Our Founder - Sam Angell
There’s definitely a cleaner, tidier way to introduce myself.
Something polished and professional like:
“Sam Angell is an award-winning branding specialist, author, and advocate with a passion for human-centred design.”
Which is true.
But…
It also sounds like the kind of sentence that puts on a suit and forgets to mention the person underneath it.
There are probably a few different ways to introduce Sam Angell.
Founder of Angell Designs.
Branding specialist.
Graphic designer.
Author.
Advocate.
Award-winning creative.
Human-centred design enthusiast.
Occasional menace with strong opinions about Taylor Swift.
And while certainly true aspects of who I am as a person, they’re only part of the story.
Because before I’m a business owner, I’m a person.
A queer, non-binary, disabled, and neurodivergent person with a very full inner world, a deeply creative brain, a soft spot for storytelling, a slightly (okay severely) chaotic relationship with rest, and a lifelong habit of turning big feelings into words, visuals, and meaning.
Angell Designs is a huge part of my life, but it’s not the whole of who I am.
It’s one expression of the way I see the world: through story, emotion, access, identity, design, humour, care, curiosity, and the belief that people shouldn’t have to shrink themselves to belong.
Behind Angell Designs
I founded Angell Designs in 2018, starting with logos, posters, and small design projects before the business slowly evolved into the human-centred branding studio it is today.
At the heart of Angell Designs is a belief that design should feel human.
Not cold.
Not confusing.
Not so polished that all the personally gets sanded off.
And certainly none of this AI bullshit that seems to be running rampant.
Human.
That belief didn’t come from some architectural textbook back in my university hay days. It came from life. From lived experiences.
I know exactly what it feels like to move through spaces that weren’t designed with me in mind. As a queer and disabled person, I’ve spent a lot of my life scanning rooms, websites, services, systems, and communities for signs of access, safety, and belonging.
That lived experience shapes the way I work, but it also shapes who I am outside my business. My creativity isn’t separate from my identity. My advocacy isn’t separate from my design work. My writing isn’t separate from my survival.
It all comes from the same place:
A need to make the world feel more understandable, more honest, and actually built for people who’ve been left out.
Author Work
Long before I was writing website copy, brand strategy documents, blog posts, and books, I was writing quietly… often in secret.
Writing has always been one of the ways I process the world, but for the longest time, it was also something I felt deeply ashamed of. As an autistic person, I have often taken language very literally, and that shaped the way I saw my own writing. I worried I was missing something everyone else understood. I worried my words were too blunt, too strange, too obvious, too much, or not enough.
Instead of seeing that literal, detail-focused way of thinking as part of my voice, I treated it like proof that I was inadequate.
So, for years, I hid most of what I wrote.
There was one exception: a short story I submitted to a magazine competition, which led to me becoming a co-author at 16 in The Letter “R” by Alana Bosgra and contributors, edited by Christelle Bosgra. But even then, writing still felt like something I was only allowed to do in secret.
Something to keep mostly private.
Something not yet safe enough to place fully into the world.
That began to change when I met my partner.
Being loved by someone who saw my creativity with care helped me begin to see my writing differently too. I didn’t need to be embarrassed. I didn’t need to hide until everything was perfect. It wasn’t evidence that I simply wasn’t good enough.
My writing (and other creative endeavours) are a real part of who I am: raw and honest.
Now, I’m a published author. My book Built for Belonging explores identity, disability, resilience, and the long (often messy) process of building a life that feels like it has room for you. I’m also a co-author of Wake Up Revolution, another published work I’m proud to be part of. Both books are available for purchase through my store on my author website.
On my author site, I also share journal entries, essays, poetry, reflections, stories, and pieces that once may have stayed hidden in notebooks, folders, or quiet corners of my mind. My writing can be raw, reflective, funny, poetic, uncomfortable, hopeful, and occasionally a little dramatic (because subtlety is lovely but sometimes feelings arrive wearing a theatre costume and demand a spotlight).
For me, writing is no longer something to be ashamed of. It’s a way of making meaning. A way of telling the truth and trusting the right people will understand.
That author side of me also feeds back into my design work. Storytelling sits underneath everything I create. Whether I’m writing a memoir chapter, designing a brand identity, or shaping website copy, I’m always asking:
What’s the real story here?
Creativity
My creativity isn’t limited to my work hours.
It’s how I think. How I process. How I play. How I understand myself. How I make meaning out of the weird, hard, beautiful, and occasionally absurd parts of life.
