Interaction Design · Project 1 of 3 · Weeks 1–5
Package Design Project 3: The 7 Deadly Sins
Seven sins. Seven beverages. One brand.
FORMAT
Individual
WEEKS
11–15
METHODS
Visual language research · Brand identity development · Logo design · Label design · Adobe Illustrator · Adobe Photoshop · Illustration and typography · Secondary packaging construction · Display design · Digital mockup · Physical prototyping · Iterative critique
TAGS
Aesthetic Psychology, Package Design, Design Education, Design Thinking
Why this project
The 7 Deadly Sins represents the expression phase of the course's three-part structure: play, constraints, expression. It has served as the capstone across multiple semesters and multiple universities, with a brief and set of deliverables that have remained essentially stable throughout. That stability comes from the richness of the conceptual framework. A framework that is culturally legible, visually complex, psychologically layered, and morally contested can sustain repeated instruction without losing its generative power.
The choice of the seven deadly sins is not arbitrary. The sins are culturally legible, visually rich, psychologically compelling, and morally complex. They carry centuries of visual representation — from Hieronymus Bosch to Dante to contemporary advertising — that students can research, reference, and argue against. Each sin has a distinct emotional register, a distinct set of visual associations, and a distinct relationship to appetite and indulgence that aligns naturally with the beverage category. A design for Sloth contains different decisions than a design for Wrath — in color, typography, the pace of the label composition, and the material finish. The framework is specific enough to drive those decisions but open enough to reward interpretation.
Throughout multiple semesters, the project consistently shows a gap between students who visually depict the concept and those who interpret it more deeply. Illustration tends to deliver visuals that simply reveal what Pride looks like, while interpretation aims to evoke the feeling behind it. The common visual stereotypes for the sins, such as gold and excess for Greed or red and jagged for Wrath, are easily recognizable but limiting. Students who excel are those who go beyond these stereotypes, using research and their own reasoning about each sin to create more nuanced representations. The brief intentionally avoids specifying visual styles, encouraging students to explore interpretive depth.
The requirement that the seven beverages function as a cohesive brand system, rather than seven separate designs. Students who create strong individual labels but lack a consistent visual language across all seven end up presenting a portfolio instead of a unified brand. The brand standards one-pager clarifies the system's logic by detailing what is common among the seven, what differs, and why. Those who fail to complete this have not addressed the system problem, a fact that is clearly evident each semester during critiques.
What is new in the current iteration is the material note requirement in the concept statement, which carries the sustainability thread from the restructured Project 2 into the final project. This is new territory; in previous semesters, the project stood on its own without an explicit environmental accountability requirement. Whether that thread changes the work in ways that are visible in critique is something the current semester will reveal.
The Brief
PROJECT PROMPT
This is the final project for this course. You arrive here having developed structural intelligence in Project 1 and environmental reasoning in Project 2. Now, you integrate all these elements — craftsmanship, conceptual depth, material awareness, typographic ability, and expressive range — into a single, high-resolution brand system.
Create a comprehensive beverage line called The 7 Deadly Sins. Each of the seven drinks represents a sin: Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Gluttony, Sloth, and Lust. Each beverage features a unique visual identity that conveys its sin through form, color, typography, and imagery, while maintaining cohesion as a product family. This isn’t seven separate design projects; it’s one system with seven expressions. The main design challenge is balancing individual identity with family unity.
Your final concept statement must include a brief paragraph about the packaging materials—what they are, why they were selected, and their post-use fate. This reflects your environmental considerations from Project 2, which you should continue to uphold.
DELIVERABLE
Company name, logo, and brand standards one-pager: color palette, typefaces, logo usage, visual system rules
7 label designs (primary and back label for each sin) with individual concept rationale for each
Digital mockups for all 7 beverages
Functional 3D prototypes for minimum 3 beverages with applied labels
Secondary packaging for minimum 2 beverages (physical or digital mockup)
1 display element for the full line (physical or digital mockup)
Physical prototype of at least 1 secondary packaging piece
Final concept statement: brand concept, sin rationale for each beverage, material note
Process documentation: sketchbook, in-process photos, critique notes
Self-assessment — see separate assignment sheet
What I've learned from running this
The 7 Deadly Sins has served as the final project for this course over multiple semesters at various universities, and it is the project I am most familiar with in this curriculum. It consistently yields the strongest work of the semester. Students come to this project after developing skills in structural and brand identity through previous assignments in previous courses, and the beverage category allows them to apply these skills creatively. The multi-piece deliverable — including labels, secondary packaging, and displays — showcases work that truly reflects systems thinking when executed well: students who grasp that a brand system involves every element conveying a unified message, not just sharing visual styles.
Each semester, the project highlights a key tension between illustration and interpretation. Students who stick to basic associations—like Greed as gold and excess, Wrath as red and aggression, Sloth as gray and soft—produce work that is technically skilled but conceptually shallow, merely depicting what the sin looks like. In contrast, students who go beyond these associations, discovering unexpected perspectives on their sin and developing a visual language that evokes it, achieve the course’s goal. The requirement for a clear concept rationale aims to encourage this early articulation: students who can explain why their interpretation of Envy is unique and specific tend to design more thoughtfully. Yet, the challenge of overly literal illustration over deeper interpretation has persisted each semester I’ve run this project, making it a central focus during critique.
The system coherence issue — having seven distinct identities under one unified brand — remains a consistent challenge. Students who see it as seven separate label design tasks tend to produce a portfolio with separate pieces. Conversely, those who first develop a shared visual language and then differentiate within it create a cohesive brand. The brand standards one-pager serves as the key assessment tool for this distinction: students who struggle with it have not truly solved the system problem, regardless of how impressive their individual labels are. I now explicitly address this distinction in Week 12 feedback, as I’ve learned from past semesters that students often do not recognize it until it is clearly pointed out.
What is genuinely new in the current iteration is the material note requirement—a short environmental accountability paragraph included in the concept statement, inherited from the restructured Project 2. Past semesters did not include it. Whether its inclusion alters the work in ways that are evident in critique remains an open question that this semester aims to answer.