A mockup is an image or scene you need to better represent your illustrations, products, or fonts. For example, if you’re designing fonts, you can use a champagne bottle mockup with editable labels and more. Thus, you can write something on the topic of a specific mockup in your own font and use Photoshop to insert it on the label. This will allow prospective clients to better appreciate your font in real life and make purchasing decisions faster.
In this article, we will analyze the definition of a mockup, the specifics of their use, and also show you where to get free mockups.
Who needs mockups and why?
In most cases, designers use mockups. They need them to present their own work to the client. With the help of mockups, you can create not just a picture, but a whole story, showing all the magnificence of the finished product.
On the technical side, a mockup is a PSD file that has editable smart objects. Smart Object is an editable layer in Photoshop that allows you to paste your object where you want it.
So where to get mockups? There are three options: create yourself, download for free, or buy. Next, we will look at where to get free mockups, and also figure out what is going to be better: download a free mockup or buy it.
Where to download mockups for free?
Some people think that it’s hard to find decent free mockups in the public access, but if you dig deeper, there are many free resources on the Internet where you can download mockups for free. Most often, such websites collaborate with designers who give their mockups for free distribution, and in return they get recognisability. Among the free mockups, you can find many interesting ideas in top-quality performance.
To buy or download mockups for free?
If you can find free mockups that will fully meet your requirements, then there’s no point in buying paid ones. Paid mockups won’t necessarily be more useful or interesting to you. It’s quite possible to find legal and free interesting mockups. You can even collect a set of them so that you don’t waste time when searching for them again.
But paid mockups also have many advantages — from the ability to buy a large set at once and present products in the same style to saving time on searches. In general, ready-made mockups have a lot of advantages, including the ability to easily and without wasting time create a ready-made product presentation. But there are also disadvantages, among which the main one is the lack of complete uniqueness because there’s a great demand for good mockups, so you can find the same design from another specialist too.
The ideal solution is to make mockups yourself or order individual solutions. At the same time, for the first option, not everyone has the skills, and the second is quite expensive. If none of them suits you, just use the ready-made mockups, and it’s only you who decide to pay or not.
