Jonas Blanking has always favoured a bike or a pair of in-line skates to get to work. Always equipped with a backpack filled with notes, sketches, a laptop, and some gym wear, he more than once experienced soggy folders and a fractured laptop.
An industrial designer, with experience from the sports and automotive industries, he started to look around for a solution. He glanced at the air cargo industry, an environment in which containers are tested to the extreme. He soon concluded that weight, handling, and choice of materials are essential to developing a new breed of backpacks.
To create the protective casing, Jonas researched the plastic and aluminum structures used for air cargo containers: how they were assembled and riveted; the type of screws used; how materials would react stress conditions and corrosive environments; bearing in mind that today’s teenager handles gear like luggage crews at any airport.
The challenge of conbining a soft body with a hard shell would be the most difficult part of the process. Several models were made during 1996, resulting in a working prototype. It was an unconventional design and a unique combination of materials which proved to be strong, protective, light, comfortable, and ergonomically sound.
It proved to be much more versatile then first anticipated. Jonas experimented with fastening devices to create an entire carrying system, aware that contemporary backpack users do not have a specific profile. Today the speeding skateboarder could easily be an IT professional on the way to the office.
The hard shell was a new thought on how to strap gear to a backpack. A permanent external frame, allowing the positioning of fastening devices on both the inside and outside of the pack.
The Monocoque Hard Shell, the Internal Cargo System, and the External Cargo System combine to allow transportation of mixed high- and low tech cargo while offering impact protection.
The first BOBLBEE hard shell backpack was produced in 1998.