Outside of Angell Designs, I’m drawn to pretty much anything that lets me explore story, identity, and imagination. I love writing (as previously discussed), pop culture, design theory, visual storytelling, and the kind of creative rabbit holes that begin with “I’ll just look this up quickly” and somehow ends three hours later with seventeen tabs open and a completely new personality trait.
Taylor Swift is one of those recurring rabbit holes. Not just the music, but the eras, storytelling, visual worlds, fan culture, symbolism, lyrics people turn into personal scripture… I love looking at pop culture through a design lens, because even the most glitter-covered cultural moments usually have something (anything) interesting to say about identity, branding, and belonging.
I’m also the sort of person who can look at an album, a building, a website, a fictional character, or even a colour palette and immediately start thinking about what it means.
This is either a gift…
Or an affliction…
Possibly both?
Life Outside the Laptop
Like many creative business owners, I spend a lot of time with my laptop nearby. But outside of client work, I’m trying (with varying levels of success, I’ll admit) to build a life that’s not entirely held together by deadlines, caffeine, and suspiciously optimistic to-do lists.
I love slow creative days, coffee shop working sessions, quiet writing time, and the occasional countryside stay or cat-sitting adventure that gives me time to breathe. I’m interested in design, architecture, education, urban planning, accessibility, and advocacy.
I also have a beautiful cat, Ivy, who holds the very official and highly respected title of Health & Wellness Officer. Ivy’s duties include emotional support, supervision, interruption, general judgement, and reminding me that no matter how important an email is, a cat sitting on the keyboard is legally more important.
My life is also shaped by study, curiosity, and a tendency to keep learning new things even if (and when) my calendar has politely requested I stop. I’m someone who likes understanding systems: why things are designed the way they are, who gets included, who gets missed, and what could be done differently.
That curiosity shows up absolutely everywhere! In my business. In my writing. In my advocacy. In my personal projects. In the way I can turn one passing thought into a full essay, a content series, or long conversation no one technically asked for but will definitely receive anyway.
Queerness & Disability
My identity isn’t something I tuck away from my work or personal life.
Being queer, disabled, and neurodivergent has shaped how I understand belonging, visibility, access, and care. It has also shaped how I understand exhaustion, resilience, community, and the pressure to appear more “together” than you feel.
For me, being visible is definitely not always easy. It is extremely vulnerable to speak openly about disability, mental health, queerness, survival, and the lived realities that sit behind the polished parts of a business or public identity.
It’s also really important.
It’s important because representation is the moment someone else sees a version of possibility they didn’t know was allowed.
I don’t share my story because every detail needs to become content. Some things are private. Some things are sacred. Some things are simply mine. But I believe in telling enough of the truth to make space for other people to breathe.
Human Ambition
I am extremely ambitious.
Maybe not in the shiny hustle-culture way that requires waking up at 5am, drinking green juice and pretending rest is for other people.
I want to build a meaningful creative life. I want to write books, design brands, advocate for inclusion, create spaces that feel more human, and keep growing Angell Designs in a way that won’t cost me my health, identity, or joy.
Living with disability and complex health needs means I’ve had to learn that success can’t be built on pretending capacity is unlimited. It has to be designed around reality, rest, access, flexibility, and truthfully? Around the knowledge that being a person has a body and brain is genuinely a full-time job.
This has changed how I think about business.
I’m not interested in building something that looks impressive from the outside but feels unliveable from the inside.
I’m interested in building something sustainable. Something values-led. Something that lets me do good work without disappearing into it completely.
That belief also shapes the way I support my clients.
Because if I have learnt anything, it’s that a brand shouldn’t be another performance you have to maintain. It should be a structure the fully supports you.
At the heart of my story isn’t just design, business, or authorship, but the ongoing practice of making meaning from lived experience and turning it into something other people can feel, use, and recognise themselves in.
I’m a queer and disabled creative whose work is shaped by writing, advocacy, curiosity, humour, accessibility, and the profound belief that people shouldn’t have to fight so hard to feel included.
Angell Designs is one expression of that belief:
A place where branding, website design, social media strategy, and print collateral become tools for clarity, care, and connection.
If my story resonates with you or you’re ready to build a brand that feels more human, more aligned, and more grounded in who you really are, book a discovery call with Angell Designs to talk through your next steps.
You can also explore my design services, visit the Angell Designs store, or head to my author site to read more of my writing.
