The Design That Almost Broke Everything

A conceptual piece testing if art styles can hold in the same world

When I set out to build The Canis, it was to try and solve a few problems at once.
I didn’t anticipate creating one instead.

Enter, the jellyfish.

I did not choose this design. It popped into my head one night.

I have a real fondness for political cartoonists. I grew up on Zapiro in South Africa and enjoy many of today’s artists.

The jellyfish concept was my own little protest. I shelved the idea for a couple of weeks until the jellyfish suddenly slotted into place within The Canis. A condition. Spineless. The enchanted ones.
It represents what confronts us. What we’re up against in The Canis.

Jellyfish nightmares

Spineless

I kept waking up at 5am with the jellyfish fading behind my eyelids. Hating it.
It took me 5 days to do. 3 of those were 7.5 hour sit ins.

The one that ended up on garment is the second third version.

I couldn’t see why. Was it conceptually weak? Probably. Was it good? I don’t know.

Nearly broke The Canis

Five minutes after I’ve built The Canis, I’ve designed a character that broke it. I could not tell if it was pushing one style of art too far.

If I have, which style do I go with, do I need to redesign everything and pick one or will this evolution of story be legible?  My brain was a rolodex of symbols and iconography.

The irony is this is exactly what Spineless represents

The conditions that spread and fracture our systems, that push to the brink and force change.
I bit the bullet and released it into the wild. I still hated it.

I mocked up the world. I needed to see conceptually if it held. No one knows that the Raptor design is really a sleeping geometric creature. No one knows that the Sun Eater doodle has morphed into a formidable Token. No one knows how dangerous it is. The fragments are only just being unearthed.

It didn’t break

To my surprise, it held. Even if the AI concept mock-up has gone a little literal with Raptor…He was inspired by the Bio-Raptors from Pitch Black. Still some of the best creature sound design ever made.

Spineless

The enchanted. Because pressure always finds a form. The condition. Organic streetwear for those who recognise.

The next 5 designs are planned.
The next fragment is being unearthed.
I thought the jellyfish was going to break The Canis.

It didn’t.
I like it now.

What is Mongrel Logic

It’s been a little while since I have answered this question.
Mongrel Logic is me.

A flip on a negative

A close up the Pastel Eye design.

I’m not an idiot when it comes to linguistics.  I am also not an idiot when it comes to emotions. I chose the name The Pavement Special originally, to name a thing that hadn’t been defined. That way I could write about whatever I wanted and in theory, the name could remain unchanged. I do enjoy business architecture.

I started a blog with no direction, zero SEO, literally a digitised dear diary. I needed a place to just write without thinking too much.

But, I spent 8 months not doing anything because I got two puppies. the month after starting it. Two. Littermates. If you know, you know. Turns out I am an idiot about some things.

One sunny afternoon we were coming off a dog walk, we were attacked by a bigger dog, who lives in our cul-de-sac, I might add. Everyone was physically ok. Lex has never been the same since. He thought the world was butterflies and sunshine before that moment. Zen is the more, suffer in silence, type. Just like me.

Rage fuelled caps

I was so angry about the dog off lead, the effect on the puppies, the effect on me, the fact that he made no adjustments and just kept walking the dog past our house, every day, three times a day. We had to make all the adjustments. I don’t blame the dog. Ever.

But a piece of my mind involves a piece of my fist due to the rage around this situation, so I decided to do something else instead.
Try to raise awareness, make a cap, donate profits to an organisation that cared about dog welfare and who can lobby. I have not forgotten about this. I never will.
And when it comes to animal welfare, the welfare of those less fortunate, you have found my hulk smash button. Now, I don’t have big fists, in fact when I look at a pinky-finger I am baffled that such a small bony thing can exist.  

I built a monster

I started working on the embroidery for the cap first, and I started looking at makers. Very soon discovered that my print on demand idea was not executable.  No custom fabrics. Hardly anyone did embroidery at that level.

I knew I needed to have the fabric made. I knew the cap construction needed to be custom, the embroidery needed an expert. I started hunting.  

This is where the designer range was born. Months of research, designing, and work and some number crunching, led to me to where I am now. I have spent nothing on this business; aside from running the websites, I don’t have anything to spend. As much as it is a practical reality for me, it is also part of a system I am testing. The reproducibility of the model. More on that later.

