There are roughly 231 million licensed motor vehicles in the United States, and every one of them has at least one -- sometimes two -- pieces of "automotive jewelry."

	Prisoners really do make plates    License-plate manufacturing and jails have been linked for so long that many people might think it's just an old joke.     Or, as comedian Jeff Foxworthy puts it, "You might be a redneck if you consider your license plate personalized because your dad made it in prison."     But license plates are still primarily made by state prisoners and continue to be a mainstay of prison industries throughout the nation. At last count, 39 of the 50 states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, New York and Maryland, use prisoners to manufacture their vehicle plates.     The rest, according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, primarily use one of two private companies -- Waldale Manufacturing of Nova Scotia or Irwin Hodson Co. of Portland, Ore. Two states -- Wyoming and Kansas -- use state factories that employ mentally and physically disabled residents. But even the prison industries rely more on outside contractors than they used to, particularly when they design specialty or vanity plates. In those cases, many state prison systems contract with 3M for software that allows plates to be designed by computer before they are stamped out. -- Mark Roth

That's what one state official calls the standard 6-by-12-inch license plate. With hundreds of millions of these rectangles traveling our highways and byways each day, the license plate can arguably be called America's most common form of public art.

In recent years, new computer software and printing technology have allowed states to create a blizzard of multicolored, scenic plates, and many seem to have used the entire rainbow spectrum for their designs.

Given the explosion of new plate images, it seemed like a good time to gather together a group of experts to answer a simple question: What are America's prettiest and ugliest standard license plates?

The five panelists assembled by the Post-Gazette recently were graphic designers Larkin Werner and Brett Yasko; Carnegie Museum of Art curator Elizabeth Thomas; artist and teacher Jo-Anne Bates; and photographer and artist Chuck Biddle.

After viewing full-size color printouts of each state's plate posted on the wall at Werner's studio, the panelists were asked to vote for the five best and five worst plates in America.

Drum roll ...

Colorado's Rocky Mountain design of white peaks against a green background was judged the best overall plate.

A close second went to Alaska's traditional plate, a simple navy on gold design with the state's flag in the middle and its motto, "The Last Frontier," nestled underneath. The other three spots went to Wyoming, with its traditional bucking bronco image; Vermont, a classic white-on-green design; and Utah's centennial plate, featuring the Delicate Arch sandstone formation, the only multicolored design to make the top five.

The group had less of a struggle picking the five worst plates.

They were caustically unanimous in choosing Kentucky's "Mr. Smiley Face" design, with a grinning cartoon sun in the middle and the motto "It's That Friendly," as the worst plate in America. They would get little argument from the people of Kentucky, who were so disgusted by the design introduced by former Gov. Paul Patton that they demanded and got a new standard plate, which is being issued this month.

The remaining worst four, in no particular order, are: Pennsylvania, which the group felt made vanilla look daring; Georgia, a misty gray plate with a stylized peach in the center and a prominent display of the state's Web address; Illinois, whose letters and numbers routinely cover up a faint blue rendition of Abe Lincoln's face; and Texas; which the panel felt was the prime example of a plate designed by a committee, featuring the space shuttle, a cowboy, tumbleweed, oil derricks and more.

In general, the Post-Gazette panelists favored simplicity of design, sharp contrasts, bold colors and a lack of pretense.

Some of them admitted that a lot of drivers would probably disagree with them and pick the "pretty" scenic plates that have come to dominate many states' designs, from Arizona's saguaro cactus and North Dakota's buffalo to South Carolina's palmetto tree and Indiana's misty green farm field.

But Yasko, who runs his own design studio in the Strip District, said that for him, "less is more. The worst thing that ever happened [to license plates] was discovering this new technology that allows them to put whatever image they want on the plate."

Werner, whose Wall to Wall Studios is also in the Strip, agreed. He tended to favor even simpler plates -- Michigan and Delaware, for instance -- than his colleagues did.

Werner, whose father came up with the former state tourism slogan, "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania," believes that many states' fascination with using gradations or "fades" of color makes the plates hard to read, which defeats the primary purpose of the plate.

The more classic designs, on the other hand, evoke "a time when cars were cool," said Thomas, who is associate curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Bates, an artist and retired teacher at the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, was the most inclined to pick multicolored plates. But even then, she wanted them to evoke the state with their images, and that's one reason her top choice, Utah, made it into the final five. The scene on the plate works, she said, because "if you've ever been to Utah, that's exactly what it is."

