What's inside my bag?

Anatomy of a designer's backpack

Being a designer means always being curious and eager to learn something new every day, whether you are working from home or from the office. You will need something to keep yourself updated throughout the day, so as the title suggests, what are the things that I always carry in my backpack? Let's see what's inside.

1. The backpack itself

So it’s the container for everything you carry, so it should be enough for your stuff that you can carry around easily. A simple backpack with a separate laptop compartment would suffice. I suggest to get a backpack rather than the hand bag. Because it will be easier to move around with it whether you are in a train, bus, motorbike, car, or walking, and most importantly, your stuff will be safe.

2. Pen paper and a notebook

This is the must-have item, whether you want to create paper wireframes or to validate, discuss, or note down any ideas. Notebook is for note keeping and writing down some inspirations or anything that your mind strikes. Also, to prepare rough sketches, IA, or other things that you do as a UI/UX designer, you are going to need plain sheets of paper, pencil, and a notebook.

3. A portable laptop

Well this is obvious as a UI/UX designer having a laptop is must because you will be spending a lot of time in front of It. To digitize your work, you will need a computer; in terms of raw power, the desktop always wins over the laptop in terms of portability, so having a laptop with a decent configuration is required. Your laptop should be able to run UI/UX software like Adobe Suite, Figma, Sketch, etc. smoothly, and the laptop should be light and portable. Another thing to keep in mind is the color accuracy as a designer you will be playing around the colors more often so best for laptop with higher color gamut and contrast ratio.

4. A headphone

Working long hours on the same thing can be dull, so spice yourself up with some Metallica or some soothing nature sounds to set your mood. A headphone is always recommended; earphones are decent and light, but I prefer headphones for longer hours of use. It goes easy on the ears, so wireless headphones are my recommendation; they shouldn’t be expensive or fancy as long as they have good bass and decent sound quality.

5. Don’t forget the chargers.

We often tend to forgot our chargers when we are in hurry or moving from places. For long hours of work, your laptop and phone are both going to need food and power, so when you are preparing to move around or just getting stuff inside your backpack, always put your phone and laptop chargers first.

6. A blue cut lens

Blue-cut lenses feature a special coating that reflects harmful blue light and restricts it from passing through the lenses of our eyeglasses. Blue light emitted from computer and mobile phones and long term exposure to this type of light increase the chance of retinal damages so its always best to carry a blue cut lens with you. You need to take care of your eyes too!

So these are the things that I carry for my everyday work. Consider stuffs that are useful essential for you to work properly and making the most of it.