the “Death Pizza” shipping/handling art collection

I used to work in a shipping/receiving center (back in 2004, at a now-defunct family-owned music store in Bryn Mawr). I appreciate the unique kind of boredom and goofy inspiration that can germinate in the repetitive, “hurry-up-and-wait” hustle working shipping and handling.

As I find myself ordering an increasing amount of goods from large corporations that automate their processing/shipping on assembly lines, I realized that small stores that pack/ship their own products deserve some special love, so I got the idea to engage them with a bit of creative fun, to share a bit of (still-)human joy beyond the cardboard and tape and distance between us.

So in 2022, one day, when ordering some musical toy, I added into the Notes for Shipper’ to “if you have the time and inspiration, take sharpie and draw on my box your interpretation to the art-prompt…“

and the best idea I could come up with for something simultaneously silly, evocative, abstract, and totally relatable.

“…Death Pizza“

And, to my delight, the shipper obliged. So I started to repeat the process. Over the years/purchases, I’ve collected the works here online, referring potential contributors to view previous submissions. With time/aggregation/feedback, the quality and diversity have sweetened.

Each is hand-drawn by a real person, a stranger, who has only been prompted by text, ususally in the “notes to Shipper” section of some online-out process, with the following:

If you have the time and creative urge, please decorate the packaging with your interpretation of the art-prompt “Death Pizza.” Your art/work can can be added to a gallery of shipping/handling workers like you at my online blog, https://thepatrickrichardson.com/death-pizza/. Cheers !

So, here is my gallery, in chronological order, of interpretation-drawings that lovely hands behind this shipping and handling have been kind enough to share.

#001, From Syntaur

#002, From some eBay Seller

#003, From Drum Factory Direct

#004, From Drum Factory Direct

#005, From Music Go Round #3

…this one was a BLAST. When I made this order, there was not a “shipper comment” field to offer the prompt… so I called their office and talked to the manager. He said, “yeah, I’ll relay the message to my guy in shipping… he has a degree in Fine Art… he’ll love it.”

Overview of the main panel w/ 4 of the 5 images compiled on this box

Detail 1, I love the cheese-dripping scythe.

Detail 2, pizza-as-threat. I love the crust/hair and wallet chain.

Detail 3: a proper single-panel cartoon…w/ pun !

Detail 4: A logo worthy of a shirt.

Detail 5, “pizza as Death”. Permanent marker on bare cardboard currogate. Here, the figure of Death has a face of pizza pie, intact-but-pre-sliced, with no specific suggestion of toppings to any specific palate; echoing and affirming the sentiment that “Death comes for us All”. The figure’s speech reinforces this, commanding our worship upon our inevitable fate. Solid lines upon hand sand weapon evoke flat, cartooish imagery, while carefully-flowing stroke-fill of cloack suggest fabric in more verite’ realism.

#006, From DrumFactory Direct (again)

The people at Drum Factory Direct continue to be game for my requests.

“Death Pizza” from DFD. Permanent marker on white wax currogate. A figure of Grim Reaper / Delivery boy brings sustenance and doom. Thin shaky lines embed the figure w/ disarming fragility, even humanity. The choice of background, white corrugate, enhances the starkness of the composition.

#007, from Music Go Round in Duluth, GA

Bought a little 2000-s era portable guitar effect/trainer (the Zoom PFX 9003) from Music Go Round in Duluth GA. The website for MGR’s doesn’t allow for “special instructions” at the point of checkout, so I had to send request via response to purchase-confirmation email. Looks like the Tanner in Shipping and Handling had fun and came through.

Got a nice note/acknowledgement of the Death Pizza project.

Detail of the work by Tanner at Music Go Round, Duluth, GA. The soft lines and cartoonish brushwork create an childish, innocent aesthetic that belies the dark subject matter. The crust is filled in full-black, suggesting pain of deep burns, yet shaped conspicuously like the pompadour popular among goth/emo/horror fans, adding a playful take on “irony” for the more mature viewer.

#008 From Alternate Mode

When I (finally) got a DrumKat multi-pad, I bought it used and had it shipped directly to Alternate mode for inspection/repair/upgrades. Their admin, Danielle, was super helpful and friendly. I told her about my box-art collection, and she added her art to the box she re-used from the original seller.

took a “selfie” w/ shipping-room art by Danielle form Alternate Mode
close-up of “Death Pizza”, work in ballpoint pen on plain cardboard currogate, by Danielle of Alternate Mode. Playful use of stick-figure aesthetics complemented by playful detail and bird-imagery giving the pizza-slice-as-head it’s own mouth, suggesting ominous role-reversal of food and eat-er… figure holds up an amorphous weapon dripping with fresh kill.

