{"id":77603,"date":"2025-08-18T01:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T01:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/77603\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T01:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T01:24:07","slug":"james-bond-007-logo-designer-was-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/77603\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bond 007 Logo Designer Was 103"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJoe Caroff, the unheralded graphic designer whose iconic creations included James Bond<\/a>\u2018s 007 gun logo, posters for\u00a0West Side Story\u00a0and\u00a0A Hard Day\u2019s Night\u00a0and typography for\u00a0Last Tango in Paris, Manhattan and Rollerball, died Sunday. He was 103.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroff died\u00a0one day short of birthday No. 104 in hospice care at his home in Manhattan, his sons, Peter and Michael Caroff, told<\/a> The New York Times.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroff also cooked up the opening title sequences for such films as Richard Attenborough\u2019s\u00a0A Bridge Too Far\u00a0(1977), Volker Schl\u00f6ndorff\u2019s Death of a Salesman\u00a0(1985), Gene Saks\u2019\u00a0Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) and Martin Scorsese<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0The Last Temptation of Christ\u00a0(1988), which pulled back to reveal a crown of thorns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis portfolio of posters included those for a dozen or so Woody Allen<\/a> films plus\u00a0Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma\u2019s Hung You in the Closet and I\u2019m Feelin\u2019 So Sad\u00a0(1963),\u00a0A Fistful of Dollars\u00a0(1964),\u00a0For a Few Dollars More\u00a0(1965),\u00a0Too Late the Hero\u00a0(1970),\u00a0Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Cabaret\u00a0(1972),\u00a0An Unmarried Woman\u00a0(1978) and Gandhi (1982).<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus, Caroff designed the logo and title signature for Orion Pictures, several album covers for Decca Records and the logos for ABC\u2019s Olympic coverage (with the network\u2019s circular letters and five Olympic rings intertwined), ABC News and\u00a020\/20\u00a0(styled to resemble a pair of eyeglasses).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe one quality he wanted his work to have was \u201ceffervescence,\u201d he said in the 2022 TCM<\/a> documentary\u00a0By Design: The Joe Caroff Story. \u201cI want it to have a life, it doesn\u2019t want to lie there flat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his first movie job \u2014 he would work on more than 300 campaigns during his career \u2014 United Artists executive David Chasman hired him to design the poster for\u00a0West Side Story\u00a0(1961), then asked him to come up with the letterhead for a publicity release tied to the first Bond film,\u00a0Dr. No. (Chasman had designed the poster for the 1962 movie.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said, \u2018I need a little decorative thing on top,’\u201d Caroff recalled<\/a> in 2021. \u201cI knew [Bond\u2019s] designation was 007, and when I wrote the stem of the seven, I thought, \u2018That looks like the handle of a gun to me.\u2019 It was very spontaneous, no effort, it was an instant piece of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by Ian Fleming\u2019s favorite gun, a Walther PPK, Caroff attached a barrel and trigger to the 007 and for his work received $300, the going rate for such an assignment, he said. Even though the logo, though altered in subtle ways, has been featured on every Bond film and on millions of pieces of merchandise, he received no credit, no residuals, no royalties.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe logo did, however, bring him \u201ca lot of business,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like a little publicity piece for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJoseph Caroff\u00a0was born on Aug. 18, 1921, in Linden, New Jersey. He had four older sisters and a younger brother. His father, Julius, was a painter who \u201ccould make a plaster wall look like a wood wall \u2026 it wasn\u2019t as if he just painted it, he\u00a0rendered\u00a0it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile attending Brooklyn\u2019s Pratt Institute, he assisted French graphic designer Jean Carlu on the making of the 1942 propaganda poster \u201cAmerica\u2019s Answer! Production\u201d for the U.S. Office of War Information. It featured a large, gloved hand on a wrench. (Carlu, whose right arm had been severed in a Paris trolley accident, had designed the poster for the 1921 Charlie Chaplin<\/a> film\u00a0The Kid).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt Carlu there were no set times,\u201d he told Thilo von Debschitz in a 2021 interview for\u00a0Eye\u00a0magazine<\/a>. \u201cSometimes he asked me to come at eight in the morning, sometimes not before 10 in the evening. I was able to take part in large design projects and learn a lot of different techniques from him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroff graduated in 1942 after majoring in advertising design, being elected class president for three straight years and serving as art editor on the school yearbook,\u00a0Prattonia.<\/p>\n

