Will you be submitting a design for the newest Mississippi license plate?

NORTH MISSISSIPPI (WMC) - For the first time in over one hundred years, the next issue of Mississippi license plates will be designed by a state citizen.

Who the designer is will be left up to the state’s License Tag Commission for the Department of Revenue (DOR).

“[The License Tag Commission] has always been in charge of selecting the design, so we thought it would be better if we solicited help from the public,” said Lexus Burns with DOR.

DOR will be accepting applications until the end of November, and Burns says DOR, at last check, has already received 20 submissions so far.

“DOR is expecting heavy participation,” Burns said. “We’re really excited.”

This will hopefully be an upgrade from the current, generic license plates that sit on hundreds of thousands of Mississippi vehicles.

“They’re horrible,” said Oxford resident Rebecca Leake, speaking on the design. “I was talking about it the other day with my mom because she works in Tennessee. She just said they got new license plates. I was like ‘ours are horrible.’ Why the yellow?”

License plates in Mississippi are on 5-year cycles.

Burns said the current design will disappear at the end of 2023, so in barely over a year drivers will see the new, publicly inspired design on the back of their vehicles.

The winner will ultimately be decided by the License Tag Commission, which consists of the governor, the commissioner of revenue, the state treasurer, and the attorney general.

“We just think this is a great opportunity for people to get involved in their government,” Governor Tate Reeves said during a Tuesday press conference. “We know that there are people throughout our state that have tremendous artistic design skills.”

Three different Mississippi license plates have been awarded “Plate of the Year” by the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, the most recent being the Biloxi Lighthouse Design, which circulated between 2007 and 2012.

Will Magnolia State artists create the next award-winning design?

“We’ll see,” Leake said. “I think since [the state] did the same thing for the flag, it opened up opportunities for this.”

Below are the design requirements:

• Proposed designs must be submitted by end of business day on Nov. 30, 2022.
• The design must be submitted in Adobe Illustrator (Ai) format.
• The design must be readable with a light-colored background design with dark-colored alphanumeric characteristics for plate numbering.
• The design must be limited to a maximum of three colors.
• The design cannot contain expressions that are considered obscene, slandering, insulting or vulgar.
• The design cannot contain any copyrighted images.
• Each submission is required to provide the name, address, and phone number of the designer.
• The designer selected will not receive any compensation.
• Participants must be Mississippi residents.
• The designer of the winning design must execute a release of any rights to the design.
• Changes to the design may be made to meet the required specifications and may contact interested parties for further information.
• The plate size will be 6″ exact x 12″ exactly as it is today.

Additional guidelines, including a visual aid, can be found here.

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