First sketches, San Francisco 1997
In between running tags (delivering packages) as a bike messenger I would sketch out ideas I had going on in my head. I had made band stickers for years, these sketches where my first time trying to figure out how a sticker illustrating card door danger could work.
This was a "back burner" project of mine for a while since I didn’t have enough money to make stickers but hoped one day I would find a way. It was about a year before I got back to my original sketches. At this point I firmed up the Death character. It would still be years and a few more sketches before I'd actually go to print.
More sketching 1998
By this time I had a friend pose for the bicyclists and traced some type by hand to get the message to pop without competing with the imagery.
I started adding action words in comic book type. For a while I thought POW! was the way to go. I wanted to have the license plate say "Any street 666" but It caused the illustration to bee too busy and distracted from the main message. At this point I started realizing the image needed some kind of context, like a city-scape. The big starburst graphic wasn’t helping to make the image recognizable at a glance.
1999
After trying "Slam" and "Pow!" I settled on Kachunk. Here you can see the street scene better. This basically became the first version of the sticker. I added some dot matrix patterns to add texture in the silk screening process.
Sticker V1 2001—2004
This was the first version of the sticker. This version had the big "Kachunk" lettering representing that distinct sound of the door latch releasing so many of us have been conditioned to fear. After printing I realized I forgot to sign it! The first run was 1,000 and there was a second printing of 1,000 in 2002.
V2 2004 — 2005
Updated the illustration to 200 the point more clear and reprint better. Added a white border and a "Jerry Business" credit at the bottom. Removed "Kachunk", changed the perspective and focused more on the point of head / door contact. Ran 1,000 like this.
V3 2005 — present day
The first version to carry the web address. Added a black border and redrew parts of the illustration so it would screen print better.