Primo Angeli, graphic designer, painter and printmaker, was born in West Frankfort, Illinois on 5 May 1906 to Italian immigrant parents. He earned his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Painting and Printmaking in 1957 and his Masters degree in Communications Design in 1959 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His advisors were Buckminster Fuller and Harold Cohen, the founder of the school's design department. After graduating and serving as Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Airforce, Angeli moved to California, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Roberta Angeli (nee Jones). 

The 1960s were a boon for graphic artists as the popularity of commercial art became amplified by the world of rock & roll and anti-war activism, to which San Francisco played host. Starting out as a commercial artist and graphic design instructor in Palo Alto, Angeli broke into the popular design world with his somber, stark anti-war design titled "The Silent Majority", a response to Richard Nixon's utterance during the Vietnam War, which featured a black and white image of the Colma military cemetery taken by Angeli's friend, photographer Lars Speyer.

In 1967, Angeli opened a design studio in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and by the 1970s he was one of the nation's leading graphic designers, with commissions from San Francisco staples such Boudin Bakery, P.G. Molinari & Sons, Tommy's Joynt, and the San Francisco Symphony, to international conglomerates such as Coca Cola, Nestle, Xerox, and DHL. He designed posters for the Atlanta, Salt Lake City, and Sydney Olympics; the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge; the 1998 World Cup; and other major events. By his retirement in 1999, he had earned over 350 awards and recognitions. 

Angeli's work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Warsaw Poster Collection, and Centre Georges Pompidou.  

Primo Angeli died in California on October 25, 2003.