Mockups are a great way to create designs and test them in different real-life contexts that help businesses or even individuals to get a realistic perspective. It helps companies save their time as well as cost on the production as it allows them to visualize the final result and make corrections before production to ensure it’s according to the preferences of clients or customers. Whereas, brand mockups can give a variety of options of logos for businesses and analyze them on different products with different backgrounds and textures.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that these benefits of mockups can only be extracted if you are able to make good, high-quality mockups. Therefore, this article will provide you with five tips to help you create a good mockup. Read below!
1. Understand the Product
It may sound like a cliché, but most of the time, designers are in a hurry to directly skip to drafting mockups without deeply knowing about the product. Understanding the product means you can create a mockup according to the message that a product conveys and this helps fulfill the purpose of a mockup.
Rather than simply throwing on a logo on a fancy-looking mockup, you should try to relate the logo or design to it. For instance, putting a logo for a vegan food company on a mockup with all-vegetables in the background will be ideal. It will also be perfect for targeting prospective buyers, therefore, making the marketing campaign for your client more effective.
2. Ensure Crisp Resolution
It is indispensable that the quality of your mockup and logo or design should match perfectly. Now, it doesn’t mean that they both should have poor quality, as that would be an example of a poor mockup job.
It’s relatively easier to create a crisp quality mockup, however, you can’t simply paste a small logo on it by stretching its size. This will make the pixel quality extremely low or which can also be called a raster. You can either convert a raster to vector by yourself using software such as Adobe Illustrator, or some of the online paid applications can also do it for you.
You should also take into account whether the design is supposed to be on the billboard or poster mockup as this will greatly influence the quality, and you should accordingly edit it.
3. Consider the Theme and Colors
While you are drafting mockups, you are provided with countless options of colors and that will determine the final look of the overall product. When creating a mockup, you should consider the color theme and use it in such a way that makes the product stand out.
For instance, if the product is already dull, using a neutral-colored mockup is simply going to make the product go unnoticed by the audience. Therefore, you should always go for contrasts i.e, use a bright mockup with a cooler-toned product.
In addition to this, it can be easy to make the mockup very distracting with so many unnecessary details in it, thus, you should try to keep it simple yet interesting to catch the eye of the right audience.
4. Use the Right Tools to Create a Mockup
There’s really no right or wrong to using a tool for making a mockup. It all depends on your preference and with which tool you’re most comfortable as it can determine the quality of your final mockup. You can use design software for a professional look, whereas some of the online design templates are even no less for a pro look.
Design software. You can try Adobe Photoshop, Moqups, Mockplus, or Adobe Illustrator, however, they may be a bit complex to use. Hence, you should have a great grip on them and the results will be indeed top-notch.
Online design templates. If you’re not an expert, you can always take advantage of the online design templates that can be found on a variety of websites for free. The only drawback is that they may end up being the same as the competing brands, therefore, try to look for such websites that continuously update their libraries.
5. Collaborate with Experts
While making a good mockup, you need to also take the opinions of experts or your team members as there’s always room to improve. You can use collaborative tools that allow you to upload and design mockups and at the same time, others can have a look too and leave comments. It’s not only convenient but will also help you get that perfect look.
Remember that it is also crucial to implement the feedback if you think it is realistic and will enhance the final product. It’s also a great idea to make different versions of the same mockup such as with various themes and colors to help you and your team pick the best one out.