Undergraduate · Studio · 4 credits
Package Design
From flat sheet to three-dimensional form — structure, sustainability, and the designed object
PREREQUISITES
no prerequisites
OFFERED
odd spring
LEVEL
300-level
A studio course exploring packaging design through the lens of sustainability. Students learn material properties, structural engineering, cradle-to-cradle philosophy, and how to design packaging systems that minimize waste without sacrificing visual communication. Projects include structural dieline construction, sustainable material selection, and a complete beverage brand system — packaging seven product variations as a cohesive identity suite.
Syllabus
Key information — full syllabus available as PDF
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Course Learning Objectives
Discuss the need to use renewable and sustainable materials in the design of packaging.
Create packaging solutions for products that are responsive to environmental issues and consumer needs
Demonstrate design processes and applications when applied to three-dimensional objects.
Critically assess the resolution of your packaging solutions, rationalizing its environmental impact, materiality, and purpose.
Sustainability Learning Objectives
evaluate sustainability issues and solutions using an approach that focuses on the intersections between complex human and natural systems.
describe the three aspects of sustainability (environmental, economic and social) and give examples of how at least two of the three are interrelated.
articulate how sustainability relates to their lives as community members, workers and individuals and how their actions impact sustainability.
Graphic Design Program Learning Outcomes
Demonstrate proficiency in visually communicating ideas and narratives through fundamental design principles, typography, color theory, and layout skills.
Produce effective visual communication solutions tailored to specific audiences and contexts, informed by an understanding of the human elements influencing design.
Demonstrate iterative design processes to solve visual communication problems creatively throughout the ideation process.
Demonstrate a multifaceted design approach that integrates design history, theory, and criticism through diverse viewpoints, recognizing design’s societal and cultural implications.
Effectively employ appropriate tools and technologies to create and distribute visual messages in alignment with industry standards and practices.
STRUCTURE
3 projects building sequentially: structural exploration → sustainability constraint → expressive brand system
Project arc follows play → constraints → expression
All projects begin with physical making before any digital work
Sustainability reasoning introduced in Project 2 and carried explicitly into Project 3
Process documentation maintained throughout: sketches, prototypes, critique notes, written reflections
In-process and final critiques for each project
Written self-assessments accompany each project
ASSESSMENT
Ungraded — completion-based with sufficiency thresholds per project
Each project has a defined sufficiency threshold; work not meeting it is returned with written feedback before the next project begins
Feedback structure: peer critique during in-process critiques, written self-assessment submitted with each project, written instructor response
Complete / incomplete evaluation for exercises and reading responses
Deadlines apply — this is professional practice
TEEXTBOOKS
Package Design Book 7, Ed 23 By: Taschen ISBN 13 : 9783836594127
Packaging Sustainability: Tools, Systems, and Strategies for Innovative Package Design By Jedlicka, Wendy ISBN 13 : 9780470246696 (Available through the library)
Required: Spiral Sketchbook
Projects
Major projects per semester:
Package Design Project 1: The Structure Sampler
Students create six packaging structures—four mandatory and two of their choosing—using chipboard, cover stock, and recycled or found materials. Phase 1 focuses solely on structure: no graphics or color, just construction. In Phase 2, a single-color graphic layer is added to one chosen structure. The project emphasizes developing tactile and structural understanding before introducing any design elements.
Package Design Project 2: Less / Forever
Students pick an actual consumer product and redesign its packaging within one of two sustainability approaches: radical reduction of materials (Less) or cradle-to-cradle lifecycle design (Forever). They select their approach based on the product's true needs, justify this choice in a written proposal, illustrate the entire material lifecycle with a diagram, create prototypes, and defend their decisions using environmental criteria.
Package Design Project 2: Material is the Message
Students selected a material — paperboard, bioplastic, fabric, metal, glass — and designed packaging that made that material's properties central to the communication. The message was not just on the surface; it was in the substance. Replaced in the current curriculum by Less / Forever, which gives the sustainability work a more defined analytical framework and requires students to argue from environmental criteria rather than material aesthetics.
Package Design Project 3: Single Serve Food Package
Students designed packaging for a single-serve food product — a snack, a condiment, a prepared meal — addressing sensory marketing, shelf appeal, regulatory requirements, and sustainability considerations. Replaced in the current curriculum; the food packaging content is now addressed within the broader frameworks of Less / Forever (sustainability) and The 7 Deadly Sins (beverage brand system).
