Wyoming drivers will be sporting new license plates when their registration expires next year.

Wyoming Department of Transportation spokesman Andrew Smyth says state law requires them to issue a new plate design every eight years.

"This design is Square Top Mountain in the upper Green River Lakes, which is located over near Pinedale," said Smyth. "The standard county plates and the people that are doing 23-month registration renewals can get them already, so you may have seen some out on the road."

Smyth says prestige and specialty plates, which drivers can start ordering this Monday, will also have a new look.

"We are going to now allow five characters on the prestige plates," said Smyth. "We already have five characters on the standard number plates, but that hasn't been possible thus far on the prestige plates because the letters are slightly bigger than numbers. We're going back to a stacked county number, so that'll make a little extra room to allow an extra letter."

The colors on the University of Wyoming plates are also being inverted, so they'll now have brown numbers and letters on a gold background.

Smyth says if your plates expire this year, you'll still need to renew those plates for one more year.

"You get a new plate whenever you come due for registration in 2017, unless you want to pay 23 months into a two-year renewal," said Smyth. "If people already have a specialty plate or a prestige plate and all they want to do is keep it, what's going to happen is they'll get a postcard in the mail 2-4 months prior to their registration expiration date next year. They don't need to do anything until they get that."

Symth says they're also simplifying the online application for ordering plates.

"We're going to add payments by credit card and we're also going to add the University of Wyoming plates to that online system," said Smyth. "People will have the option of going and ordering their plates and paying and they won't even have to send us anything to place their order."

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