Designers Take Stab at Making Better Mileage Stickers

Yesterday, we reported that potential car shoppers found both of the EPA’s proposed new fuel-economy stickers to be confusing , according to a survey. Both stickers have come under criticism during the 60-day discussion period allotted by the EPA.

The trouble with designing these labels basically comes down to organizing and objectively conveying the fuel efficiency of not only new gasoline-powered cars, but the new compressed-gas, diesel, electric and hydrogen cars coming down the pipeline.

It’s a daunting task and one which even the EPA’s designers have stumbled over, but can anyone do any better?

Translogic, a tech-oriented automotive blog, seems to think so. The website asked three of its favorite design firms to come up with a better fuel-economy sticker. What they delivered is pretty interesting: Draplin Design Co. uses a tear-shaped grading system, which gets decidedly grimmer as the vehicle gets dirtier.

The design firm Scipt & Seal throws out the “A, B, C” grading system and replaces that with a percentage score representing the car’s efficiency. The score would also be backed by a color – blue, purple or green – which would visually represent the car’s fuel efficiency, in ascending order.

GRID, the last firm and the one we liked the best (shown above), removes the “peachiness” of the grading system and the colored hues and just shows hardcore data in an organized fashion similar to today’s existing EPA fuel stickers, except that it’s loaded with more information. Important numbers like combined mpg, monthly fuel costs and annual CO2 emissions are displayed prominently.

Check out a few of the designs below and get more information and photos about what the designers were thinking at Translogic.

Reimagining the Fuel Economy Label (Translogic)