Film News
James Bond Logo Designer Dies At The Age Of 103
Creator Of A True Design Classic Passes Away
News has reached us that Joe Caroff, designer of the original James Bond logo, has just died at the age of 103. Here’s a few details courtesy of our friends at The Hollywood Reporter…
Joe Caroff, the unheralded graphic designer whose iconic creations included James Bond‘s 007 gun logo, posters for West Side Story and A Hard Day’s Night and typography for Last Tango in Paris, Manhattan and Rollerball, died Sunday. He was 103.
Caroff died one day short of birthday No. 104 in hospice care at his home in Manhattan, his sons, Peter and Michael Caroff, told The New York Times.
Caroff also cooked up the opening title sequences for such films as Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far (1977), Volker Schlöndorff’s Death of a Salesman (1985), Gene Saks’ Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) and Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), which pulled back to reveal a crown of thorns.
His portfolio of posters included those for a dozen or so Woody Allen films plus Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad (1963), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), Too Late the Hero (1970), Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Cabaret (1972), An Unmarried Woman (1978) and Gandhi (1982).
Plus, Caroff designed the logo and title signature for Orion Pictures, several album covers for Decca Records and the logos for ABC’s Olympic coverage (with the network’s circular letters and five Olympic rings intertwined), ABC News and 20/20 (styled to resemble a pair of eyeglasses).
The one quality he wanted his work to have was “effervescence,” he said in the 2022 TCM documentary By Design: The Joe Caroff Story. “I want it to have a life, it doesn’t want to lie there flat.”
“He said, ‘I need a little decorative thing on top,’” Caroff recalled in 2021. “I knew [Bond’s] designation was 007, and when I wrote the stem of the seven, I thought, ‘That looks like the handle of a gun to me.’ It was very spontaneous, no effort, it was an instant piece of creativity.”
Joseph Caroff was 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 “could make a plaster wall look like a wood wall … it wasn’t as if he just painted it, he rendered it,” he said.
Read the full obituary here
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