Seven Deadly Sins - week 3

 Instructions

The seven deadly sins are: pridegreedwrathenvylustgluttony and sloth. Illustrate one of the deadly sins without using any text. Please be creative and think about all the different ways you could illustrate the sin. i.e., Don't choose greed and focus on money. You can dig deeper than this.

Describe the project and your design decisions on your blog.

 Content

    For this project, we were asked to visually represent one of the seven deadly sins without using any text, which immediately pushed me to think more about symbolism and process rather than explanation. I decided to explore pride and envy, since they often go hand in hand, especially when comparison gets involved. My main goal wasn’t to over complicate the idea, but to show how small visual choices can communicate a bigger message when they all work together.


    I started by building the main elements of the piece in Illustrator. The money symbols and stock arrows were created using basic shapes and the Shape Builder tool, which helped me quickly refine their forms without getting too technical. I kept the arrows simple one rising and one falling so they could act as background elements that support the characters rather than steal focus. The dollar signs were also kept clean and minimal, mainly to help balance the composition and guide the viewer’s eye across the piece.
    Once those elements were in place, I moved on to the characters themselves. I chose to represent them as simple spheres so the emotions would come through mostly in their expressions and posture rather than detailed features. The gradient work was a big part of this step. I spent a good amount of time adjusting highlights and shadows to make the spheres feel more dimensional while still keeping that smooth, playful look. Even small tweaks to the gradients made a noticeable difference in how polished the characters felt.
    To add more depth to the scene, I created my own gold coins instead of relying on pre-made assets. I followed a tutorial that walked through using gradients, strokes, and layering to give the coins a realistic shine. This part of the process was especially helpful because it reinforced how much detail you can get out of simple shapes when you understand how Illustrator handles light and depth.

Check this video out if you wanna make your own too!: Create Your own Tokens/Coins!

    Overall, this project at first really did have me second guessing, and overthinking some of my choices at times, but when I stuck to a design that is both simple, and can still tell a impactful message I just had to stick with it to the end. I honestly enjoy how it came out, and espically making everything by myself, for myself just makes it 10 times better.

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