Five Star Big Mouth Backpack

Three images of the Five Star Big Mouth Backpack. Two with the bag closed and one with the bag open and items easily accessible.
 
 

Observing students interacting with their backpacks is a lesson in the daily brutality some products face. Tossed, dropped, riffled through, stuffed, you name it, backpacks see it all.  The requirements of durability and accessibility are understatements.  Moms simply want a bag that can last 1 year, that’s all, just hang on for 1 year, please!  Students want something that keeps them organized and they can take stuff in and out quickly. Oh, and they must look cool when sported by middle school to high school students.

Two images of the Big Mouth backpack. One image shows the backpack closed. In the second image the zipper flap is open showing the large opening for easy access to items.

The project required DesignThink to explore, refine, and deliver a final design within a compressed scheduled. Game-on! Our team focused early concepts on granting kids quick and easy accessibility by creating the super simple, but incredibly insightful Big Mouth zipper flap opening. This creates a very large opening, granting kids unparalleled access. What seems so obvious for ease of access, is something that surprisingly very few backpacks offer. But what is access without organization? To address organization, the team created “stadium” storage areas which stagger the partitions at different levels.  This enables students to quickly find what they are looking for in the bag without having to riffle through a single “collect all” area.

Big Mouth backpack with zipper closed.

The soft goods aesthetic has a tech-inspired look that says, “I am part of the new tech-native generation, organized, and ready to embrace whatever the future throws at me”.  Moms know Five Star makes durable products that will see their child through the year.

Initial sketches for the backpack