Joe Caroff
by Murray Crane
Joe Caroff, the designer behind some of cinema’s most enduring images, has died in New York aged 103.
In 1962 he turned the curve of a “7” into the barrel of a gun and created the 007 logo. The year before his West Side Story poster captured the raw energy of the film in fire escapes and figures, often wrongly credited to Saul Bass.
Earlier, under the name Joseph Karov, he designed the jacket for Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead—a reminder of his ability to distil narrative into a single image.
He worked with speed and economy, trusting the first line, the first mark. Nothing fussy, nothing wasted.
He was part of the golden era of commercial art—pre-graphic design, pre-computer—when a hand and an idea were enough.
Old School Commercial Art.
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