When I understood what I needed to get the cap made, the designer range off the ground, I knew I needed an engine. Something to fuel the designer range, that could stand on its own as well as exist as crossover, and crucially, matched the ethos of the luxury streetwear range I was developing.  I needed one project to fund the next one. Yes, fuck is right.

That’s when the art came into it, drawings that for some inexplicable reason I had held onto, taken across continents with me, suddenly had a purpose. The worlds I was building as a teenager, the stories, characters, novellas and the fifth try at starting a business and the second at a clothing line, suddenly all made sense.

That was the last time anything made sense. Haha.

Being responsible for the life cycle of your product is extremely important to me. I was born in Africa. I have lived equal numbers of years on both the African and European continents by now.  I know what it is like to be part of the problem and part of the solution.
I’m far from perfect, but I am so sick of the lazy, profit driven, greed led approach to business that I wanted to build something better.

Where regulations follow

You can call me naïve in 12-24 months, in the meantime, hold my beer. You may not be old enough to remember this, but products used to come with a lifetime guarantee. Microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines, fridges, all came with a guarantee. Not a warranty, a guarantee.  These days it’s hard to find anything that lasts more than 12 months. Organic cotton will still be in your wardrobe in a decade, just starting to fray.
When you design with the product’s entire life cycle in mind, you need to ensure you can answer for its journey once its owner is done with it, and it has to be made first from ingredients that allow it to be returned, remade.

Being early is only half the problem

I hope I get to bring my vision to life. I’m never convinced that it’ll work, but I am determined to try, because if it does, we are ahead of the regulations that will absolutely be brought in regarding product lifecycle.
When I chose Teemill, it was because they aligned on a design level.

When I ordered my first sample, I was honestly surprised at the quality. And the print colour was stunning. I knew I had found my engine. It’s been 7 months since I launched the shop, and it’s been 9 months since I came up with the idea for the cap. I feel like I’ve been working for four years.

The fact that I can’t spend on growth is agonising, but also crucial for the first 12 months. Which is kinda soul destroying in a way, being in this phase of the business, I have no idea what people think.  Releasing vintage, unchanged teenage art first, was the hardest test this little engine could pass. And we did.

Designing with constraint, whether that is showing art that was in skill unrefined, and not changing it, designing within our print box, no sleeves, no backs, no cuffs, no detail, has honestly allowed me to play in ways I never imagined with the designer range and prompted me to think about details I might have otherwise overlooked.

I can honestly say there is nothing like it out there. For both our everyday sustainable, circular streetwear range and our designer range. I’m not here to shit on other people’s designs, I love streetwear. Whether understated or street couture that serves one purpose and that is to photograph, I’ve been a lifelong fan. Are we the underdog? Absolutely, this was built for underdogs. Will you have seen anything like this before? No. Why? Cos I drew it when I was 14, 16, 17. Etc. And because I have been designing this range for a very long time.

Way before the dogs, before the blog, when I was still in primary school, scrap booking fabrics, dresses, cuts, colours.

This is Mongrel Logic.

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.

Logic Descends: The Origin Story of the Second Design.

It was 2002. I was 23. Aw. Or Aaah. Not sure which.

A night of Skull Monkeys & Resident Evil

I was housesitting and spent an evening drawing, playing Skull Monkeys, and watching the first Resident Evil. That’s when I drew Logic Descends. She didn’t have a name then. I drew two versions that night. I kept both

Enter: Attempted Burglary at 3AM

Much later, I was woken up by the sound of a crowbar hitting a metal gate. I switched the lights on. They ran. Cops came. Life went on.
Make of that what you will.

Logic Descends… or Angel?

You decide. When I revived her for Mongrel Logic, I kept her mostly as she was, her face is new, the animalistic stance, the sharp energy, the slightly feral wings, they’re the same.

She’s a piece of my early creative DNA.

2002 Time Capsule

This is me from the same year (and my brother); oversized jumper, corduroy’s (I know) too big. Basically… still me.

Some things change. Some things don’t. And sometimes, the things you made decades ago find their way back home.
More designs (and more stories from the vault) coming soon.