I can count on one hand the number of times I've driven
in the last five years.
But I take my driver's license everywhere.
And for many of us, our license is the most important
document we carry every day.
It's not just proof of your identity, but also a symbol
of your home country or state.
So my initial idea for this video was to compare driver's license designs
across all 50 US states but looking deeper into it, while there were a few
standouts, the vast majority of designs ranged from mediocre to plain bad.
And by bad, I don't just mean visually unappealing,
but also difficult to read.
So instead, in this video, I want to unpack why.
We'll look at how designers emphasise the most important details in a layout
to make complex information digestible, and how it can be used to improve
drivers' license design, while taking inspiration from an unexpected place.
So let's dive in.
It's no accident that all these licenses look so similar.
For all US and Canadian licenses, there is a shared design standard,
a template established by the American Association of Motor Vehicle
Administrators, which I'm just going to refer to as AAMVA in this video.
That standard is itself based on a framework set by the
International Organisation for Standardisation or ISO.
These standards are written by committees within these organisations
and, let's be honest, there's a reason why "designed by committee"
isn't exactly a famous compliment.
No one's ever gushed over a design and thought "I bet this
was designed by a committee".
Not a chance!
Now that isn't to say that this approach is invalid, it's just
that they have a different focus.
These committees are mostly focused on document security,
and so are composed of experts that reflect that security focus.
Drivers licenses use security features like holograms, ultraviolet printing,
micro-printing, even RFID chips.
But that isn't the focus of this video.
Instead I'm here to critique the layout from a design perspective.
But before we dig in, just as all these security features are used
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Okay, so let's take a closer look at the AAMVA design standard and what
it says regarding graphic design.
The most relevant section here specifies a three zone layout for
the front of the ID, with each zone containing specific information.
Zone 1 at the top of the document must indicate the type of document
and the authority that issued it.
Zone 2 contains the vast majority of data, including your personal
information, dates of issue and expiry, vehicle restrictions, and other
information such as organ donor status.
Zone 3 must include your portrait and signature.
I don't really have a problem with zone 1 and 3, but my issue with zone
2 is that it clusters various kinds of information together without
setting a specific order, which often leads to an undifferentiated wall of
text that's ugly and hard to read.
Let's imagine you're working behind a busy bar at a live concert.
You're responsible for serving only customers over 21, but you're
getting IDs from all over the US.
In the few seconds someone might flash their card at you, try to pick the date
of birth from these three licenses.
Not as easy as it looks, right?
Combine that with the less than ideal lighting conditions, the
stress of people waiting in line and having to do math in your head,
and the layout of these licenses isn't making your life any easier.
Now, most states have moved to vertical licenses for for people under 21.
We got you!
But beyond age verification, that doesn't really fix the
larger underlying problem.
What's lacking is a clear hierarchy of information, which is
sometimes called visual hierarchy.
You can think of it as similar to journalism's inverted pyramid.
Just as a news story needs to open with the key facts, who, what,
where, when, why, and how, designers use hierarchy of information to
guide the viewer's eye to the most important information first, using
size, placement, colour, white space and other design principles.
So for example, the poster for our concert should draw your eye to
the headlining band first, not the ticket price or the drinks offer.
The challenge for drivers' licenses is twofold.
One is the pocket size of the layout and how much information
we have to cram in there.
And secondly, the varied needs of different audiences
for a single document.
And here's where I think we can learn a thing or two from...
Trading card games have two important audiences, players and collectors.
Each has information that is most important to them.
For example, in the Pokemon trading card game, each card
is also broken down into zones.
The top half of the card provides information about the Pokemon, and
the bottom half gives information on the abilities, attacks and
additional game mechanics for players.
At the very base of the card, down in the margin, we have extra information
including the card's number in that series and the card's rarity indicator,
more important to collectors.
But this principle is hardly unique to Pokemon.
Trading card games across genres, as well as sports trading cards,
use visual hierarchy to make dense information quickly digestible
once you understand the system, especially with complex game
mechanics or player statistics that need to fit into such a tight space.
So how can we take these principles and apply them to a driver's license?
Creating any effective design begins with understanding our audiences.
