Designing visually appealing mockups is something that all designers need to be able to execute as part of their design jobs. Gone are the days when designers could submit their designs in a simple form. The clients now want to see how the logo or packaging would look like in the real world. This, in a way, is a win-win for both designers and clients as all the parties know how the output is going to be. For designers, it gets easy to convince the client about how good their designs are and how they will look when executed. For the clients, it becomes easy to imagine the applications. They can then get the final output tweaked to suit their liking.
With the growing popularity of design mockups, there are many template options available on the internet. The majority of them provide open files to get easier for designers to use them and customize them as per their requirements. But one needs to develop a keen eye to understand which mockup will work on which product and how to tweak the open files. Moreover, there will be times when a ready-made template will not help, and the designer will have to develop the mockup right from scratch. The following video tutorials will help in designing the perfect mockups for your brands:
1) Creating Mockup Using a Base Image:
One of the most basic tutorials, this video will guide you through creating a product mockup using a base image. Often, you will come across requirements of showcasing the logo or the packaging design on objects such as T-Shirts, caps, cups, etc. For this, you will need to find an excellent high-resolution base image with the object. Try selecting an image with simpler backgrounds and less texture. This 10 minutes tutorial will then help you understand stepwise what needs to be done to set up the logo or packaging on that particular object.
2) Realistic T-Shirt Mockup in Photoshop:
Creating T-Shirt mockups is a lot of fun. This is also one of the essential inclusion that designers provide to view the design output. This tutorial provides the proper guidance for executing this task. You will need a base design or logo that you want to set up on the T-shirt. The tutorial uses a black T-shirt, but you can use the same steps for any color you want to work on. Generally, it is preferred that you use a single-color T-shirt to not conflict with your design. You can select the color base on your logo or design to ensure that it looks best on it. The tutorial also teaches you how to fine-tune the T-shirt color to enhance the visual of your design. The video is just 12 minutes long and provides you the basic guidelines for creating a realistic T-shirt mockup.
3) Packaging Design Mockup in Photoshop
PHLEARN is one of the most viewed tutorial channels on YouTube by designers. Coming from this channel, this 18-minute tutorial is a must-watch for designers working on packaging design. For any packaging design you create, you need to provide a mockup of that on the package so that the client can visualize it. This tutorial uses a base image and teaches you how to impose your design on it. The choice of the base image depends on your design, but the steps to achieve the outcome are almost the same. It provides you with important tricks like using the transformation tool, Blur tool, and the Vanishing Point Filter to make your final mockup look visually stunning and highly realistic.
4) Stunning Logo Mockups:
The work of a designer does not end at just designing amazing logos. They also have to then present it in the best possible way. Logo mockups help in this, provided the designers choose the right setup for the mockup. Some of the best possible setups are visiting cards, hoardings, reception desks, or stationary. But this tutorial takes it a step further to teach you realistic 3D rendering of your logo. This adds a special x-factor to your design which will make it easy to impress the client. The good part of the tutorial is that it is just 4:30 mins long, but even in that short duration, it explains how to create logo mockups on several objects.
5) Tshirt Mockup Composite Design in Photoshop:
This tutorial is for experienced designers looking to learn how to create visually stunning mockups of their T-shirt designs. Coming from the tutvid YouTube channel, which already has 1.15M subscribers, this tutorial is rich in terms of its content and its production. It starts by talking about how to create the mockup on a flat T-shirt using several different methods. Then it takes the tutorial up one level to show how to create mockups using a photo of a model wearing the T-shirt. You will get to learn how to use layers, masks, adjustment layers, and blend modes to create a realistic mockup in no time—a very useful tutorial for designers working in the fashion sector or even for Ecommerce websites.
6) Mobile Application Mockups:
Creating mobile applications is one of the latest trends for brands. Even if you are not designing the mobile user interface, the client would always like to see how the branding will look in a mobile application. Creating stunning mobile application mockups is the solution for this. This video tutorial by Dansky helps you achieve that easily. It uses a high-resolution mobile image as a base and helps you load the mobile application on it. The tutorial is just 3 minutes long, so be prepared to pause the video a couple of times to better understand. But the good part is that it provides the download link of the project files.
