Artist Conversation: Victor Melendez on creating the Seattle Kraken’s first Hispanic Heritage Night design
By Silvia Leija-Rosas, edited by Charles Hamaker
Seattle, WA - In its fourth season, the Seattle Kraken join 13 other National Hockey League teams in celebrating Latinx fans and the culture they are part of. On Saturday, October 19th, the Kraken will host Hispanic Heritage Night when they host the Calgary Flames at Climate Pledge Arena with a puck drop of 7PM PDT, for the first time in franchise history.
While the majority of the Latinx community in Washington lives, works and thrives in central Washington, nearly 260,000 Latinxs live in King County, and make up the third-largest racial/ethnic group in Seattle. Hispanic Heritage Month, nationally recognized from September 15th-October 15th, will kick off the Kraken’s Common Thread campaign, an evolution of the NHL and NHLPA’s Hockey is for Everyone program with an increased focus on the local Seattle hockey community. The Kraken’s Common Thread nights highlight nine Seattle Kraken communities through special game nights during the 2024-25 season, plus additional merchandising designed by a local artist part of the community.
A layout of the Seattle Kraken’s 2024-25 Common thread nights. Click the link here to read more about them.
Mexican-born artist Victor Melendez is an art director, graphic designer, illustrator and occasional muralist who has worked with both small businesses and bigger companies, like the USPS. The art on his portfolio is distinct: bright colors, fun lettering and Southwest-style illustrations. He is the Kraken’s Hispanic Heritage Month artist, and one who had a heavy hand in the development of the special night.
Many of his artist friends have designed for the Seattle Kraken’s special nights before, so it felt like common sense to Melendez to approach the Kraken during their Asian Pacific Islander Night showcase at the Seattle Center to ask about Hispanic Heritage Night.
“They were very open to the idea,” Melendez said. He set up a meeting between the Mexican Consulate and the team and plans started rolling. “You can say there was a grassroots initiative.”
Despite his eagerness to help organize the night, Melendez confessed he’s actually never been to an NHL game. But he’s familiar with the sport through Sports Center, and more recently, through the Western Hockey League’s Wenatchee Wild who he visited during their 2023-2024 inaugural season.
“Growing up in Mexico, hockey and winter sports were non-existent,” Melendez said. “It wasn’t until I got here to states where I kind of started getting in.”
Melendez moved to the Pacific Northwest in the mid-1990s, a few years before Mexico’s men’s national hockey team played its first world tournament. Currently, Mexico is the only Latin American country that competes in IIHF tournaments. Their women’s hockey team who currently rank 25 in the world, has seen great growth since they were first iced in 2012. In fact, it was only four years ago that Luisa Wilson became the first Mexican to win a hockey gold medal during the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
With the Kraken fully settled in Seattle, Melendez said he’s excited to get the speed and action of the sport in-person and hopes this night is just the start for a new generation of Latinx Kraken fans. When speaking about the design for Hispanic Heritage Month, Melendez said he wanted these burgeoning Kraken fans to find familiarity in his designs.
A Seattle Kraken ‘S’ shaped like a feathered snake in patterned blues and purples, Melendez’s design draws inspiration from Quetzalcoatl the God of Life, Light and Wisdom in Aztec culture and integrates patterns most often found in Mesoamerican and current Indigenous art across Latin America. Melendez, who is familiar with sports branding design, said he wanted to bring to life the many cultures and styles across the countries south of the U.S. border while keeping the uniqueness of the Seattle Kraken design alive.
“I was taking into consideration my community, the people that this work is celebrating,” he said. “I wanted to be able to at least spark some sort of curiosity in a certain way that they might be interested in finding out more about the sport.”
Seattle Kraken players will wear the design on their warm up jerseys on Saturday, before those are auctioned off. The Kraken will donate those proceeds to GreenLatinos– an organization dedicated to demanding equity and combatting racism by Latinx leaders. Kraken fans can also buy the design on pucks and t-shirts. But that’s not the only place where Melendez’s design shined. On Sept. 21, a similar version of the illustration greeted nearly 11,000 attendees of the Grupo Firme concert at Climate Pledge Arena, another connection that came with the organization of Hispanic Heritage Night for the Kraken.
Art by Victor Melendez, the artist chosen to design the Seattle Kraken’s #CommonThreads Hispanic Heritage Month jersey is on display on the screens at Climate Pledge Arena tonight. (Photos by Silvia Leija-Rosas)
From the first discussion to the submission of the design, Melendez said his goal was to build on the Kraken’s culture of inclusivity and bridge both worlds: the hockey community and the Latinx community living right outside of it.
“We're not going anywhere and we have to get in,” he said. “And hopefully they do it next year and the year after, until it doesn't have to be something extraordinary, but it's something that is just part of the team.”
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