED writing over an ELECTRIC BLUE background. Anybody with technical writing or design experience (or an ounce of common sense) could tell you that red-on-green and red-on-blue are incredibly difficult to read. Literally difficult, stemming from how your eyes process colors. So at least that part has improved.
However, I think there’s still a readability problem with them, and also why pick exactly the same color scheme as Iowa?
http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/south-dakota/some-south-dakotans-not-happy-with-new-license-plate-design/article_34093652-062f-5fc0-8d8f-ab9d141d9752.html
SCJ and KMIT both claim a California co has design contract. Both used basically the same AP article.
My conspiracy theory had tells me the Highway Patrol approved the design so they could pull more people over for having a “dirty license plate”…
I got the “organizational plate” for free; no county ID, and it looks a LOT better.
I don’t see the Iowa plate resemblance, though; blue sky & brown blob with blue letters (South Dakota) vs blue sky & white/gray blob with black letters (Iowa).
I do notice it’s harder to read the County ID plates from a distance than the old ones…
This might be “small potatoes” but $16.7 million in taxpayer funds is really no laughing matter. Why spend that much on a redesign? Why not just issue the same design again if plates are reaching their useful life end?
Here’s what I think happened. South Dakota signed the contract with the California company with the expectation that the California company would utilize Lawrence & Schiller as a subcontractor for the design and pay Lawrence & Schiller way too much. Essentially laundered a payment to L&S through the California company.
Maybe, it is time to put the Crazy Horse Memorial on our license plates, instead…. No, I am serious.
As far as USA Today is concerned. Well, many years ago a USD political science professor said it best to me and my fellow classmates, when he referred to the USA Today as the “‘Weekly Reader’ for adults”…..;-)
Why on earth would the state not be willing to say who designed the plate? Why would a spokesman make such a silly statement, knowing that such reticence will only fuel bloggers and conspiracy theorists? What reason could he have for not revealing who did work for the state?
Mr. Rorschach, I wish I could get those pheasant plates like you have but I don’t understand all the uproaring over meaninglessness.
Whiners.
Mr. H. Maybe they won’t say because it was an E-B5 program that designed these things. Or maybe they won’t say because there were many millions spent on artistry workers to make clay models.
good new-oahe is 100% full. march 9. when the spring rains come (in the hills most precip is rain, not sno) mike will be calling contractors from around the state, and boy and girl scouts out to sand bag his place, so their spines will deteriorate, but not his!! for free!
I like the plates, less to find unappealing. didn’t gant get all twisted up with some publisher or designer and something didn’t get produced for public consumption on time. the state regulates vehicles so plate contracts is necessary, considering what regulation must bring in. even for a little state, it must be hundreds of billion.00s.
A few years ago, my son and I messed with license plate designs. We checked our design ideas by backing up until we could not read them. Take a look at our ideas. http://dakotatoday.typepad.com/dakotatoday/2005/07/new_south_dakot.html