From a hospital room to a territorial marketing project for 32 municipalities in Apulia.

History of cultural packaging

A patron saint festival in San Severo gave rise to the brand "Patroni di Puglia: la festa" (Patron Saints of Apulia: the feast), a regional marketing project involving 32 municipalities in Apulia in promoting cultural tourism linked to the region's traditions and patron saint festivals.

Nicola had kept his promise: "If we get out of this room alive, come to my house in May for the patron saint's festival in San Severo."

And I, true to my word, am here.

The sources you don't expect

On that Sunday in May 2011, I saw the 'fujenti' arriving, running behind the fireworks batteries during the patron saint's festival of the 'Madonna del Soccorso', and I immediately joined them to take photographs and film.

It reminds me of the Spanish city of Pamplona with its bulls. Men, boys and women run alongside the batteries during the patron saint's festival.

Almost as if to compete with fire. Not behind it. With fire. Literally.

From emotion to project

After a few days, I go to see Silvia Godelli, the Councillor for Tourism for the Region of Apulia.

I suggest to her: "Councillor, after the Holy Week rituals in Apulia, we should implement a project dedicated to patron saint festivals. It is an enormous intangible heritage. We can promote it and deseasonalise tourist flows.

For the budget: you provide a portion, and I will collect the rest from the municipalities.

"All right! Let's start with the brand 'Patron Saints of Apulia: The Feast"

The power of clear vision

Getting the municipalities to join the territorial enhancement project was not complicated. When you are clear about where you want to go and convey genuine enthusiasm, the world follows you everywhere.

With tenacity and obstinacy, I described a concrete tourism promotion project: strict regulations, a multilingual pocket guide, digital presence, national and international trade fairs.

Clear objectives, defined timelines, measurable results and a touch of creative madness.

Trust is built by showing that you have a vision and the tools to achieve it.

See the project page www.gaetanoarmenio.it/progetti/patroni-di-puglia.html

The packaging of the territory

After all, I was just doing my job: packaging. I took scattered cultural content – festivals, illuminations, pilgrimages, bonfires, floats – and gave it attractive packaging for the tourism market.

My passion for design and photography has allowed me to create formats that work: recognisable visual identity, photographic storytelling for the web and social media, and carefully curated guides.

Not just a territorial marketing strategy, but also aesthetics.

Instead of wine labels, I packaged traditions.

Instead of pasta packaging, I was promoting intangible heritage.

Same method, same creative skills, different product.

And to think that it all started on that balcony in San Severo... or perhaps, with a promise made within the walls of a hospital.

4 November 2025

Over the last fifteen years, November has taken on a double meaning that goes beyond reminding me of the passing of the years. November is also my birthday.

The night

It was November 2010. The pain came suddenly. First aid: a Buscopan drip and then home. But during the night the pain returned, worse and deeper.

According to the doctor, with a serious expression: "Immediate hospitalisation!" "Can we postpone it until Monday?" I asked: "Mr Armenio, you may not make it to Monday."

Panic. A week in Molfetta. Then San Giovanni Rotondo: "Pancreatic cyst, immediate surgery!" "But I'm not famous like Steve Jobs!" I tried to play it down with irony.

Ten hours in the operating theatre. Internal bleeding during the night.

My wife waited outside while the head physician told her:

Madam, take heart, we are losing him.

I don't know what he felt at that moment. I never really asked him. Perhaps because I know that some things are better left where they are. Once they're over, it's better to look at them from a distance.

What remains

My body bears the marks, the scars are evident, reminding me that I was there, on the edge, and I came back. I have learned that time is not infinite.

We all know that, of course. But knowing it and feeling it in your bones are two different things. Since then, every day counts a little more. I have learned to recognise genuine people.

Those who remain when everything collapses. Those who say "I'm here" and really are there, not just in words. And I have learned that authenticity is not an aesthetic choice, but a necessity. When you have looked death in the face, you no longer want to pretend. To be someone you are not.

Since then, every project, every story, every connection carries a piece of that night.

The meeting

During those days in hospital, in San Giovanni Rotondo, I met Nicola. From San Severo. He told me about their traditions, about their patron saint's festival.

He said to me, 'Gaetano, if we make it out of this room alive in May, come to San Severo for the festival. You have to see it.' So I went.

And from that meeting, from that visit, one of the most important projects of my career was born: https://www.gaetanoarmenio.it/progetti/patroni-di-puglia.html.

A project involving 32 municipalities in Apulia, which became a box set requested by the President of the Republic, transforming local traditions into shared cultural heritage.

