More often than not, mockups can be the difference between excellence and mediocrity in design and product development. It is with smart mockups, whether in 2D or 3D, that designers can really aspire to create solutions that exactly solve the user’s problems. Learn in this guide how to use mockups in your branding and design process for the most effective and successful brand identity.
Mockups allow you to see how your product or design will look in real life; before you get into the deep work of building prototypes. They also enable designers to collect vital feedback across the board, on which they can then develop their designs or products to the pinnacle of excellence.
So, how do you use mockups in your branding process? What are the best practices? Where can you buy the best mockups? What are the benefits you should optimize for? And what key tips could help improve your overall process? Read on, as we will discuss all of these in this article.
Best practices for using mockups
It doesn’t take a genius to become a designer. However, that difference in excellence is usually determined by best practices. We will discuss a few of those below.
Create your mockups early on in the design process
Mockups shouldn’t come in as an afterthought or the last step in your design process. From the very beginning, you need to start visualizing how your design would appear in realistic conditions. Especially if you’re designing 3D products like apparel, packaging, bottle labels, or other similar products, you want to know how your design would wrap around the intended object after all.
Choose the best tools for the task to use mockups in branding process
It goes without saying that you need to get the very best software for the task at hand. Design tools and techniques vary, depending on what you want to do. So, you may need different tools for 2D designs, 3D wraparounds, or wrinkled designs on packaging.
First, you want to create your design in 2D and set a copy aside—in case you may need to reuse it in the future. Then, using transform tools, you can skew or rotate your design as you wish to position it around your template. Then, with additional techniques like blending and lighting adjustments, you can bring everything around to taste.
Be as specific as possible
Many designers get caught up in producing generic designs, relying solely on pre-set templates. Of course, this is lazy work and it is always reflected in the quality of the final product. If you want to stand out as a designer who is worth their salt, it will serve you to customize the project to your client’s needs as much as possible.
For example, if you were contracted to create wall designs for a store in a mall, you want to use images of a mall as your template, rather than just any generic wall. Learn in this guide how to use mockups in your branding and design process for the most effective and successful brand identity.
Best places to find mockup templates online
Best practices alone won’t cut it, you still need an expressive collection of high-quality mockups. Here are where to find those:
Yellow Images
Yellow Images is a leading digital marketplace for high-quality PSD mockup templates, 3D models, and just about any other design elements that you may need in the design process. In reality, you can get these things anywhere. But what really sets Yellow Images apart is the sheer volume of options that are available. With several thousand templates, chances are that you will definitely find something that fits right into your needs.
Rawpixels to use mockups in branding process
Most mockup templates tend to be minimalist in design so as not to draw attention from the design itself— which is meant to be the center of attraction. Well, if you would like templates with a little bit more zhuzh, you should be looking at Rawpixels.
Behance
Behance is commonly referred to as the Instagram for creatives. True to that name, it is a central platform where designers from all across the world come to share their designs, including mockup templates. Learn in this guide how to use mockups in your branding and design process for the most effective and successful brand identity.
Software templates
Of course, nearly all of the software out there for design has some form of template bank or another. The actual number of available templates may vary depending on the software and the subscription fees, but you’ll always have access to at least a few hundred templates on any software that you choose.
Benefits of using mockups
There are a thousand and one benefits to incorporating mockups into your branding process. In this section, we will discuss some of these benefits.
They help to visualize the intended design to use mockups in branding process
If you were designing t-shirts, for example, you could spend a lot of time picturing how your design would look when imprinted on the shirts. But, without 3D mockups, there’s no way to tell whether the design would actually turn out the way you intend. The same goes for just about any other type of 3D design.
Mockups enable you to put these things in perspective, showing how they would look in real life, under realistic conditions. Learn in this guide how to use mockups in your branding and design process for the most effective and successful brand identity.
They help cut time
The traditional work process would involve going all the way from ideation to design and production, to approval. This involves a lot of suggestions and iterations that take up so much time. Without mockups, it isn’t uncommon for clients or other stakeholders to find out, only after the entire process has been completed that the final product does not align with the vision that they had in mind.
With mockups, you can begin to get feedback early on in the process, and you can fix problems as you go along. This prevents having to go through multiple iterations and saves a lot of time.
They help improve communication between the designer and the other stakeholders
Perhaps the greatest benefit of mockups in the branding process is how much it improves communication between the designer and the other stakeholders involved in the process. It simply helps to have a visual aid around which everyone can communicate clearly their expectations, objections, and opinions. Without mockups, all you’d have is people speaking in abstract terms that can get very disconnected from reality.
Wrapping up to use mockups in branding process
We hope that by now, you understand that mockups are not meant to be just another step in the design process. Rather, you should craft your branding process around mockups, taking advantage of its many possibilities to significantly improve user experience and cut development times.
The post How to Use Mockups in Your Branding Process appeared first on Visualmodo.
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