Backpacker magazine awarded adventure gear company newcomer, Boreas, two 2012 Editors’ Choice Awards for the Lost Coast 60 and the Buttermilks 55 backpacks at the recent Outdoor Retailer Winter Market. Given annually, Backpacker magazine’s Editors’ Choice Award, the most prestigious award in the outdoor industry, recognizes gear for its outstanding innovation in design, materials, and performance.

Boreas is the brain-child of San Francisco based design collective, lowercase Designs. With the outdoor market saturated with over built highly technical products, lowercase brings to market with Boreas, products that introduce clean design and simple innovation.

Both the Buttermilks 55 and the Lost Coast 60 highlight lowercase’ progressive design and minimalist aesthetic direction through hidden daisy chains, tool loops, and a ribcage design that strengthens the integrity of the backpacks. These two award winners represent the simple design genius and true uniqueness of Boreas.
“This recognition from Backpacker is a great honor and achievement for the Boreas Team and lowercase’ design vision,” says Boreas and lowercase co-founder and developer Tom Newth. “For Boreas, we set out to design great products that aren’t overly complicated. We want the user to connect and easily understand the benefits of each feature just by picking up and exploring the product.”

Backpacker Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Dorn said about the award, “No other magazine or website conducts in depth field-testing as vigorously or impartially as the crew led by Gear Editor Kristin Hostetter.” All winners must excel under extensive field-testing conducted by Backpacker’s team, who take hundreds of new products into the backcountry every year.
The complete list of Backpacker 2012 Editors’ Choice Award winners will be officially announced in the magazine’s April Gear Guide issue, on newsstands March 6, 2012.

lowercase designs is a design firm founded by industry veterans Tae Kim, Alexei Tcherepanov, and Tom Newth. Formed as a design collective in 2008, the San Francisco studio works on projects centered around user driven product innovations and brand design.

Boreas makes outdoor equipment for everyday use: beautiful, practical, hardwearing gear for passionate people with things to do. Boreas believes the best outdoor products are neither complicated nor expensive, that they should be as versatile as the person using it, and that there’s no reason to compromise form for function.