…Thanks Danielle !

#009 by from Music Go Round in Aurora, CO

I found a great deal at the Aurora CO MusicGoGRound for a used “PockIt ClockIt” by Moffenzeef Modular, a pocket-sized device to receive analog clocking pulses, and divide/randomize them for my little Pocket Operators and such… Joe and friends at MGR Aurora were happy to reduce the default shipping on such a small/light item, and responded to my email that they’d make it a “group collaboration,”

Excellent work…all (three ?) of you !

perspective shot of intact triptych of “Death Pizza” from Aurora, permanent marker on bare currogate.
the side panel of Aurora triptych portrays a stark monochrome iconigraphy, the eye- and nose-shapes mixing into the pizza-toppings, creating a playful strain between the two images.
Top-lid panel of Aurora triptych employs 2-color red/black contrast in both figure and font. Pizza slice figure/mask makes clear references to jack-o-lanters and other macabre forms. Text treatement cleverly omits red hilight from an all-black “I”, giving “pizza” an ominous first-person identification.
In the front-panel of Aurora triptych, we see the meal embody the face of the victim of disembodied violence. Usage of red in both toppings and open-wound create ambiguity between “savory” and “shock.” The stark, brow-less eyes seem simultaneously desperate and lifeless, and the barely-crossed-eyes inward positioning of pupils suggest only subliminal silliness amid the slaughter-slicing of savory sustenance.

Thanks to Joe and Everyone at MusicGoRound, Aurora.

#010, direct from PhonicBloom

Small scale maker(s) PhonicBloom create a variety of “pocket format digital synthesizers for your unique sound creations and meditation.” I was smitten with the design of their MmXx t-Ape device, as it had retro packaging on a very futuristic form of rhythmic noise. When I ordered their “MmXx t-Ape” product, a byte-beat synthesizer, I added my (now standard) request for contribution to to their bespoke ordering page.
The order made the trip from Ireland to Philadelphia USA faster than expected, and when I opened the package, I saw, staring back at me…

…a personal drawing of a pizza, topped with skull, topped with spider.

…inserted among the whole care-page spread, in addition to get getting the device, the tin-case, and the Ape sticker.

Awesome !
Thanks so much to everyone at PhonicBloom for your creative products and participation.

#011 – From Music Go Round in Duluth GA

…buying a microphone and knee-mounted practice-pad for incredible discount, I requested the Death Pizza treatment, and the friendly people in Duluth were happy to oblige.


an adorable pizza-faced Grim Reaper with tarot-card framing

#012 from Music Go Round in Fort Collins CO

Buying a portable audio-looper for one of my (many) “musical dollhouses” the nice people of Fort Collins decorated the box with a quilt of Death-y/Pizza-y motifs. perfect for this years Halloween.

a tableu of assorted moribund and imagery adorn the box from Fort Collins…

#013 from Tanner at Music Go Round in Duluth, GA (… AGAIN !)

…and now we have a first RETURN contributor. This is actually the THIRD from this specific store in Duluth, but a self-identified/gracious second a specific person. Tanner from the warehouse of Music-Go-Round saw the opportunity to return, and even wrote a nice note on the packing slip.

MGR - duluth 2
“Second time I have gotten to partake in this project. Hope all is well” – Tommy

Thank you Tanner. In many respects, so much is well.

Close-up of Tanner’s “Death Delivery”.

Tanner has presented us with a novel representation with a reaper-skull driving a hearse that does side-work delivering hot pies in between shifts moving cold corpses. Hail Tanner !

#014, ANOTHER from Drum Factory Direct, “Supreme Death Pizza”

When one of my stage-hand friends said the (magic) words, “I just want to get RID of this drum set,” I drove him to his storage locker to salvage his kit (including Pork Pie drums and a mess of hardware and cymbals). The Project required assorted replacement parts (brackets and lot of fresh tension rods), so we have another order from Drum Factory Direct.

And it seems the nice people at Drum Factory Direct appreciate, if not remember, the Death Pizza thing, so we (may) have ANOTHER Repeat Artist submission. Their charming personal note on the packing slip suggests the work is entilted “Supreme Death Pizza”, but offers no author name, nomme de plume, or alias. Hence, this charming contribution is titled, but anonymous, so we remain unsure if this is indeed a former artist.

