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.

Growing pains.

Close-up macro of a sewing needle with threads under tension.

I love building Mongrel Logic. We are officially into our 6th month as a start-up, on zero budget, that’s just a fact. Although, I look forward to it becoming a historical fact one day. Just saying, I still do the day job as well.

Time has lost all meaning.

Work never stops. There is no such thing as a day off. I’m not complaining, there are just many elements to what I am building. Organic business growth exclusively in our first year is just one of them, which is partly why time has lost all meaning.

Social media has taken over my life.

Days are spent agonising over content I have, knowing more needs to be done, having barely any time to do that, but needing to push on even if it’s not perfect. Even if I haven’t got everything I need. Which is an extremely frustrating problem to have, but essential at this point and an on-going process.

The reel story.

Sorry…The real story is I care about all this. I was born in Africa, I live in the UK. I’ve lived both sides of the solution and the problem. But this blog isn’t about waste. Nor about extremely good quality clothing for an exceptional price. (Shameless plug.)

I draw incredibly weird shit, mythical cosmic world builders, sun eaters, South African crime fighting superheroes, lots of eyeballs. It’s about using creativity to build a way forward. Said every artist ever.

I’m not afraid, to t…struggle in obscurity.

Persistence in the dark. Being unseen until the world is ready. The undertow, the liminality. A lone wolf. Gestating in the undercurrent of, ok, I’ll stop. World domination loading.

Endurance.

Not just a tag line. An essential ingredient to the first year, an ethos, a mindset, an inner vision and outward expression of what it means to live where design chaos and craft collide and what it means to think that survival deserves to be worn.