But that's another story.

I'll tell you about it in the next few days.

30 October 2025

The 1980s. "Go to your family and ask them to lend you money."

When a public official leaves you high and dry and you understand what it means to do business in the South

We left Via Francesco Nullo and ended up in Via Don Minzoni. New premises. New equipment. Three partners: myself, Giovanni Gadaleta and Stefano Salvemini. The Cooperativa L'Immagine was now a distant memory, and we were convinced we had made it.

Then came that tender. A large public body. Enormous quantities, a financial commitment that made our legs tremble. But we won. And we thought it was the turning point.

Contract in hand: first payment after 90 days.

Six months passed. We didn't see a penny.

Every morning the same scene

I would show up at the accounting department in despair. Always the same office, always the same faces, always the same answer: 'We are checking, come back tomorrow.'

The suppliers were pressing us. I found one of them waiting for me at my front door. We hadn't been able to pay our own salaries for months – which always arrived in dribs and drabs – let alone those of our two employees.

One morning we asked them to be patient a little longer. The next day, no one showed up at the company.

The phrase that still cries out for vengeance today

I returned to the agency for the umpteenth time to beg them to release the invoices. The manager – who, incidentally, was from Molfetta, my hometown – looked down at me from behind his tidy desk.

Do you know what he said to me?

"Oh, what a fuss, you're young. Go to your family and ask them to lend you the money!"

I remained there. Standing. Silent.

Not because I was lost for words, but because at that moment I understood everything. That our dismissed employees were not his problem. That our sleepless nights did not concern him.

The choice

Giovanni decided to leave us. Stefano and I were left alone, staring at each other. The question was simple and terrible: what should we do? Should we close down or carry on?

We chose to move forward.

That crisis taught us the true meaning of entrepreneurial resilience. In a complicated southern Italy, where doing business meant – and still means – walking a tightrope between unpaid bills and pressing suppliers, we chose not to fall.

Today, that phrase comes back to me every time I sign a contract with a public body. Not out of resentment, but out of vigilance. Because I know that behind every late payment there is someone who still says, 'Go to your family.'

And we, on the other hand, are still here. Doing business.

Despite everything.

22 October 2025

"How you do it is wrong." I am borrowing the title of a film currently showing in cinemas.

When I receive a WhatsApp message from Giovannangelo de Gennaro, one of the two artistic directors of the Viator Festival (the other artistic director is musician Michele Lobaccaro), announcing the festival programme, I feel a burning sensation in my stomach.

He is extremely anxious despite me sending him Neffa's song 'Molto calmo' several times, but I must say that it had no effect.

I have to prepare all the online and offline communication. So start with the first proposed graphic layout and then prepare a whole bunch of others.

No matter how you do it, it's never right.

In the end, exhausted, I give up and decide to go ahead with what he had already decided at the outset. He proposes a false democracy but in the end accepts what he himself proposes. I wonder if he enjoys leading me on. But they say that's how artists are...

The travelling musician and the birth of "Solitudo"

Yet behind this apparent creative chaos lies a precise method. Giovannangelo is an authentic travelling musician, a walker who draws inspiration from his pilgrimages along the Via Francigena and the spiritual paths of Italy.

His artistic communication arises from footsteps, from the silence between one note and another, from the deep listening that only the solitude of the wayfarer can teach.

"This year's theme is Solitude: the inner companion of the traveller, music that arises from silence," says Giovannangelo.   An insight gained during his many journeys, where the graphics of ancient stones meet the score written by the wind.

The spiritual impact of the Viator Festival

The 2025 Viator Festival will travel through four regions – Puglia, Basilicata, Molise and Lombardy – transforming each stop into a musical ritual.

Music becomes a universal language that unites different cultures, while the communication of the festival takes on a deeply spiritual dimension.

Compared to other music festivals, Viator has a unique cultural impact: it recovers the spiritual dimension of travel, transforming the audience into sound pilgrims.

The festival's own graphics – that solitary silhouette between stone arches – convey this message without the need for words.

The journey begins now, in this moment of listening. Because the true communication of the Viator Festival does not start from the stage, but from the silence that precedes each note, from that solitude that becomes presence.

Music is the pace. Silence is the direction.

We look forward to seeing you at the Festival: view the programme at www.festivalviator.it

15 October 2025

Italy, the 1980s. Those were the years of reflux, when the world was changing direction.

After the years of terrorism, people sought refuge in their private lives: consumption, television, well-being.

In our country, there was the “Milano da bere” (Milan to drink) and the culture of image replaced that of commitment.

