Process: Making the ultimate bag
Designing the ultimate bag
The ultimate bag for creative professionals? This limited-edition, leather-clad, pocket-filled messenger bag comes courtesy of Adobe — with help from MEDIUM Design Group, a Santa Barbara luggage and footwear brand.
"As designers, we're always looking for the ultimate bag to carry around our stuff," explains MEDIUM's CEO Scott Milden. "We carry pens, keys, laptops, cables, MP3 players. We're always buying bags, but none of them really work. So we wanted to make something that was just for people like us."
So how do you make such a bag? According to MEDIUM's designers, the first step is to find out what creative pros want. Luckily, they didn't have to go far to do that. With years of experience in designing for creative professionals, MEDIUM had all the input they needed from their customers. Compiling a list of key features was easy.
Prototypes were drafted in Adobe® Illustrator® CS2 software.
First of all, they decided, the bag would have to be practical. Most creatives and designers favor huge laptops and carry around lots of gadgets and accessories, including digital cameras, MP3 players, and so on. It also needed to be rugged and weather resistant. But just as important, it had to look great.
"It was something that creative pros would definitely carry around and, at the same time, it wasn't a compromise in quality," says MEDIUM's executive producer Kevin Milden. "It was a really well-done bag with full-grained leather and places for everything."
Horn used the Gradient Mesh feature in Illustrator CS2 to create a photorealistic rendering of the bag.
Next, design director Coleman Horn began drafting a prototype in Illustrator CS2. "I originally created the whole thing full scale, which is a great option," he says. "It's a really quick way to get your idea down, and you don't have to worry that the dimensions are correct."
In some ways, Horn's design is derived from the special needs of the audience: Its wide, oversize strap, for example, helps soften the weight of heavy 17-inch PowerBooks. The sealed, rolled top helps protect expensive equipment from damage. But other features speak more to style. The full-grained leather flap and the anodized aluminum toggle clasp give the bag elegance as well as utility.
This focus on customer needs is central: "The goal of engaging with MEDIUM in this bag was to demonstrate the importance of good design," says Tricia Gellman, director of product marketing at Adobe. "Just as Adobe builds products based on customer insight, we wanted to ensure that this bag met the customers' needs and was differentiated from other products on the market."
Working out the details
Once his sketches were complete, Horn used the Gradient Mesh feature in Illustrator CS2 to create a photorealistic rendering of the bag. From there, he converted the image to PDF and sent it to the team at Adobe for a review. Interestingly enough, the main objection was that the Adobe logo, which was presented red on white, was too prominent. The team suggested toning it down by using a black background surrounded with red stitching.
The original design presented was very refined and shiny, and it didn't reflect the lived-in and more casual look that the Adobe team wanted. In addition, there was a version that had too many pockets. In the end, the teams settled on a design that would allow people to carry most things but that didn't have to include the entire kitchen sink.
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