3rd Annual 4 Wheel & Off-Road Jamboree shirt

A T-shirt by an unknown designer commemorating the 1990 Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania 4 Wheel & Offroad Jamboree Summer Nationals. The Jamboree, held every July in rural Pennsylvania, is now in its 36th year and still attracts off-road vehicle enthusiasts from around the country.

Dated 1990, this design is a celebration of 60s and 70s type filtered through 90s neon colors and all-out radical design sensibilities. Arched pink-and-black Buxom crests the hood of a monster truck seemingly bearing down on the viewer over a backdrop of Memphis-style bacterio texture. Its massive tires leap over “4 WHEEL &” in hyper-saturated neon tones.

After substantial research I can’t find anything that matches the closed 4, all-square W and blocky ampersand. As far as I can tell it’s either a font lost to time, a mishmash of several, or somebody drew it from scratch with a ruler.

“OFF ROAD” is the typographic foundation of the design, with a gorgeous chrome effect and bright-orange shadow applied to what I think is VGC’s Shotgun—either modified by hand or using some alternate glyphs I can’t find online. “JAMBOREE” ties it all up with some magenta-flocked Dynamo over a line of handwritten script.

Even more 70s energy peeks out in the details: the Ford logo rests atop “TRUCKS” in good old Avant Garde Gothic. On the right, the “General Tire Special Events Performance Series” mark is a sandwich of Futura and a futuristic bold slab-serif, which has been smudged by time and wear but looks a lot like City.

I found some footage of the 1990 Bloomsburg Nationals to see if I could grab a screenshot of anybody wearing this shirt in its natural habitat. No luck, but it looks like it was a fun time.