Joe Caroff, James Bond and avoiding AI slop
Joe Caroff was the graphic designer behind the double-0-seven logo and hundreds of classic movie posters. After Caroff’s recent death, Tom Ellis, Director of Ad Creative at Yahoo, asks whether skills like the famous designer’s will remain in demand, or whether AI will become creativity's Blofeld.
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Last month, legendary graphic designer Joe Caroff died, aged 103. It was one hell of an innings, and he leaves a legacy that has touched more lives than he could have possibly imagined.
From the James Bond logo to movie posters for classics like West Side Story, Gandhi and The Last Temptation of Christ, Caroff helped create instantly recognisable branding and lettering for over 300 blockbuster movies.
Caroff helped create instantly recognisable branding and lettering for over 300 blockbuster movies.
His legacy is long and arguably unrivalled, and a stark reminder that, in 2025, with AI increasingly being used in the creative process, there is no substitute for graphic design excellence.
Above: Caroff designed hundreds of movie posters for films, including the one for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
The Caroff dilemma
Let’s be real - AI is everywhere now, or will be soon. But overuse or replacement of human designers is a recipe for disaster.
The ease of use of AI, the thing that makes it so easy to churn out content, is actually increasing the risk to brand viability. The time taken by Caroff to refine, iterate and strip a design down to its purest essence stands in sharp contrast to the instant outputs of many of the generative systems we use today.
Bond’s iconic logo wasn’t a clever command written into a chatbot. It was a long and hard-worked distillation of a character, a mood, a cultural moment.
Bond’s iconic logo wasn’t a clever command written into a chatbot. It was a long and hard-worked distillation of a character, a mood, a cultural moment. Sketching out the numbers, Caroff had noticed that a pencilled guideline looked like a gun barrel and refined it into one of cinema’s most enduring icons. Genius can simply come from the human eye catching an accident, something AI can’t "see".
Above: The 007 logo, with its seven morphed into the barrel of a gun, wasn't "a clever command written into a chatbot" but a hard-won distillation of the Bond character by a talented designer.
Or think of the classic West Side Story poster, with each word joined by New York-style fire escapes, creating the bleak urban backdrop to this famous Romeo and Juliet-inspired musical. Its simplicity and bluntness translate so much meaning that a machine alone could never convey.
AI can play a role, but only if deployed with three guiding principles.
AI lacks that human judgment, the ability to know when to hold back, to know when less is more, and when a logo or poster should hint at a larger message rather than be a blitz for attention. Without that restraint, we risk a flood of cheap, shiny sameness. We risk more of that 'AI slop' that young people are calling out for cluttering their social media feeds today.
Adopting to AI
This is not to say that AI is the Blofeld to our human Bond. As with every new technology, it's about how we adopt it. Refusing to engage with it is futile, but over-relying on it is equally reckless. In the advertising landscape AI is fantastic at iterating and personalising content en masse, taking volumes of data and using it to reach individuals with tailored creative.
But, without a core brand, a central human idea, or a base level of manual input from a strong brand and design team, the outcome will be lacklustre at best. AI can play a role, but only if deployed with three guiding principles: creatives must be in the driving seat, transparency has to be deployed, and subtlety can be a secret weapon.
Above: Caroff’s West Side Story poster translates meaning that an AI robot could never convey.
AI should never be used as a wholesale replacement for human judgment. It is a quiet and diligent assistant, automating the repetitive, the background, the data-driven, so that human designers can focus on the spark of originality that makes a brand endure.
Caroff’s famous approach of stripping creative down to the essential - “the annihilation of the extraneous” - illustrates the artistry of editing. For the machines, that still requires human input.
The next Bond
James Bond itself is in a time of flux and disruption. So, what could the next reboot look like? When the logo, the posters and the entire brand identity for the next era of 007 is conceived, will audiences accept something that feels churned out by a machine? Or will they demand that same, carefully crafted, instantly iconic feel that Caroff and his peers built into their work?
The goal is always to cut costs, but the risk with starting from an AI baseline is that nothing will stand out.
Brands face the same crossroads. The goal is always to cut costs, but the risk with starting from an AI baseline is that nothing will stand out. Strong brands require memorability, discipline and, above all, a human sense of taste. AI cannot create legacy - it can only remix the past.
Joe Caroff’s work reminds us what is at stake. Brand identities need to be timeless, not just functional. If brands want to last, they need to tread carefully with AI and balance innovation with integrity.
The future of design lies in knowing when to let AI help and when to step aside and let humans create. Because, in the end, it’s people, not machines, who define culture.