\n\tFive days after getting married, Caroff in 1943 headed overseas to serve in the U.S. Army, and he would load propaganda leaflets that he had worked on with Carlu months earlier into planes that would drop them all over Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tBack home after 36 months away, Caroff landed a job at Alan Berni & Associates, then opened his own business designing book jackets. The first one he got paid for was for the cover of Norman Mailer\u2019s debut novel,\u00a0The Naked and the Dead<\/a>, first published in 1948.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved doing that work,\u201d he said in the TCM documentary, \u201cprimarily because it was an opportunity to read a book, to interpret it and then come up with a cover design that I felt best expressed what was in that book.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroff got the idea for the\u00a0West Side Story\u00a0poster \u2014 it famously features textured letters that resemble bricks and the ballet-like outlines of lovers Maria and Tony on fire escapes \u2014 after seeing clips of the film. (He said it helped that he was a West Sider in real life.)<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of his fun touches on the poster for The Beatles\u2019\u00a0A Hard Day\u2019s Night\u00a0was putting a knot in a guitar handle. \u201cIt frankly was just a whim,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t do anything except to create a quirky note, nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter 18 years going it alone, he founded the agency J. Caroff Associates in 1965, and he and his 22-person staff, working out of offices on East 57th Street in Manhattan, often handled 10 film projects at a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs von Debschitz related in an interview for\u00a0Print<\/a>, \u201cHis poster for\u00a0Tattoo\u00a0\u2014 a [1981] erotic thriller produced by [frequent client] Joseph E. Levine \u2014 caused a scandal because it depicted a naked woman with bound feet. Feminists (and probably pubescent men) tore the posters down in the subway, which led to even more publicity. Levine told Caroff, \u2018You made out with your fucking poster better than I made out with my fucking movie.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tHe invented an undulating typeface for\u00a0Last Tango in Paris\u00a0(1972) and came up with treatments that used roller skates and high rises to spell out\u00a0Rollerball\u00a0and\u00a0Manhattan\u00a0for those 1975 and \u201979 movies, respectively. He also fashioned a train out of the title for the poster for\u00a0The Great Train Robbery\u00a0(1978).<\/p>\n

\n\tHe retired in 2006 at age 86 to concentrate on painting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to his sons, survivors include his daughters-in-law, Ruth and Cynthia, and his granddaughter, Jennifer. His wife of 81 years, Phyllis, a longtime professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work whom he met at a New Year\u2019s Eve party, died in February, four days shy of 101.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter decades of being ignored by Bond producers, Caroff received an Omega watch with an 007 engraving from Barbara Broccoli<\/a>, Michael G. Wilson<\/a> and EON Productions as a 100th birthday gift.<\/p>\n

\n\tCaroff was asked if he had saved any of his original renderings over the years. Think how much those would be worth! Alas, he had tossed pretty much everything.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cProbably not a smart thing to do, but I never attached what I was doing to any greatness,\u201d he said. \u201cI was just working, period. I was just being an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Caroff, the unheralded graphic designer whose iconic creations included James Bond\u2018s 007 gun logo, posters for\u00a0West Side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4275,49,48,47239,75,25926,27370,42998,11487,47240,47241],"class_list":{"0":"post-77603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-barbara-broccoli","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-charlie-chaplin","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-james-bond","14":"tag-martin-scorsese","15":"tag-michael-g-wilson","16":"tag-obituaries","17":"tag-tcm","18":"tag-woody-allen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}