An English sailor, two rival clubs and four names.

Napoli dates its official founding to 1926, but its story begins two decades earlier. English Wikipedia traces the club’s roots to the Naples Foot-Ball & Cricket Club, founded in 1905 by the English sailor William Poths and his associate Hector M. Bayon, with Neapolitans including Amedeo Salsi, who became its president, also involved. That club’s earliest kit was a sky blue and navy blue striped shirt worn with black shorts.

The family tree then split and rejoined. Wikipedia says the foreign members of Naples FBC broke away in 1911 to form Internazionale Napoli, which wore blue shirts with white shorts. Under financial pressure the two rivals merged in October 1922 as the Foot-Ball Club Internazionale-Naples, shortened to FBC Internaples. The merged club played at Internazionale Napoli’s ground at the Terme di Agnano and kept that club’s nickname, Gli Azzurri, “the Blues”.

The present name arrived four years later. Wikipedia says that under the presidency of Giorgio Ascarelli, Internaples changed its name to Associazione Calcio Napoli on 25 August 1926 and moved to a new ground, the Stadio Militare dell’Arenaccia. On 25 June 1964 the club became Società Sportiva Calcio Napoli, the name it uses today, usually shortened to SSC Napoli or simply Napoli.

The modern club is a refounding. Wikipedia says that the club was declared bankrupt in August 2004, and that the film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis re-founded it that year under the name Napoli Soccer, because the old name could not be used until the following season. De Laurentiis restored the name Società Sportiva Calcio Napoli in May 2006. Sky Sports, reporting on 4 December 2020, described De Laurentiis as the club’s president. The club is based in Naples, in the region of Campania.

Blue water, a horse, a donkey and a siren.

The colour is a piece of geography. English Wikipedia says that because Naples is a coastal city, the club’s colours have always been taken from the blue waters of the Gulf of Naples. Naples FBC used two shades of blue, but since the 1920s a single tone, azure, has been used, often in a sky blue shade. That is why Napoli shares the nickname Azzurri with the Italy national team. Wikipedia says the kit itself is a merger of the two early clubs: the sky blue shirt from Naples FBC and the white shorts from Internazionale Napoli, combined when they became Internaples in 1922. At home the team wears azure shirts with white shorts, and away it traditionally wears white shirts with white or blue shorts, though recent away kits have often moved away from that pattern.

The city’s animal shaped the early badge. Wikipedia says Napoli’s earliest badge showed a rampant horse on top of a football, with the letters ACN around it; the rampant black horse is a symbol of Naples, and Internaples had been nicknamed I Puledri, “the foals”. The current badge, a large N inside a circle, can be traced back to Internazionale Napoli, which wore a similar design on its shirts. Since adopting the N, the club has altered it slightly at various times, sometimes with the club name around it and sometimes without; the main variable has been the shade of blue. The letter is usually white, and Wikipedia notes it has occasionally been gold, especially before 1980.

Two more nicknames carry their own images. Wikipedia says the team was given the name I ciucci, Neapolitan for “the donkeys”, after a poor performance in the 1926–27 season, a derogatory play on the city’s horse symbol; the club adopted the donkey as a mascot, ’O Ciuccio. Partenopei, used for the club and for Neapolitans generally, comes from the Greek myth of the siren Parthenope, whose body, in the story, was washed up on the shore where Naples stands.

Design and documentation.

Football club identities are often built from a handful of recurring devices, and the clubs in this part of the round show several of them. The first is the monogram: interlocking initials that compress a long formal name into a mark small enough for a shirt, a scarf or a stadium gate. Monograms tend to survive redesigns because supporters read them as a signature rather than a picture, so designers usually redraw the letters, adjust their weight and spacing, and leave the arrangement alone.

The second device is the motto. Some crests carry a short phrase, sometimes in the home language and sometimes in Latin, set on a ribbon or band. A motto gives a club a line of copy that can move from the badge to banners, stands and advertising without a change of meaning.

The third is origin. A number of European clubs began as works teams or sports associations attached to a factory, a school or a parish, and the founding organisation’s name or initials can remain in the club name long after the link has loosened. Finally there is the stadium name, which may honour a former president, a place or a sponsor, and which becomes part of the brand on tickets, signage and broadcast graphics.

A flat N and a city font.

The latest redesign came in July 2024. Football Italia, reporting on 5 July 2024, quoted a club statement presenting a new identity: the traditional N, which the club called its “Napoleonic N”, had been made more minimalist and contemporary, stripped of extra elements and offered in a monochrome variant. Footy Headlines, on 6 July 2024, described the change as the removal of the light and depth effects from the badge, leaving a flat, two-dimensional mark, and reported that the club announced it on social media on 4 July 2024 and would use it on its kits from the 2024–25 season. The same report said the EA7 home shirt for that season was predominantly sky blue.

The club said the bigger change was typographic. According to the statement quoted by Football Italia, Napoli introduced a font of its own, named BE NAPOLI, which the club described as drawing on the city’s mix of cultures: letters with convergence points and diagonal lines meant to suggest views of the city, solid and compact characters standing for a united team, and acute angles intended to suggest grit and speed. The launch video, the club said, moved through the Spanish Quarters, the Sanità district, Spaccanapoli and the Centro Direzionale.

The stadium name is the other public-facing change of recent years. Wikipedia says Napoli has played at the Stadio San Paolo since 1959. Football Italia reported on 29 November 2020, following the death of Diego Armando Maradona earlier that week, that the mayor of Naples, Luigi De Magistris, had announced on Instagram that the ground would be renamed the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, after several versions of the name had been discussed. Sky Sports reported that the Naples City Council confirmed the change on 4 December 2020, and quoted the club saying it was “delighted” by the decision; the San Paolo name was not kept as part of the new title.

For a design guide, Napoli shows how a club can keep one letter and one colour taken from its own coastline for a century, then flatten the mark and add a typeface without changing its core. Compare it with AS Roma, another Serie A club whose colours come from its city, and Serie A, the league in which it plays. For this guide we use gulf azure, Naples navy and shirt white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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