How To Make Garments Entertaining?

Visual exploration of The Canis; story telling through comics.

One of the reasons I don’t do too much ‘me working on this’ content, is the bulk of it is,
me sat behind a laptop occasionally staring into space,
me on the bathroom floor at midnight scribbling notes or
me being dragged through the woods by two dogs while deep in thought.

None of this is very TikTok friendly. But a consequence of having a job, dealing with life and building mythology.

The Canis

How could I make clothing entertaining? This was the question that started it all.

Well, there were a couple of big questions I was circling; how would you talk about your brand if there were no social media. Buffering on the second.

Some days of thought later I started mapping Mongrel Logic’s core range to games.

I had already been thinking of the drawings as characters, some of them having travelled with me across continents for the past 20 years, and that world was somewhat born back in the 90s and early 2000s.

I had this idea of Mongrel Logic trading cards for the longest time and not found a home for it yet, these two ideas merged and I found myself on the bathroom floor at midnight, (running a bath I don’t just go sit there) and scribbling notes on Pokémon, GTA, Minecraft, etc.

What about those games made people love them?

The language

I’m very good at some things, designing and systems is one of them; I build side entrances and back doors everywhere to allow me to pivot story, language, etc.

I already had some ‘for those who’ language in there, it sounded cool but had no real direction.
It suddenly found a purpose, the world started forming behind my eyes.
At the end of April “The Canis” had emerged, although it was called “The Pack” for about five seconds. And “hunt the logic” was floating for a moment.

The next steps were figuring out which character/design played which role in a newly evolving ARG with garments.


A couple of days of arguing with myself later, everyone had settled into their new roles, and it was like a light switched on. Things started making sense again. (First time in months)

The Canes {F}

The Canes are modelled after gravity, electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force. I circled this like a vulture for days.
Kar, Mur and Torn have Latin origins. For no other reason other than it sounded cool and like it could be unearthed, ancient.

While I was forming The Canes, I was simultaneously working on Spineless; the design that nearly broke everything, I wanted the world to carry meaning.
Spineless represents the real-world issues infecting The Canis.
If it worked, The Canis could have a repeatable ‘condition’ which I only realised after was kind of perfect; because jellyfish only appear in unstable conditions.

The Canes were forming while this condition was spreading and testing the world.

We came out the other side, tested, triumphed. Protected by tokens. Governed by The Canes, three cosmological forces that fight against conditions like Spinless.  

Oh. The irony.

Sun Eater is next

I put that stupid doodle on a garment because I had had the store for about 3 months, I had no idea what I was building but I was showing up every day to build it, and this stupid grinning face kept staring at me.

I coloured him in grey; by the way; grey drawings don’t do so well on socials. Hahaha.

I put him in the store. I was working with GPT4 at the time. It used to have a ton of high school energy, it said and I quote, “bwaaaahahahahaaaa, I ate the sun but I’m sorry”

That’s how Sun Eater got his name. I used to have that quote on a tee, it may return. Right now, Sun Eater is traversing the universe, munching his way through stars, heading in our direction.

I have around 7 iterations of him, none of them are where I want him to be.

I was watching a video on dark matter the other night and have had a brain wave that I plan on trying later today. Look out for the comic on socials, if I’ve got it right, you’ll see him.

And if it works, then he truly is coming.

Comic book socials

 Finally, finally, after months of trying to define what the hell I want to do with my socials that doesn’t involve my face.
The Canis has finally taken over my feed.
The Canis speaks. The Canes are governing. And Logic is transmitting.

Why we’re building the engine before the designer range.

Abstract hand-drawn black hole sketch representing time, gravity, and systems pulling inward, an early visual study tied to the foundations of Mongrel Logic.

Every brand would love to start with the hero product, the piece that looks like the brand. We do too, but for us that’s the destination, not the starting point.

This isn’t just about organic cotton.

It’s about organic growth. Everything you see here has been built without investors, without paid promotion and without shortcuts. Not because those things are inherently wrong, but because designing out waste is the backbone of how this business works. Including financial waste.

Proof of concept before expression.

Building the engine first has allowed us to test out the logic of the system early. Not just sustainability, but design language, production decisions and how the work is received. It’s also how early signals are built.
It’s a way to learn without burning capital, and to refine without panic. This is how the Designer range gets funded without debt, without rushed decisions, and without compromising the thing its meant to be.

Starting at the “wrong” end.

Most brands build authorship and architecture after they launch, often because the first product has been funded. As it stands today, this little business has no debt, and that’s an intentional constraint. It means doing things in a different order. At times the harder order.

Mongrel Logic.

There’s a reason this business is called Mongrel Logic. I am Mongrel Logic.
It’s frustrating to work with systems that reward speed over thought.  But it’s also incredibly effective at testing whether something can hold its shape.

Time is part of the design.

Time.
And we’re right back to the first blog and where this all started. Time to build the engine. Time to see what holds. Time.
The designer range is coming. Not as a gamble, but the next logical phase.

On a personal note. I’m not good at time. I’d rather walk than wait to catch the bus. I’ll get there faster.  

A Christmas Of Refinement.

Lilith’s Corsage in progress

Much to the annoyance of everyone around me, the amount of work I have been doing to build this little engine that could, has kept me up so late that I almost saw Santa.

Have you ever dreamed in ctrl c, ctrl v?

Neither had I, until I started building the shop. I now find myself waking in the night with tension from holding down Ctrl +C and not pasting it, because technically, I’m asleep. This should give you some indication of how many alt texts, descriptions, documents, versions, oh my!

The little engine that could.

