One of the most important things to think about when designing is context. In what environment will the item sit? What texture will it appear on? What colour will the background behind it be? Will it be bigger or smaller than the items around it?
In the design stage, a creator will think about all of these things, and yet when they go to present the design it’s very easy for these contextual elements, which have made a great impact on the design choices, to be forgotten.
That’s why we create mock-ups. Mockups can show shapes, lighting, background, special effects and more. They’re not a cheat – in fact, they’re extremely valuable and the best way to present your design.
Mockups are particularly valuable for packaging and print design – more on packaging later. For now, let’s focus on print.
When recently designing the first stage of a wedding stationery suite, we stumbled across an issue – we had to present the Save the Date first, with no context as to what it would look like next to the Invitation. Of course, the invitation should be the grander of the two. The Save the Date should be the pre-cursor to the main event, however by simply presenting the Save the Date these was no way to show the opportunity for development.
The items were also flat, crisp and able to be viewed at much too large a size on screen. They needed some context. Although there are plenty of fantastic free mockups available online, you can spend many hours searching for the right one, just to find out that the present size is a bit too tall or wide, and you end up warping your design to fit the mockup.
In reality, mockups are pretty simple to make, and we love to customise our mockups for the client, so we know it fits the design and suits the style we’re aiming to convey. We use a few stock sites to add our context and make these layouts look true to life.
Recommended: pexels.com and unsplash.com.
Interested in the process?
Check out our video below for a quick showing of how to create a simple flat lay wedding invitation set.
If you’re not quite ready to delve into making your own mockups, we’re giving away this one for free (you lucky duck).
It comes with 3 shadow sets, 2 greenery sets and a variable envelope colour. Download and enjoy!
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