While living in Kansas City's Historic Northeast neighborhood, I began carrying a five-gallon bucket on walks with our dogs to pick up the litter that, somehow, reappeared daily. Our usual route took us around the high school complex, so mixed in with the trash was plenty of interesting ephemera, too—handwritten notes, schoolwork, art doodles—that I started squirreling away for potential future projects. Quite a few of those scraps made their way into the packaging for Hospital Grade's Written Axe to Trigger.

I became a designer because I wanted to design book jackets. I'd done a couple of book projects, but mostly designing albums was the closest I'd come. Written Axe to Trigger gave me an opportunity to bring the two together. I had an old cloth-bound book I'd collected along the way, and I scanned its covers, binding, and other surfaces to use as the foundation for the artwork. A stock illustration of a dragon became the dominant visual element, while handwritten notes, weathered paper, and other collected scraps filled out the package, giving it the appearance of a well-worn book.