When I first heard of the new, one piece driver's license in the province I was pleased. Going one piece is more convenient, and only updating every five years is nice. In fact, I like the idea of a one piece license a lot, which made me surprised when I discovered that I would rather just keep my old one. The reason is simple, the new license design is cheap, and ugly.
The biggest problem lies in one of the most prominent parts of a photo ID. The picture, previously color, has gone black and white. That looks very cheap at the best of times, though somehow this version made it worse. It just looks badly printed, and as though the image itself is of really poor quality. Side-by-side, the old license - which does use the same picture - doesn't have the same quality issues as the new one. Perhaps the old picture was stored in a poor quality format, but I'm amazed by just how bad it looks. It's honestly embarrassing, not for me but for the province.
That could be fixed by switching back to a color portrait, not everything wrong with the license could be fixed as easily. Of course, there's the transparent part of the license, clearly designed as a security feature. It is a second portrait, this time in an oval, and it looks even worse. Given the heavy vignetting used to get the image to fit, and the oval shape, it looks more appropriate for a commemorative spoon of the Queen than it does for government issued identification. It fits with the overall design theme used, that being something very cheap, and very dated.
There are little things wrong with it as well. Canada, placed where it is above the "hewan" in Saskatchewan, looks like it's a mistake, and the font is very thin and doesn't mesh well with the other fonts used. The color scheme is pretty weak, and the attempt to get images that define the province on there has lead to hay bales and some trees, which are a bad cliche.
Sure, there are good parts, it's more difficult to counterfeit, with many little lines and security features sprinkled throughout. It's also one piece, and I'm happy to discard the paper portion of the license. Even with those good points, it still doesn't forgive the poor design and quality of the new ID.
The old design wasn't perfect, the Canadian flag was in an odd spot and it didn't have as many security features. However, it had a consistent look, the printing quality on the portrait looked good, the color scheme was strong and appropriate for the province. It looked like what a Saskatchewan ID should look like, and more inspiration should have been taken from the old design rather than throwing it out for this new mess.
It's not as though I am clinging to the old style out of nostalgia. I'm clinging to the old style because it looks higher quality than the new one. The old license didn't carry a message really, the new one does. Unfortunately, that message is that the province is cheap, ugly and dated, something which I know isn't true. If it wasn't so obvious we could do better it'd be less disappointing, but when new and old are placed side-by-side it becomes clear that something went wrong with the new look. It needs to be thrown out and replaced.