Luckily, AAMVA have published this design principles and
guidelines document which breaks down the key stakeholders.
Of course we have the Issuing Authority, the government body
responsible for issuing the license.
For them the license is not only important for record-keeping but also
as a projection of the municipal brand.
Then we have first-tier stakeholders including law and
traffic enforcement, medical first responders, airport and transport
security, and car rental agencies.
After that a range of secondary stakeholders might need to verify
your identity for an application, like financial or government institutions,
hospitals, schools, or employers.
Lastly, we have a wide range of commercial interactions where identity
or age verification is needed, ranging from pharmacists to bartenders.
Different data points these various stakeholders might want from your
license can fit into three categories.
First, driving details.
This includes your license number, class, issue and expiry dates,
and any noted restrictions.
Only a few stakeholders on this list actually need these, but in
those cases, it's generally an interaction with some consequences.
So that's fairly important.
Then we have identity basics.
Almost everyone is going to need what you look like, your name and age.
And finally, only some will want the additional details like your
address, height, veteran status etc.
But not necessarily all of them and different ones
depending on the stakeholder.
So this gives us a clear order of importance for us to use as the
basis for our visual hierarchy.
All right, so time to put it into practice.
I'm going to use South Carolina's current license design as the starting
point, and just for kicks it's going to be for none other than Ash
Ketchum, the original Pokémon Master.
Zone 2 on this card is essentially just one difficult to read wall of text.
First, it's not a good idea to set everything in bold.
Bold is supposed to emphasise.
All caps makes it harder to distinguish letter shapes, especially when there's
very little space between lines.
And Arial is not designed for legibility at small sizes.
See how the driving, basic and extra details we previously discussed are
all split up in a jumbled order?
Because it exemplifies a lot of the problems we find
across different designs.
To address these issues let's delete this duplicate date of birth which
only adds to the visual clutter, and this document discriminator number.
This is such a niche administrative data point that it should really be
relegated to the back of the card.
Improving legibility is crucial, so we'll replace the all-cap
format with sentence case and choose appropriate fonts.
Now, since this license will be for the fictional Kanto region from Pokémon,
I've used Shin-Go, a popular sans serif font from Japan used in many Nintendo
games, for some of the key info.
While Intel One Mono, a new font designed specifically for
coders with low vision, will both neatly align the numbers and help
differentiate secondary text.
This should greatly improve readability, making it easier
to process the information.
Now we'll reorganise the layout into three distinct sub-zones.
Driving details will be placed at the top in blue to set them
apart from other information.
The expiry date is a much more valuable piece of information than
the issue date for most stakeholders, so I've literally highlighted the
former and faded back the latter.
Moving down, the identity basics, name and age, align with the eye line of
the portrait, since eyes are a natural focal point when people look at faces.
I've also increased the type size to improve quick identification.
Finally, other identity details will occupy the lower portion of the card.
To reduce visual noise, we'll use a tint of grey instead of black.
By removing excess text labels and retaining only mandatory number
references, which can be deciphered with a key on the reverse of the
card, we'll create more white space, allowing the text to breathe
and improving legibility further.
Special organ donor and veteran indicators will be placed at the base
of the card in blue, balancing the layout and making them easy to find.
Of course, adding security holograms and micro-printing will further
enhance the license's integrity and protect against counterfeiting.
Comparing the before and after, it's clear to see how much
easier the redesigned license is to understand at a glance.
Now this design is just for fun and only a starting point.
Of course, real-world implementations involve numerous
revisions and logistical restrictions and compromises.
But I hope it highlights the value of thinking about how typography and
layout can be used to improve user experience for all stakeholders.
By embracing the concept of hierarchy of information, we can design driver's
licenses that help guide the viewer's eye to the most crucial details.
And ultimately, a well-designed license can make a huge number
of everyday interactions just that little bit smoother.
Big thanks as always to my supporters on Patreon who
make these videos possible.
And if you would like to see me tear into another subpar design, I did
a teardown a few years ago on the In-Flight Safety Card from Ryanair,
which you can give a watch over here.
My name is Linus, thank you for watching and I hope I'll
see you in a future video.