Meet the TikTok creator behind a redesign of the Sask. licence plate

TikTok creator Ethan Craft said feedback has generally been positive about his concept for a reimagined Saskatchewan licence plate.

The concept video, posted to Craft’s account, “Ethan the License Plate Guy”, has more than 267,000 views as of March 20. His overall account has surpassed 300,000 followers and 13 million likes.

Craft told CTV News it was commenters who drove him to tackle a Saskatchewan plate makeover.

“There’s only two other jurisdictions on the entire continent that use licence plate designs older than Saskatchewan’s, it’s been 45 plus years of pretty much the same white and green with the wheat in the middle,” Craft said. “I finally tackled it and I’m happening to say 70 to 80 per cent of comments are to the tune of ‘I love it’, so that’s what I want to hear.”

“In my opinion, it might be time for a bit of facelift for the plate.”

Saskatchewan is not the first Canadian plate Craft has overhauled. He also tackled Ontario’s in Oct. 2022, along with multiple U.S. states.

“Lily in the centre, nice and colourful, which is unfortunately something a lot of Canadian plates don’t really do,” Craft said. “There’s also the yellow at the bottom, and the green kind of gradient above that from the flag.”

Unchanged in Craft’s concept: the slogan, “Land of Living Skies” and the font used for “Saskatchewan”.

According to Craft, a good license plate design has to be both colourful and functional.

“It has to be colourful and eye catching, but also legible. There’s been a million great designs over the years that when you’re ten feet away, it starts to blend in with the background colours,” Craft said. “

The final piece: what Craft calls “uniting symbols” of the region the plate represents that people can relate to.

Craft said he hasn’t had a plate go into the production stage so far. All of his qualifying factors are present in his pick for the best license plate in Canada: Nunavut.

(Photo source: Wikimedia)

To date, none of Craft’s designs have gone into production, but he’s open to the possibility.

“I would say that if SGI sees this and wants to take a stab at redesigning their 45 plus year old plate, I’m happy to work with them for free and I would love to see some version of my design go into production.”

The current design of the Saskatchewan licence plate was introduced in 1977, with an alteration made in 1998 to add “Land of Living Skies” and a new font for Saskatchewan.

@licenseplatetok