Package Design Project 3: The 7 Deadly Sins
Students design a complete beverage line — seven drinks, one for each deadly sin — including labels, secondary packaging, and a display element. Each beverage has a distinct visual identity that expresses its sin through form, color, typography, and imagery, while remaining cohesive within a unified product family. The capstone asks students to integrate structural knowledge from Project 1 and sustainability reasoning from Project 2 into one ambitious, expressive system.
Course Overview
- Package Design teaches students that design is not limited to screens or flat surfaces but also occurs physically. The course starts with a question: how does a flat sheet turn into a three-dimensional form that closes, holds, protects, and communicates? It then advances through increasingly complex design challenges.
It is structured around three projects that follow a deliberate teaching sequence. The first focuses on play: students create six packaging structures from chipboard, cover stock, and recycled materials, without graphics, branding, or expectations of aesthetic beauty. The aim is to develop structural literacy—understanding paper and board capabilities before pursuing specific aesthetics. The second project introduces constraints: students redesign packaging for a real product following a sustainability framework of their choice, either radical material reduction or cradle-to-cradle lifecycle. They must research and test to find correct solutions, as there are right and wrong answers. The third project is a capstone: designing a complete beverage brand system based on the seven deadly sins, where students develop seven distinct identities within a cohesive family, manage secondary packaging and displays, and consider material impacts. By semester’s end, students progress from hand-making boxes to designing brand systems with embedded environmental considerations.
The course’s focus on sustainability is fundamental, not ornamental. It fulfills Pacific University's sustainability core requirement by integrating environmental criteria as key design constraints, not just adding a recycling module. Project 2 requires students to argue based on lifecycle data and material research, not appearance. This approach—learning the rules before breaking them, understanding costs before making choices—persists into Project 3, where students need to understand their materials and their end points.
Having taught similar courses at multiple institutions, I’ve found students initially view packaging primarily as a graphic challenge: putting appealing graphics on a box. The first project’s structural focus quickly shifts this perspective. Students who have never folded a tuck-end box or fitted a lid with just the right resistance gain physical knowledge that can’t be transmitted through screens. This hands-on understanding influences their later decisions on graphics and branding.
Course Reflection
- Package design is currently at a pivotal point in design education. It is one of the most visible and impactful disciplines—contributing significantly to global material waste, influencing consumer choices at the point of purchase, and uniquely involving physical handling rather than just observation. Despite its importance, it is often taught as mainly a surface-level challenge: creating attractive visuals, communicating the brand, and standing out on shelves. The structural, material, and environmental aspects are usually considered secondary or technical details.
This course considers them as fundamental. The project order is structured so that students first learn the components and manufacturing of packaging before trying to design its appearance. The sampler project builds structural literacy. The sustainability project develops material reasoning. The capstone creates a design system that, assuming the earlier projects are completed successfully, is grounded in both. A student who has built six distinct box structures by hand and written a lifecycle argument for their Project 2 material choices, upon reaching the seven deadly sins brand system, approaches design differently than one who has only designed flat surfaces.
The ungraded format of the course embodies a belief I've maintained for over twenty years of teaching studio design: grades distort the connection between students and their work. In a graded system, students tend to focus on the grade and designing what they believe that the instructor wants. Conversely, in this course, the focus is on whether the work meets the standard, not on the grade itself. Clear sufficiency thresholds specify the standard for each project. The self-assessment and instructor feedback foster a dialogue instead of a simple judgment. Students who fall short of the threshold are not penalized—they are encouraged to keep working until they meet the requirements. This approach better reflects professional design practice and promotes a more genuine relationship between students and their craft.
The arc of this course begins with play, then adds constraints, and finally focuses on expression. It is based on a pedagogy I've successfully used in other classes. When students are asked to create something expressive before understanding the structural and material rules, their work often feels arbitrary: visually interesting but lacking grounding in how the form actually functions. Conversely, students guided through structure first, then constraints, and finally expression tend to produce more sophisticated work at the capstone level. The seven deadly sins project is designed to be ambitious enough to clearly show what each student has learned and what they haven't. The best work in the course always appears at the end and builds on everything that came before.
Selected Student Self-Reflections