New York State Fair Automobile & Motorcycle Races, 1928

This vintage poster advertises the New York State Fair’s National A.A.A. Championship Automobile Race and National Championship Motorcycle Races held on September 1st, 1928. The design centers a bold shield-shaped text panel reading “NEW YORK STATE FAIR” in tall, Art Deco–influenced lettering, with the event details, date, and the phrase “OFFICIAL PROGRAM” carefully stacked below. At the bottom, a ribbon banner emphatically states “PRICE 25¢ PAY NO MORE,” underscoring the accessibility of the spectacle. The imagery features a vivid red race car in the foreground, hurtling toward the viewer, followed by a stream of pale blue and white cars rendered with speed lines and dust clouds to convey motion and excitement. The poster’s color palette of warm yellow, bright red, deep blue, and black outlines reflects late 1920s graphic tastes, combining fairground exuberance with the sleek modernity of motor racing. The crisp flat colors, solid blocks, and registration typical of commercial printing from this period suggest a lithographic process, likely chromolithography or early offset lithography, though no specific printer’s mark is clearly visible in the image. By pairing state fair branding with cutting-edge automobile and motorcycle competitions, the design captures the era’s fascination with speed, technology, and large-scale public events. This piece matters as a visual record of how fairs functioned as major entertainment hubs in the interwar years, using bold poster art to promote motorsport as both modern marvel and mass spectacle, and illustrating the evolving language of advertising at the dawn of the automotive age.