Miriello Grafico

When I told designer Michael Osborne I was going to be in Italy he said, “You gotta go see my design mentor, Primo Angeli. He’s living in Spoleto now. And if you don’t like Primo, you’ll still love his wife Deanie”.

I’d heard about Primo Angeli for decades, as he developed his packaging empire in San Francisco, but we had never met. I was intrigued to get an idea of what a wildly successful, type-A designer might be doing now in the bucolic small town of Campello Sul Clitunno, near Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. Maybe he spends his days covered in paint, grappling with immense canvases, straining to express his client-suppressed creative vision. Maybe he’s become a wine expert, amassing a wine cellar of Italy’s unknown best. Or maybe he’s still just trying to wind down from 40 year of running a top creative firms in a city that was at the center of the outer most reaches of the change and experimentation in the 60’s and 70’s.

Marlane and I spent two days with Primo and his rock-of-Gibralter and beautiful wife Deanie, in Campello. I found that Primo is doing a little bit of everything I projected and more. He’s still making sense of the business he piloted for decades,  stories of it’s wild successes and failures find their way into much of what he talks about. I learned that Primo loves to tell stores, like how his jukebox-selling father pleaded with him in broken English to not go into design, “Please Primo, donta do dis ding.” And I learned that Primo is also lucky, lucky to be the first born (Primo) instead of the second (Secondo). Secondo Angeli Design, just doesn’t have the same zing does it.

He doesn’t speak much Italian after ten year in Italy. But he can find the exact words for the situation when he needs them. It’s one of his gifts. When the cook at their favorite local restaurant came back to refill a basket of deep fried antipasti, Primo blurted, “Questi sono criminali”. (Those things are criminal!)

Seeing what people do with their success interests me greatly.  Primo and Deanie are living their full lives in Umbria with their opera singing son and his new wife, creating new and simple successes every day. Just like the day we spent together becoming new and fast friends. “I’ma glad you doin dat ding Primo.”- Ron