While many closed themselves off in their own small horizons, others still tried to look outside — towards those who remained on the margins, such as Don Tonino Bello, then bishop of the diocese of Molfetta, Giovinazzo, Ruvo di Puglia and Terlizzi.

It was 1987

when, through a friend, I received a request:

“Gaetano, Don Tonino is starting a community in Ruvo di Puglia. It's called C.A.S.A. It will take in young drug addicts. They are starting with a screen printing workshop and need someone to supervise them”.

I accepted without thinking twice.

Those were the years when heroin had invaded the streets of our country and, of course, my city too, leaving emptiness in people's eyes and silence in their families.

The house and the motorbike

The community took its first steps amid a thousand difficulties and prejudices.

It was a small villa along the Terlizzi-Ruvo di Puglia provincial road.

At first, I arrived on my motorbike, which had always been my companion of freedom.

Until one evening, Don Nino, who coordinated the house, took me aside:

“Gaetano, I'm asking you a favour... please don't come on your motorbike anymore. That noise creates too much excitement among the kids”.

From then on, I drove through that gate every evening in silence, with respect, in my Fiat Fiorino.

The screen printing workshop

I taught the kids screen printing.

The ink, the frames, the colours became a way to give shape to something new.

Every gesture was an act of trust.

I often stayed for dinner with them. Some evenings were tough — shouting, crises, sudden escapes — but even in those moments you could feel the stubborn beat of life wanting to start again.

Names and memories

Alfonso, Teresa, Katia, Anna.

These are names that I still carry with me, like marks engraved in time.

We met up again with some of them years later. With others... it is better to leave them in silence.

But each of them taught me that solidarity is not an abstract feeling: it is presence and listening.

Today, looking back on those years, I understand that those “kids on the outside” weren't just them.

We were all on the outside — on the outside of a changing time, of a distracted society, of ourselves.

Yet, in that little house on the provincial road, we found a direction: to return to life, together.

9 October 2025

When a label takes you on a journey through a story of dust and wonder.

Light a fire sings Italian rocker Giorgio Canali.

The hands of young Nicola Chiarappa, on the other hand, know how to light fires that make you dream. And sometimes explode.

A few days ago, I was in San Severo to deliver the adhesive labels on rolls that he uses for his products, including those destined for abroad. Five minutes of work. Sign, say goodbye, leave.

Instead, I stopped. Sometimes you just need to slow down for a moment to discover stories that deserve to be told.

Nicola represents the fourth generation of a family of pyrotechnicians.

His workshop is full of powders that seem harmless and eyes that shine with something between passion and lucid madness.

Everything is done strictly by hand

The mixture of colours? By hand. The assembly? By hand. Every single firework? By hand.

Real craftsmanship, the kind that keeps you busy 365 days a year. Only January is sacred. That is dedicated to the family.

When scissors become fuses

‘There is always danger. All it takes is a pair of scissors to fall and if the floor is not clean... everything goes up in smoke.’

As he speaks, I instinctively look at the floor. I don't see any scissors. The floor is clean. I breathe.

Behind those mesmerising fireworks is a world where one wrong move can change everyone's day.

Twelve years old and the perfect disaster

The first time Nicola directed a fireworks display, he was twelve years old.

Nothing exploded. Total silence. A disappointed audience. His father on the microphone with apologies.

‘From then on, I never stopped.’

You carry that scar with you. It's the price you pay for learning that gunpowder doesn't forgive haste.

From great-grandfather's notebook to digital simulator

Great-grandfather drew the choreography in crumpled notebooks, using tempera paints. He tested them live, in front of an audience.

Today, there is a digital simulator that anticipates every effect. But the heart is still there, in those faded drawings.

Tradition and technology. Ancient gunpowder and modern software.

The San Severo battery: when the people rebel

2002. The prefect bans fireworks displays during the feast of the Madonna del Soccorso.

Popular uprising in San Severo.

The solution? Reduce the TNT charge. Thus was born the “San Severo fireworks display”: less powerful, safer, one of a kind.

An identity born out of a ban. A signature that today bears the name of the city throughout the world.

The enchantment continues

Nicola does not know where the company will be in twenty years' time. He only knows that he wants to continue to make people dream.

I, who spend my life among words, projects and rolls of labels, leave that workshop with one certainty: true creativity is not inventing from nothing.

It is igniting wonder where others see only dust.

Have you ever lit a fire?

For your parties, visit https://chiarappafireworks.it/ and for your labels, visit https://www.etichettelimmagine.net/ita/home.html