What Is Analog Design?

There are a lot of ways to identify Virga as… a little different. We’re focused more on durability and comfort than being super ultralight. We’re weaving the desert into our designs. But one of the main things that makes us different—and you probably don’t know this yet—is that our design process has been almost entirely analog.

This means making sketches on cardboard, holding bent stays up to each others’ backs, and simply relying on experiential testing data rather than numbers.

Here are some examples. Porter made the cardboard cutout in the photo above by simply tracing an aluminum stay I had bent to match the curve of my back. He then copied it onto fabric, added some margins to it, and sewed it into a big tan blob. He took photos and sent them to me. We pondered its odd form. We agreed he was on the right track. Soon he sewed it into a useable pack, carried it around the Uintas, and came back with a lot of feedback.

Because he wasn’t using a computer he instead traced a new piece of cardboard, made it into a pack, and tested it. At every stage of the process even incremental tweaks have been made by building entire packs so that we can understand how the tweaks affect the overall functionality of the pack. Because, to Porter, nothing can be known in the vacuum of a computer where there is only data, where there is no experience.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using computers and other tools at our disposal. These tools increase efficiency and accuracy. But it’s not how we have worked.

We’re entering a new stage now, where we are happy with the Cliffrose. It will soon be digitized, and I’m sure we’ll feel some degree of sacrilege, but it’s time.

As for gear to come? Nope. No computers. Porter will keep on tracing his ideas on cardboard. He will do math on a yellow legal pad. And we’ll test the ideas in the Utah backcountry.