Overview of box art with personalized note of veneration and gratitude to the Project.

a close-up/detail of “Supreme Death Pizza” reveals the use of 3 distinct colors of toppings, a rare use of chromatic richness among this gallery.

This work feature of multiple colored dots scattered within a soft circle to readily suggest “Supreme pizza toppings”. However, the “pizza” archetype here is positioned as “mouth” centering the (angry) face of this simple/abstract/menacing character. Such artful duality and conflict between “pizza as mouth” VS “pizza in mouth”. Is this Creature made of pizza, or just eating pizza. A clever reference to the cliche “you are what you eat,” now juxtaposed with impish hostility and (named) Supremacy.

An inspired masterwork of the American zeitgeist !

#015 …follow up from DrumFactoryDirect…

…the tension-rods I ordered from DrumFactory Direct for the Lil’Squeaker kit’s snare were 1/4″ too short, so I had to put in a follow-up order, which afforded a follow-up box sketch for this ever growing pile.

DrumFactoryDirect takes ball-point pen RIGHT to the cardboard BEFORE tape… it’s like they’re enjoying this…
…impressive design choice, with a minimalist representation of (plain) Pizza, and expressionless face, but with relatively gritty detail on the medieval flail’s abundant spikes and metal linkage.

Thanks DFD !

016 – MusicGoRound in LittleTon

For 30+ years of playing the drumkit “exclusively”…meaning “never learning guitar, piano, proper singing technique…or any other instrument to give me alterate roles in a band…and NO, it seems buying up and piling up drum machines and synthesizers will never go beyond a kind of musical masturbation.

Well, a few years ago, my dear friend Reed (who is currently the PM at Philadelphia’s Mann Center) gave me an electric bass, and it has remained in my basement for years. This year, I’m determined to start learning the bass… or at least invest in equipment toward that intention.

So, when I picked a Zoom “B3” unit (flexible mulit-effects, metronome, looper, with built in DI) to go with my fresh copy of Simandle Method… I found the best price of the day at Music Go Round in LittleTon.

It seems they somehow picked up telepathically on the cosmic-scales of procrastination, and they decorated their Death Pizza submission to show this.

the box decoarated on all sides, with a scene of the heavens on the top lid, and a cultish pizza face sigil on the boxes front “face”. This thing arrived feeling almost alive.
opposite the sigil on the box “face”, the box’s “hindquarters” feature a tribal design (tramp stamp of sorts) and a weaponized bass guitar (upon it’s big “bottom”).
close-up of the pizza face-sigil. The Pizza-moon in lies in the box-heavens, outsdise the protection of the tri-gram’s, seen by All-Seeing Eye, but safe from the All-Cutting Blade
Close-up of the “Box Butt”… These warehouse workers know what I have to do, and it feels like they’re taunting me as much as encouraging…
looming clouds and zooming asteroids adorn the empty skies of the box top. Their intendend symbolism is not lost on me. I literally had to “reach for (into) the stars” to begin my practice learning the bass.

…so, seeing the writing on the wall (box) from the sages at LittleTon, I must do what I have to do…I will put the bass where I will more often see it, leave it connected and sound ready, and prepare myself to practice.

Thank you, WareHousePeople of Littleton, for your fine prices and fine(r) art-share.

017 – From DrumFactory Direct

I was seeking to buy some RJ-50 accessory arms to turn (parts from) a Pearl IKON drum rack into a “giant sit-down DJ table/drumset”…

I actually found these parts $10 cheaper and closer at Drums Etc up by Lititz…but they were limited by 6-8 week delivery…so where Time is worth more than Money, I had cancelled that order and went back to Drum Factory Direct, who had the part to me in 2 days (around the weekend).

Once AGAIN, the folks at DFD coming in with a charming contribution.

Death Pizza #17, from DFD,

When adding THIS one to the archive, I notice it bears striking style, composition, and use-of-color to #14, also from DFD. Admirable use of thematic consistency (and colorful markers). Also of note is that the prior #14 brandished death with a pistol…where the newer #17 wields a deadly sword with authentic ninja-style headband. Subtle suggestions of future-retro savagery, if not time-travel plot-devices within Drum Factory Direct’s brand of consistently “supreme” Death Pizza-s (in both artistic charm, and in red/yellow complexion of “toppings”).

THIS is the kind of effort that keeps me buying from local/American businesses.

…MORE ?

I hope to keep this fun exchange going for as long as I can.

Who knows, maybe you’ll see your own work show up here.