Little did she know that politics played a part in the decision, too. David Swan, deputy director of the Utah Division of Motor Vehicles, said that because Utah's previous plate featured a skier from the slopes of northern Utah, officials felt the next plate should show a scene from the southern end of the state.

Biddle, a photographer and artist who works at Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square, agreed that the symbols in any plate need to tell observers something about the state. It's one reason the Wyoming plate was his favorite.

Although some purists have decried Wyoming's decision to add more colors and put an image of the Devil's Tower monument on the plate as well, the bucking bronco is still the main graphic element.

Jim O'Connor, support services administrator for the Wyoming Department of Transportation, said the bronco picture goes back to the Depression, when the legislature decided "they liked the horse so danged well that in 1936, they just decided to legislate it" and require it always to be a part of the Wyoming plate.

The lack of any such evocative image in the current Pennsylvania plate is one reason why Biddle, and most of the other panelists, dislike it so much.

"Any plate that's not going to tell you something about the state is suspect," Biddle said, and, besides the fact that the current plate is almost devoid of color, "Pennsylvania's keystone [in the middle] is so tiny it doesn't make any sense" as an image for the state.

In fact, you have to go back 35 years to find a Pennsylvania plate that pleased the judging panel. They all liked the versions that existed from 1950 to 1970, with the shape of the state, in dark blue or yellow, taking up most of its surface. "Is there any way we can lobby to get that back?" Yasko asked.

Phil VanBriggle, manager of the vehicle registration division for Pennsylvania, said he was dismayed by the panel's harsh opinion of the existing plate, although he acknowledged that the newest version of it, with more solid blue and yellow strips, was designed to go back to the plate's traditional colors.

"I'm somewhat saddened we fell in the bottom five," VanBriggle said. "One of the things we need to be cognizant of with a license plate is to make it identifiable for law enforcement personnel."

Some of the older plates, particularly those with yellow letters and numbers on a blue background, were hard for police to read, he said, and that factored into the 1999 decision to create a plate with a light background and dark alphanumerics.

Poor legibility is also why the state stopped issuing its Flagship Niagara specialty plate several years ago, and why VanBriggle is trying to standardize the more than 100 specialty plates for nonprofit organizations by moving their logos into the lower left corner and sticking with traditional state colors.

The Post-Gazette panelists said they are every bit as interested in legibility as VanBriggle is, but there are ways to make plates highly readable and not sacrifice good design in the process.

And the local panel wasn't nearly as derisive toward the Pennsylvania plate as some are.

William Morgan, a Rhode Island author and architectural historian who's writing a book on license plate design, said that he once criticized the Connecticut plate for looking as if it had been dipped in Ty-D-Bol toilet cleaner, "but I'd have to say Pennsylvania's looks like it was also dipped in the urine in the bowl."

Morgan shared the local group's desire for simplicity, although some of his specific choices would have been different.

For instance, just as the Carnegie's Thomas did, Morgan put the new Rhode Island plate in his top five. The plate, which features a grayish-blue stylized ocean wave and a tiny anchor in one corner, is one of the few new plates crafted by a graphic artist.

Many other state plates are designed by companies that make license plate sheeting, particularly the industry leader, 3M.

For his worst plate, Morgan cited Nebraska.

What is intended to be an idyllic sunset scene with birds flying overhead strikes him instead as looking like "a nuclear bomb was dropped on the state and the [birds] are fleeing. I mean, it's atrocious."

One general problem many states experience, Morgan said, is that "a license plate is only 6 by 12 inches ... and when many new designs are presented at press conferences, they're put up on a big video screen, but you have to look at what they will appear as in the smaller frame of the plate."

Western Pennsylvania's neighbors didn't fare too well with the Post-Gazette panel, either.

Ohio's latest plate also features a sun in the center, sketched in a faint blue. "It looks like they murdered the sunset," cracked Yasko, although Ohio officials probably intended to evoke a sunrise. West Virginia's plate was criticized as bland, "and what's hilarious about that," Thomas said, "is it's so plain-Jane but the motto says 'Wild, Wonderful.' "

New York was another plate with too many tiny images, the panelists said, and Maryland didn't even get their attention -- although a recent article on license plate design in GQ magazine named Maryland's plate, with its red, yellow and black state seal in the middle of a white background, as "the handsomest on the road."

The panelists know that judging a license plate design, like any other artistic critique, is subjective.

