Inspire Threads

Streetwear Branding

This project was one of my earliest professional commissions and played a major role in shaping how I work as a designer with clients. Over the course of roughly two years, I collaborated closely with the brand’s founder to develop a suite of mascots, logos, and apparel graphics that helped define and evolve the brand’s visual identity. I’m no longer involved with Inspire Threads, but the work remains an important milestone in my development.

BRAND MASCOT DESIGN

A key focus throughout the collaboration was maintaining visual consistency while allowing each mascot to feel distinct and worth collecting. Early on, the client didn’t have a clearly defined direction, so we spent time exploring mood boards and visual aesthetics together a process which ultimately shaped our approach. Once the illustration style of 1920s and 30s rubber hose animation was established, it became much easier to refine how I interpreted briefs for each new release.

Before rebranding six months later as Inspire Threads, the client had named the label 'Discomfort Speaks Volumes'. The brand aimed to use its platform to encourage people to step out of their comfort zones and confront social anxiety, with clothing pieces acting as conversation starters for their audience. Drawing on the name and this initial concept, I designed the original mascots around the idea of "Volume" and "making yourself heard".

THUMBNAILS

BRAND MASCOT #1

BRAND MASCOT #2

Two designs quickly emerged as favourites: a personified vintage jukebox and a gramophone, both cheerful and confident (though the gramophone is certainly less expressive without a mouth). While these characters were never printed on garments, they became foundational visual elements on the brand’s website and influenced the tone and style of subsequent designs.

PIZZA MASCOT

The pizza mascot and tiled pattern was the first design i made for their line of reversible bucket hats. The client was clear from the start that the first hat should be a pizza design, and while I never learned exactly why it came to mind, the design has continued to be a top seller.

With the brand’s aesthetic now largely established, it became easier to narrow down design directions and present options that felt on the same track. We settled on personifying the pizza, giving it another confident walking pose. The reversable interior of the hat featured a repeating pizza pattern, that I also designed.

PIZZA MASCOT

PATTERN TILE

Each mascot design that followed featured an embroidered character on the exterior, paired with a matching interior pattern. Interestingly, the eye styles varied from design to design a choice guided by client notes rather than a deliberate design system. In hindsight, I wish I had pushed more strongly for this kind of consistent visual “connective tissue.” Using uniform eye styles could have strengthened the cohesion of the collection, especially since the pie-slice eyes used in the jukebox and gramophone designs are such an iconic element of 1920s–30s rubber hose animation.

This project taught me a great deal about translating a client’s vision into merchandise-ready design, refining an iterative workflow, and balancing creativity with practical constraints. It also helped shape how I approach collaboration, feedback, and consistency across a range of products, and clarified the kind of client relationships I aim to build. I believe this is one of the reasons many of my more recent commission clients have become returning collaborators, confident in my ability to design, ideate, and deliver work for them.

This was a first for both me and the client when it came to working with embroidery, so it took some time to find the size and line weight that worked best. We discovered that the machine performed most consistently when the line weight was uniform, although the outer border often needed to be thicker to add structure, something that becomes more evident in later designs.

You may also notice that the red pepperoni details are missing from the embroidered character. This was due to the cost of using multiple thread colours, a constraint I hadn’t considered when I first created the design. It took some discussion to decide which colour to remove, but I think keeping the red pepperoni in the interior pattern helped bridge the gap.

CUPID MASCOT

The second mascot design was built around an angelic theme, with a casual Cupid as the central character. This design was developed for both a bucket hat and a pair of socks, with the interior pattern from the hat adapted to wrap the socks. I explored several character directions before landing on a style influenced by later 1930s animation, closer to early Disney than traditional rubber hose. While it moved away from the earlier mascots stylistically, it retained a sense of vintage charm and was ultimately selected by the client. To support the theme, I designed a simple, repeating cloud pattern for the hat interior and socks.

THUMBNAILING

COLOUR SWATCHES

Both products were well received, with the Cupid character performing particularly well during February. The timing of this release is worth noting. Despite featuring Cupid, the design intentionally avoided overt love or romance iconography. It was released in November ahead of Black Friday, with the goal of encouraging Christmas purchases. In retrospect, this is a decision I wish I had discussed more with the client and either suggesting a more seasonally aligned design for that release window, or holding the Cupid concept until February. Alternatively, the character could have leaned further into adjacent seasonal references, such as a sugar-plum fairy or nativity-style angel.

MASCOT

PATTERN TILE

Looking back, this design also drifted much further from the rubber hose–inspired aesthetic established by earlier mascots. While strict consistency wasn’t required there were also elements like the full head of hair and sneakers which removed some of the visual cues that signalled the character as a angelic child. This project highlighted the importance of confidently advocating for stronger marketing tactics, conversations I’m now far more comfortable initiating as part of a healthy, collaborative design process.

VALENTINES MASCOT

The third mascot I designed for the brand was created specifically for a Valentine’s Day release. This character felt like a return to the original aesthetic of the brand’s mascots and marked my first attempt at incorporating shading, which had not previously been an option for the client. While it didn’t fully commit to the traditional pie-cut eyes, I felt the design moved in the right direction. By this point, we had also learned that thicker linework worked best for embroidery and production.

Although this design was never taken into production it remains an example of a direction I felt strongly aligned with the brand’s earlier visual language. In many ways, it addressed several of the cohesion and production considerations that had emerged across previous releases.

THUMBNAILING

MASCOT

PATTERN TILE

UNRELEASED JACKETS

Following the brand’s transition from Discomfort Speaks Volumes to Inspire Threads, I was asked to design a new logo to mark the rebrand. The goal was to create something reminiscent of classic baseball logos while signalling a fresh chapter for the brand.

To support the new branding, I was also asked to develop a series of jacket concepts intended to showcase the updated identity. These designs remained at an early rendering stage and never progressed further, leaving them feeling unfinished both cluttered and empty at the same time. That said, the project offered an enjoyable shift in context and scale, allowing me to explore how the branding could translate onto more structured garments.

I believe there were strong foundational ideas within these designs, and the project contributed to my growing confidence in working within new visual frameworks and responding to broader brand changes.

LOGO

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