Why I Named it that: The Unexpected Story Behind My Brand

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.