How to Design a Backpack, According to Designers (with James Brittain)

by Guest Post, December 10, 2025

Design Process | Sketching

This is actually one of my favorite parts of any design discipline. Maybe I’m old-school, maybe I’m a traditionalist when it comes to design process, but no matter where digital tools will go, I know that I will always protect this piece of my own workflow. Sketching is my most creative place and where I go to get my thoughts clear and my head and my solutions dialed in.

Maybe you sketch by hand, maybe you go straight to Illustrator, Gravity Sketch, CLO – take your pick – but I still carry a sketch book and a pencil wherever I go. I think it was instilled in me during design training but if you can communicate what you’re trying to make with a drawing or quick and dirty illustration, then you’re making ground at the most valuable moment: the very front end of the project.

So why? I find that I’m the least precious with a pencil and paper. As soon as I move into illustrator or start to actually get a prototype together, I’ll tighten up and don’t move as freely through the iterations. When I’m only as committed as a sketch, I can purely focus on the problem that I’m trying to solve.

I should add, I don’t consider myself great at sketching, but that’s not the point. The point is to explore an idea, a construction, a form, or an interaction with the least amount of time commitment. In our world of commercial backpack production: time is money. As we all know, the amount of time one action takes is how we ultimately gauge success.

Sketching is clarity.

Clarity is efficiency.

Efficiency is everything. (Ask your factory partner)

How to Design a Backpack, According to Designers (with James Brittain)

A Universal Language

Something else that I love about sketching is that it’s universal. Some of my most favorite and most trusted collaborators don’t speak the same first language as me, but they know exactly how I think because we’ve shared years solving problems in the sample room around a whiteboard hashing out a tricky construction problem. Whether you’re in Asia or at home in the studio: when you can’t explain it, draw it or make it. It’ll leapfrog the team forwards and get the whole thing moving in the right direction.

I find that some people can look at a black and white sketch and totally get it – many cannot – but these days, throw it into your favorite AI tool and you’ve got a pretty formidable visualization machine for any number of pieces of the process.

The First Spark

Obviously this is only the very first piece of the puzzle of building packs and it can only be done well with an array of different skills: sewing, prototyping, collaborating, testing, failing, listening to feedback, etc. They all have a part in my process, but when I look back on where it all usually sparks from, it’s from my sketchbook.

So, for me, sketching is the launch point for everything. It’s how I get my brain in gear and it’s how I communicate the vision. It also happens to be when I’m having the most fun in the process and when I see it really click for others I’m working with.