The armband as canvas. An interview with Marcello Martinelli

Certain images last longer than a match. They remain etched in collective memory, pass through generations, and end up telling a story that goes far beyond a simple result.

During the 2025/26 season, illustrator Marcello Martinelli gathered fragments of the Venezia FC imagination and transformed them into the Club’s captain’s armbands. Match after match, his illustrations told stories of the city through symbols, traditions, and references to Venetian culture, turning a matchday object into a small archive of shared images and memories.

Born from a collaboration with Powernotte, the project also speaks to something broader: the meeting of creative realities that have chosen to stay in, or return to, Venice to build their work and their creative vision here, contributing to the city's cultural narrative through contemporary languages.

We met Marcello to talk about memory, inspiration, and the construction of a shared contemporary imagination.

Venice by Venezia: In recent years, football has moved beyond the boundaries of sport to become a shared cultural language. It has become a source of inspiration for artists, designers, photographers, and creatives who use it to talk about identity, belonging, and collective memory. What is your first memory connected to Venezia FC, and when did you begin looking at football through the eyes of an illustrator?

Marcello Martinelli: I started following Venezia FC when I was about eight years old. But the moment I truly fell in love with the club was in 1999, during Recoba's season in Serie A. From that point on, I never stopped following the team, even through the long and difficult years that followed. The passion never faded; if anything, it grew stronger over time.

As a child, I was always drawing, especially football-related subjects inspired by goals, sticker albums, newspaper photographs, and football shirts. I collect historic Venezia FC jerseys, and they still provide an enormous source of inspiration through their iconic colours and patterns. It felt to me like there was nobody creating work dedicated to the club and the city through a contemporary yet nostalgic visual language. Gradually, I carved out that role for myself, developing my own style through illustrations, products, and collaborations that aim to celebrate the essence of the club.

My relationship and collaboration with Powernotte allowed me to turn ideas into reality and fulfil many of the dreams I had as a child.

I'm very happy to see Venezia FC gaining the recognition it deserves and becoming a point of reference for many other clubs in the way it approaches football, from communication to visual identity. For me, it's important to go beyond that and offer additional perspectives on how football can be experienced in a place as unique as this. Venezia is not just a football club; it exists within an extraordinary cultural context, and I believe there is still so much left to tell.

Looking at your captain's armbands, it feels as though Venezia FC is being told through details that exist far beyond the football pitch. How do you choose the subjects that become illustrations? What makes an image capable of telling the story of the city, the club, and the community around it all at once, before ultimately ending up on the captain's arm?

I like to let my imagination wander freely while drawing inspiration from the things I encounter every day. I often walk around the city, notice a detail, a corner, a particular scene, and take a photo or make a note to use later. For me, it's essential to incorporate elements that reference the city, the club's colours, or pre-match traditions.

Throughout the season, I collected visual memories gradually, allowing them to settle before turning them into illustrations. I particularly enjoy depicting things that are meaningful to supporters, because fans are one of the most important components of football, especially in a place as unique as Venice. By attending matches both home and away, I'm constantly in touch with what defines and represents them.

Because of that, it's often easy for me to come up with ideas that I know will resonate, not only with Venetians but also with the international audience that regularly visits the city. Venice remains my greatest source of inspiration. It's so rich in stories and visual references that I don't think I'll ever run out of ideas.

In a season shaped by digital content that constantly appears and disappears, the captain's armbands represented something different: a physical object, worn on the pitch and destined to be preserved, collected, and even displayed. What is your relationship with the idea of creating images designed to exist beyond the digital realm?

Ever since I was a child, I've always drawn on paper, canvas, and objects, using my exaggerated and intentionally imperfect style. In recent years I've often worked on a tablet with a digital pen, mainly because it allows me to share my work online. That has helped me grow, meet new people, and discover new opportunities. But I've always preferred drawing by hand.

There's something more magical about physical artwork. You can hardly go back and change it, and what you create ends up being the idea exactly as you imagined it, without endless revisions. When Powernotte approached me with the idea of designing the captain's armbands, I immediately realised it was the perfect object through which to express my ideas in a unique way.

Although the armbands originate digitally, the way they are produced gives them the appearance of being hand-drawn. Digital tools are undoubtedly more versatile when it comes to producing and sharing illustrations, but I'm convinced that physical works carry a much stronger emotional value.

Being part of one of the very few football realities in the world to use unique captain's armbands rooted in local culture is a tremendous source of pride.

Photo credits: Powernotte (framed captain's armbands).
Illustrations: Marcello Martinelli.