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launchpadboi
Big words! What's interesting to me is that as soon as you get into performance oriented packs you're restricted to that square shape they all do. If you're going to hike with a bag 8 hours a day, you want the weight as close to your body as possible and the way to do that is with a rectangle that's just narrow enough for your arms to swing past, not so tall that it sits below your waist or towers too far above your head, and then as deep as the desired volume dictates.
It reminds me of my time in a solar car racing student team: There was an optimal shape from a performance perspective, a squashed sort of aerofoil in this case, and any addition for styling, deviates from it and reduces performance. (I urge the form-follows-function nerds to sit back on this one and not lecture me about the beauty of a utilitarian shape, a condom car doesn't look good. ) So then you're in the tricky position where you're trying to justify a non-quantifiable improvement, aesthetics, against a quantifiable measure. How much aerodynamic losses are acceptable for the car to look good? If I recall correctly we settled on me being allowed to deviate no more than 4cm from the optimal shape, and only on the sides.
Backpacks are much the same, and now the two wolves are both inside of me. By adding that taper on the bottom and the rounded front I permit myself a "sub-optimal" bag from an efficiency perspective to let my aesthetics wolf sparkle. If I were to get into Mountain Laurel territory with big hiking packs, I think I'd cave for the utilitarian wolf and end up with a boring rectangle much like an MLD or a Z-Pack.
What I hope to figure out through making these EDC'ish, less performance oriented packs, before even starting to think about hiking packs, is a "form language" and "signature styling" so even the boring squares will be recognisable as a me-bag.