7) Create Website Mockup in Photoshop:
The best way to go about a website development project is to first understand the requirements and develop the wireframe and website design. For getting approval on the website design, you need to present it in a visually appealing manner by using mockups. This nine-minute tutorial helps you with this task. By the end of the tutorial, not only would you be able to design really good mockups but also understand how to use gradients to create the needed light and shadows effects. The tutorial teaches you how to make the most of transform options like distort, scale, skew to set up the layers in the right manner using smart objects—a very helpful resource for designers working on website development.
8) Make Beautiful Business Card Mockups:
Designing business cards is an essential part of the brand identity designing process. This is generally the second step designers take up once they are done designing the logo. Showcasing the business card design in the form of mockups helps the client visualize it in a better manner. This seven-minute tutorial guides you through the entire process. It takes a base image of visiting cards, something you can get easily, and then imposes the business card design on it. The good part is that it showcases both sides of the visiting card in a single image. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use transformation tools, smart objects, levels, using multiple layers and how to give finishing touches to the final image.
9) Create Composite Mockups for Magazines:
Every time you design a magazine, you need to also come up with a good mockup to showcase how the magazine will look like. At times this can become a challenging task. There are many good resources to help you with this, including this tutorial. This crisp video of 4:30 minutes walks you through the entire process using a magazine page image as a base. The good part of the video is that it just doesn’t impose one image on the base but rather takes it layer by layer. This way, you get to learn more about how to extract the most out of the various tools of Photoshop.
10) Create Appealing Billboard Mockups:
Another branding aspect that relies heavily on mockups is billboards. Given how expensive the execution of setting up a billboard is, clients will always ask for mockups to ensure everything is alright before the design goes for printing. Usually, designing billboard mockups is simpler than other mockups as they are on a flat surface. For fancy modern billboards, this may vary. This tutorial takes a base image of a flat billboard. You can use a good image of the real billboard that the design will be applied on as the base image. Then using various photoshop tools like transformation, skew, blend, smart objects, and others, you get to learn how to create stunning billboards that will definitely catch the eye of passersby.
11) Create a Scrolling Website Video Mockup in Photoshop
While most designers create a static mockup for websites, it fails to present the website in a scrollable form. This makes it miss the mark during client presentations. You can up your designing game by creating a scrolling website mockup in photoshop with this video. Unlike popular belief, you can create videos on photoshop. For this tutorial, you need a good base image with a laptop or desktop on it and the entire website wireframe. The tutorial teaches you how to get that image as well. Once you have these things ready, you can start by loading the base image on photoshop and creating the right smart objects in it. Then you need to set up the entire scrollable website image in the smart object and fine-tune it for the perfect view. Use the timeline tool to create the scrolling effect on the laptop/desktop screen. You can take a video out or even a GIF out. The 10-minute tutorial is highly informative and makes you an expert in making scrolling website video mockups.
12) Transform Your Book Cover into a Mockup:
Setting up a book cover on a flat book is an easy task and does not look very impressive. Rather you should use a perspective image with a human element in it, as shown in this tutorial video by the highly reputed Photoshop Training Channel. Their YouTube channel has 1.47M subscribers, so you can rely on their expertise when it comes to Photoshop. The video starts with a ‘what not to do’ section, which is interesting. Then it moves ahead to teach you how to create guides and the perspective crop tool. Then by using smart objects, you can impose the book cover design on the mockup and further fine-tune it. It also teaches you how to use a warp tool, shadow effect, and layer mask to create a highly professional output. In just 7 minutes, it teaches you how to master the art of book cover mockup designs.
13) Step by Step Tutorial on How to Download and Use PSD Logo Mockups:
This tutorial is one of the most important and useful ones as it teaches you how to use the thousands of logo mockups available on the internet. A quick Google search will take you to many websites which provide free or paid logo mockups. You need to download them, extract their open files and customize them to your liking. This elaborate tutorial will guide you through this process. It also provides information on which are the good resources. Once you have downloaded the original files, it helps you decode the open files and understand the working of smart objects.
14) Create Your Mockup from Scratch:
Are you tired of using the standard templates available on the internet? Then why not make your mockup right from scratch. This tutorial is for the extra creative people who have the time and resources to set up their environment for mockups. You will need resources like a good camera, lights, and other props that you can use to create a visually appealing environment. Then by taking photos, you can set them up using smart objects in Photoshop for creating mockups of stationery or even packaging designs.
The world of mockups is a very vast one and keeps on expanding. There are many dedicated tools and software available now to get you the perfect 3D mockups you need. As a designer, you should always make sure to provide mockups of your designs, as this will help you provide a better understanding to the client.
