I like the fact that they took some artistic license and used "stylized", or "iconified" shields, rather than trying to do a perfect pixel-per-pixel resize of the prototype shields. The latter method does not necessarily produce good on-screen results. (Which is to be expected, given that the prototype shields and fonts were designed for reflective lighting at sizes on the order of feet, rather than emissive lighting at sizes on the order of millimeters.)
Case in point...maybe it's just my twisted mind, but...when I look at the Indiana state route shield at http://elrond.aperiodic.net/shields/, I see "DOGMAN" instead of "INDIANA" if I'm more than about two feet from my screen. :) Compare that to MQ's version, where they apparently think that using a square is "good enough", and do not try to reproduce the "INDIANA" legend or use the FHWA font for the digits.
There is a balance there somewhere, between being too stylized while still having a level of realism that satisfies us road geeks who can spot the difference between FHWA Series C and D characters that are a few pixels in size. Personally, I think Google's Interstate shields are too stylized (the blue color they use is horrible) as are their US shields (which almost look like plain old circles); MQ seems to have struck the right balance of size and detail.
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