Mockups As Graphic Design Storytelling

In graphic design, mockups have evolved from simple tools to showcase a design in a real application, to essential creative assets, shaping how designers present their work and communicate within the industry, honestly, outside the industry, with clients and customers who often have a harder time envisioning graphics across different mediums. Once a way to visualize posters or business cards before print, mockups have become increasingly complex and stylized, often showcasing entire fictional brands, such as work done by college design students. It’s Nice That editor Elizabeth Goodspeed explores this and other aspects in this design must-read column, such as the shift toward the growing expectation for designers to not only create stunning visuals, but also craft narratives about that very same work. For graphic designers, mockups now offer a dual purpose: impressing clients and signaling insider knowledge to fellow creatives, reshaping design documentation into a strategic, polished form of storytelling.