A Christmas Of Refinement.
I now find myself waking in the night with tension from holding down Ctrl +C and not pasting it, because technically, I’m asleep.
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.
This Got Out of Hand: How a One-Month Website Move Became a Beast of a Business
Somewhere between “I don’t know what I’m talking about” and “I think I designed a cap”: I created a beast.
Concept artwork symbolising Mongrel Logic growing from a small blog into a full design studio.
I’m back baby!
Remember when I said this would take a month?
Yeah…try three. But it’s not because I ghosted. It’s because the tiny thing I thought I was doing decided to grow teeth.
I was just planning on moving website platforms, moving my domain, I have reasons.
Since then, things have escalated. Fast. Somewhere between “I don’t know what I’m talking about” and “I think I designed a cap”: I created a beast.
It's not just a cap. I’m now thinking about ateliers, military embroiders or Japanese, maybe even an upholsterer. All in the pursuit of what might be the coolest cap ever made.
Sorry I took so long…
The timeline blew up. But so did the dream. What started as a blog shuffle is now pointing towards building regenerative, limited, luxury products that actually mean something.
Why I Named it that: The Unexpected Story Behind My Brand
After years of starting blogs then abandoning them; I finally came up with the name The Pavement Special when planning blog number five.
The Pavement Special Logo designed by Kerryn Hewitt
This is the story about how my brand names came to be. How a solo, self-discovery voyage turned into a design studio. It’s also an example of why doing something is better than doing nothing.
What’s with the name?
After years of starting blogs then abandoning them; I finally came up with the name The Pavement Special when planning blog number five. A pavement special is South African slang for a mongrel dog. I’ve always found it funny because I identified. That’s a bit like me.
The Pavement Special was born
I chose The Pavement Special because I needed a place to talk about anything and everything until I figured out what I was making or doing, so it seemed appropriate.
I had no idea what the blog was about. I didn’t bother with SEO at all for the first year, I just wrote whatever I wanted or thought I should write. I had two starting points. I can write (ish), and I can draw (hmm). Everything else was in the dark. I’ve felt like a pavement special my whole life. I decided to own it.
I had no idea that I would be getting puppies shortly after, who were, coincidentally, mongrels.
Mongrel Logic and Mongrel Studio soon followed.
After a year of writing I finally planned my first product off the back of a dog attack. Sounds worse than it was, I was trying to process it and deal with two extremely anxious dogs when I thought of my signature design.
None of this was planned, it was discovered in the moment.
When I wrote my first blog article, I thought it might be a blog about helping spouses of partners with PTSD. Turns out, I really hate talking about my problems. I’m more… solution oriented as a person. I tried writing reviews, I wrote about things I’d seen but after I came up with the cap, I wrote about business. That’s when everything changed. That was roughly six months ago.
Welcome to The Pavement Special, a blog about my brand Mongrel Logic and my design studio, Mongrel Studio.
If you had asked me two years ago if I would be sitting here doing this, I would have told you, you were crazy. I planned to do the blog, but I went in blind. I was going stir crazy thinking about it and I had to start just doing it. The hardest part of that has been spotting the patterns in my own mongrel madness to discover what I was making. Now? I’ve designed a cap I cannot wait to wear. What started as a humble blog and…really me thinking out loud, has turned into a signature edition premium cap.