But they also believe that the look of these rectangles really matters.

The worst thing about a bad license plate for someone who cares about style, Werner said, is that "the person who loves his car and would never put a garish bumper sticker on it, is then forced by the government to put a garish license plate on it."

Lake Fong, Post-Gazette The panel judges: Brett Yasko, left, Liz Thomas and Chuck Biddle vote for their favor license plates at Wall to Wall Studios in the Strip District.

The best and worst of license plates

Here are summaries of what a Post-Gazette panel had to say about the best and worst license plates in the United States.

The panelists: artist and teacher Jo-Anne Bates; photographer and artist Chuck Biddle; Carnegie Museum associate curator for contemporary art Elizabeth Thomas; and graphic designers Larkin Werner and Brett Yasko.

THE BEST Colorado -- The Rocky Mountains evoke the state without cluttering the design, although some panelists preferred the older version, with green mountains against a white background. The design has been around for so many years that state officials don't know how it originated. Dylan Ikenoue, license plate manager for Colorado, did have this to say: "I've been here five months, and I've only had one complaint that it's ugly." Alaska -- "It has the feel of an old pickup truck driving down a dirt road," Yasko said. Duane Bannock, Department of Motor Vehicles director in Alaska, said the state introduced a fancier plate in 1996 that featured a line of gold miners snaking up the background, but when it expired this year, officials decided to reinstate the traditional design. "I'd be lying to you if I told you we don't have complaints about the blahness of this plate," Bannock said. "But we also had people complaining that that line of people looked like ants climbing up the plate." Wyoming -- The bucking bronco shows "they have some fun with the graphic and it says something about the state," Biddle said. Jim O'Connor, support services administrator for Wyoming, said one tale is that the bronco is modeled after a famous ranch horse named Steamboat because "that's the sound he made when he snorted through a busted nostril." At one point during World War II, Wyoming made its plates out of soymeal for conservation reasons, but had to change back after goats started eating them. Vermont -- It's a plate "you'd see on an '82 Volvo; it's crunchy and granola-y," Yasko said. Bonnie Rutledge, Vermont's commissioner of motor vehicles, said the state celebrated the 100th anniversary of its license plate in May, and the white on green plate has been around for nearly half that span. Vermont, Rutledge said, "is quite traditional," but she can see Yasko's point, too. "I always tell people Vermont is a cross between Haight-Ashbury and Mayberry RFD." Utah -- This scene from Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, perfectly evokes the state, in Bates' opinion, and does it without obscuring the letters and numbers. David Swan, deputy director of the Utah motor vehicles division, said the plate was developed for Utah's centennial in 1996, and it's been so popular "I guess we're going to have it until our next centennial."

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THE WORST Kentucky -- The widely reviled "Mr. Smiley face plate" was unanimously chosen as the nation's worst. "It looks like a children's drawing," Thomas said. "If I lived there, I would be embarrassed. It would make me get a personalized license plate." The uproar over the plate caused the state to hire a design firm to come up with a new "brand" for Kentucky. The result: a new motto, "Unbridled Spirit," with a stylized horse emerging from the "y" in Kentucky, which will become the image on a new plate that has been issued since Aug. 5. Pennsylvania -- "It's too generic to evoke a strong reaction one way or the other, which is sad because this is such a great state," said Werner, "and some of our older plates were so tasteful and smart." But what the panel saw as a design disaster may be a dream for state police, suggested Phil VanBriggle, manager of the state vehicle registration division. "Certainly that color configuration and color contrast helped with vehicle identification." Illinois -- Abraham Lincoln doesn't fare too well in today's designs, the panelists decided. In the Illinois plate, his faint visage is often obscured by ID numbers. And in the other plate that features him, South Dakota, you'd have to risk a rear-end accident to get close enough to see his tiny image as part of the minuscule Mount Rushmore logo. Georgia -- The Peach State's latest plate made Thomas' list because "it's so '80s and horrifying and because it has the biggest Web site name, and I think Web sites on license plates are stupid, because you could just Google it." To compound the misery, panelists said, the newest design jams a small outline of the state inside the peach symbol. Texas -- At the very least, the Texas plate could be used for a "Where's Waldo"-style car game, just to see who could identify all the pictures embedded in it. After years of featuring just the state outline or flag, the plate's design now includes a cowboy, mesas, sagebrush, oil derricks, the space shuttle, a moon, stars and the state outline. And maybe more if someone's eyesight is better.