Tyler Thompson has taken upon himself the mission, nay the Quest, to redesign the travesty of US boarding passes into something that not only is pretty to look at, but properly provides the information relevant to travelers: Flight Number, Gate Number, Seat Number.   His own description of the current design of boarding passes is a hilarious start:

It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random (yes, I realize that a human didn't lay this out, if a human had, judging by the train-wreck of design, they would have surely used papyrus). There was nothing given size or color importance over anything else, it was a mess.

His website shows some initial designs put forth by himself, then several more community iterations that leads to a truly beautiful and standardized design that I know I would prefer.

Given that I’m hopping on a plane this weekend, I’m sure to be reminded of just how hard current boarding passes are to decipher.

via Redesigning the Boarding Pass – Journal – Boarding Pass / Fail.