Built To Endure
Built To Endure was one of the first phrases this world produced. With The Canis absorbing everything, it felt right to raise a glass to where it started. The originals. The early language. The first iteration of Mongrel Logic.
Building this world has led me through a universe of phrases, words, and slogans. Built to endure was one of the first.
With the unearthing of The Canis, which is currently worming its way into every SEO corner and page on our websites, our original language is being replaced.
Yours truly drawing Lilith’s Corsage, with an older landing page visible on screen. Dec 2025.
Hopefully not completely erased.
Today, I removed the last visual trace of The Mongrel Studio page, it’s still there in practice, but our little placeholder now has a purpose beyond that. I’m feeling slightly nostalgic about stuff no one knows about but me.
The backbone of everything we do
Built to endure is and always will be at the heart of everything we do. From story to garment, it’s been designed to travel with you. Live with you. And be recycled once you’re done with it. Sustainability is and always will be at the core.
Built to endure hoodies
When what you’re building starts evolving under you, calls itself “The Canis” and takes over your social feed, I find myself hesitating over the delete button. The ‘built to endure’ hoodie is still in the shop. I know it doesn’t fit. I can’t bring myself to remove it. It’s already evolved once when we ran out of the recycled fabric colours.
The Originals
The designs that I started the shop with, will not be there for much longer either. My weird little teenage beasties are being absorbed into The Canis.
Sometimes I can’t believe I put them on hoodies.
Broken proverbs
I can’t tell you the story of where ‘Confusion Says’ comes from. Let’s just say I had a wild childhood, and this proverb was a product of it and my brother’s insane sense of humour.
I have no idea whether broken proverbs have a place to grow within The Canis.
Raise a glass
To the originals, to the early language, to the first iteration of Mongrel Logic, as we are absorbed into The Canis. If you have been here from the start, I hope you have enjoyed watching this happen. I feel like I haven’t slept in a year.
The Design That Almost Broke Everything
Spineless was supposed to be a small protest piece. Instead, it nearly broke the visual coherence of The Canis. Five days, multiple redesigns, and one accidental stress test of the entire world later, the condition has arrived.
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.
Turning garments into an ARG
A behind-the-build note on how a question about making streetwear “entertaining” led to The Canis'; an ARG built from characters, factions, artifacts and resistance.
There is something about organic business growth that forces you to think.
I have started this from my own pocket, my own blood, sweat and brain cells.
Recently, I asked the question, how do I make garments entertaining?
A photo of my notes in progress on building an ARG from our range
The question led somewhere stranger
I started by looking at my characters. Things I drew when I was 14, 17.
What I was thinking about hasn’t really changed. It’s evolved. I started mapping alignments.
Characters became artefacts.
Artefacts became factions.
This is also where I decided Artifacts was cooler than Artefacts, sorry England.
Story had already been forming around them; each garment had its own ‘for who’ declaration based on the art.
What if you could “battle” or align in the street? Choose your faction.
Can garments carry allegiance, story and resistance?
Ancient pressures.
Ways of holding your ground.
The Canis emerged.
Recognise The Canis
Two weeks of game mapping, architecture and linguistic gymnastics led to The Canis.
Suddenly, it was alive.
Not just another shop, a small theatre of resistance. Rebellion.
Defiance.
The garments became artefacts in a wider struggle because, in ways both obvious and hidden, this is a battle for our lives.
Has it changed my social media habits?
No. 😆
It’s an exercise I’d recommend to any founder
Not because it will solve your distribution problem. It may solve nothing.
But asking the question led me to unearth the world that has been hiding in plain sight for over 20 years.