Four days of drawing later, our latest design, Lilith’s Corsage, is now on the website. I wanted to do a lily, but not floral in the traditional sense. I pulled elements from older drawings and folded them into the piece; that’s where the checkerboard petals come from, for example.

I guess now the test of the dream begins.

Not the ctrl copy and paste dream. The whole thing. I’ve tried breaking it, and it stands. And now I’m about to roll the proverbial boulder down the hill.

Too many metaphors?

This is the first chance I’ve had to flex in two weeks of product design, store development, and endless strategy work. So yes, too many metaphors. My brain is trying to wake up after long hours of repetitive tasks. It’s not quite there yet.

A refined store front and some new pyjamas.

That’s really…a wonderful thing.

Mongrel Logic is 2 months old!

Mongrel Logic Cupcake with Logo icing (not its not real, how else do you give a website and a brand a cake?)

I’m not going to lie, that was painful. It was fun, but also painful. I have built a shop, rebuilt a website, more times than I can remember, our designs are rolling. Fixed embarrassing errors, all of them, I hope.

We’ve got new designs coming

I’m working on our next design as, well…not as I type that would make me an octopus. But now. Currently.

Now it’s time to spread our wings

It’s been a massive amount of work to get here. I’ve been up till ungodly hours sorting out everything from marketing strategies to future Core Range designs and our Limited-Edition range.

It’s all been worth it.

I started the blog two years ago with no direction and just waffled on for over a year before I developed any of this. I have some loyal bloody crew that have watched me do this from the start and talk about everything from cutting down trees to the thing that sparked the cap idea. I’ve built this in public, which we will continue to do. I started with nothing, I started before the idea, and here we are.

Excited for 2026

There is a lot in store for 2026, we have artists we will feature, we have the designer range, launching next year and will continue to grow our circular, sustainable, deliciously soft organic cotton designs, bringing you circular, wearable art that’s been built to endure.

Subscribe to The Studio Dispatch for more.

That’s our newsletter.

It was hard to stop, this digital cupcake features our first design. I’m hungry now.

A Quick Note on Our Studio Hum

DJ at work

Since changing all my social profiles to business accounts, I can no longer post my videos to my favourite songs, boo! And no disrespect, but it’s hard to find something royalty free that is incredible.

I became an overnight sound designer.

Which was a lot of fun. Finding sounds, editing them, finding samples playing around with layering; weird, random sounds coming out the office. The problem is, it’s very time consuming. And I am all about time saving. So, I made a sound. We have an official sound. My days of sound designing are over.
Our base layer came from a Sample Focus clip called “Gospel Choir Hum” by user2866535286451.
We adjusted it, shaped it, sped it slightly, and paired it with a bark that sounded exactly like Zen; turning a simple sample into the signature Mongrel Logic™ sound.

The shortest career ever

Well, it was fun while it lasted. But I can’t tell you how relieved I am to just be focused on visual content again. It’s cut my content creation time in half. And I’m rather proud of it. Woof.

How to Start a Business When You Don’t Even Know What It Is Yet

Designer drawing with a dog sleeping nearby ; early days of building the Mongrel Logic brand from scratch

There’s this peculiar phase at the start of any venture; a time when your ideas are still nebulous and even you struggle to make sense of them. You’ve technically started a business, but you don’t know what it is yet, it’s like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. When I first started, I felt like I was wandering in the dark. You kind of hope people don’t ask you what you do; because you still don’t know and by now, you feel like you should have it all figured out.

Why did I start out with nothing?

When I started The Pavement Special, I had no capital, only a basic skills assessment, and a gut feeling. I had an eight-year-old phone that was so outdated that watching a video on YouTube was a frustrating experience, with ads overlaying the video and audio for both playing simultaneously. My laptop, with just 3GB of RAM, was barely functional. I could only afford free Google docs. I had no job at the time. I did have a closet full of the skeletons of dead dreams. And I was determined not to add to it. I had no idea what to do, I just knew I had to do something.

Not knowing what to do and doing it anyway.

I knew I liked writing, but I had always kept the idea of writing for a living hidden away, so I dug it out the closet and put a pretty frock on it and dragged it to work. I spent a year trying to be consistent and often struggled. During this time, while I worked through my existential crises and endless questions, various ideas came to me. Some ideas were fleeting, and with hindsight, not good. Others took root and are growing into projects that are now in development. For example, the birth and development of my brand, Mongrel Logic, a cap designed as wearable art. It’s a first step toward a broader studio vision.

What have I learned from this?

I aimed to achieve small technological advancements and growth whenever I could afford it. Thankfully, I found a job during this period. This job became both my investment strategy and my biggest time obstacle, which I still battle today. I have learned that doing something is better than doing nothing and waiting is pointless; regardless of what you think you need to get started, begin with what you have. I had no idea I would be sitting here with a cap and a studio six months ago. The way it all came together, one stone at a time, is still incredible to me.

Why did I do it like this?

I decided that acting was better than sitting and thinking about what might be possible if I had a thousand dollars. Or ten thousand, or fifty, or waiting till things were right. I decided that I could no longer wait until I had the money, the information or the hardware. I’ve already spent over ten years researching. I just didn’t know that what I was doing at the time, was research. After living through the worst decade of my life, I felt angry at everything. I had expected things to be different by now. And we still don’t have hoverboards. I relied on my gut instinct, trusting it for the first time in a long while.

Ok, but how does building this business, in public, help you?

Well, I’m failing for all to see, forging in the fires of…gawd…Sorry. I’m proving that it can be done, whatever that thing is you want to do that you don’t know what it is, but you know you can’t stand it here, so it’s better than not doing it. (Surely?) I’m proving that you can achieve your goals, even if you’re not entirely sure what they are yet.