Design for the new Slovak license plate created in cooperation with the AFAD
From this year, Slovakia should introduce new state license plates, in the preparation of which the Department of Visual Communication of the AFAD also took part.
The Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic has announced a change to the licence plate from January 2023 resulting from the draft decree, which is currently in the comment process. Several introduced changes concern not only the form of the plates and the way numbers will be created, but also their design itself. According to the new system, the colours for all tables should be unified in black and white and a new font should be used. The new design was created at the AFAD Department of Visual Communication while complying with the basic requirements for plates set by the Road Traffic Act.
"The new font will replace the font used for decades, which no longer meets modern trends and the requirements for legibility of the font, especially in reduced visibility, and for the automated processing of registration numbers from plates for various purposes," explained the Ministry of the Interior.
The QOD typeface was created in the Studio Typo, the author is Simona Császárová, the pedagogical supervision by Michal Tornyai.
The typeface is intended for the new licence plates for cars, which will be used from January 1, 2023. In addition to the font, the layout of the plates was also redesigned in the studio.
QOD font
Its basic visual style is based on sans-serif constructed typefaces. It has a uniform stroke thickness and the characters occupy the same area. An important principle for plates font with registration numbers is that individual characters can be easily distinguishable from each other. That is why the letters have a more angular construction and the numbers are round. In the case of several characters, which could easily be confused in the licence plates with a normal font, their difference is emphasized. For example, B, S and 8, or O, D and 0. The uniqueness and distinctiveness of the characters is also increased by the selective use of serifs (C, G, I, J, L, S, T, 1, 7). The QOD font has 3 cuts (A B C), each one adapted by its drawing to the sizes of the plates on which it is used.