The Story of the Philippines on your Back

CEBU, Philippines - Every JanSport bag tells a story. With every scuff and scrape, with every mile it has every traveled and with every knick-knack it has been made to carry, a JanSport bag is a wealth of stories if you could make it talk. 

The new JanSport Pilipinas Bag is no different. In fact, before anybody ever gets to carry it around, the design itself tells its own unique story. Designed by award-winning artist Rommel Joson of OsoMundo – an ideas and images studio specializing on art, illustration and design – the JanSport Pilipinas Bag is like a love letter to the Philippines printed on the surface of a classic SuperBreak design. 

Structured in the form of the Philippine flag, it features icons, dates and images taken from Philippine culture and history and threaded and composed into a dense visual interplay.  

When asked about his design, Joson – a magna cum laude graduate of the UP College of Fine Arts and a recent resident of France’s La Maison des Auteurs - explained that he wanted to “tell the story of the Philippines within the space of a single backpack. The flag was a useful structure in making that visual narrative work.”  

   “I guess you could say that you’ve got the country on your back, every time you bring it along,” he added. 

Joson has also worked as an advertising copywriter and art director for Harrison Communications as well as being included in Rogue Magazine’s Top 16 Illustrators Folio.