Living in today’s modern digital world means that the competition is going to be more stringent than ever. As technology gets updated, design capabilities are also innovated. So as a designer, the ways to present a website design to a prospective client are limitless. Good thing there are free MacBook mockup templates to choose from. This way, designers can create their own vision without too much stress on creating the actual mockup.
For those not involved in the technical aspect of the design, some terms might sound gibberish. So here is a list of terms that people might here during a presentation of application or web designs.
Free MacBook mockup
MacBook is one of the laptop products of Apple Inc. It was Apple’s cheapest portable computer introduced in 2006, but production stopped twice. Manufacturing of the MacBook was stopped between 2012 and 2015 because it was supplanted by the MacBook Air second generation. In 2015, another kind of MacBook was introduced to the market, but again discontinued this year as it was superseded by the Retina MacBook Air.
A MacBook mockup, on the other hand, is a prototype of what a web or application design will look like on a MacBook. Production of the MacBook may have been discontinued but it doesn’t mean that its usability has become insignificant. It is still one of the most professional laptops for visual presentations—both in physical aesthetics as well as practical function. While there are no new MacBooks coming up, IGN implied in its latest report that now is the best time to get the best deal on MacBooks.
A free MacBook mockup is a collection of the best layouts for web presentations that are free of charge. The mockups will showcase a business’s website, highlighting its best products and services. The screen of the MacBook is the perfect one to demonstrate what a website or application will look like. A MacBook mockup will be the closest thing to the actual web or application design that a web developer or designer can demonstrate.
Because an Apple device is generally in sync with another Apple product, doing a design through the MacBook will make it easier for designers to seamlessly transfer files. So if design projects are done on a MacBook and photos were taken from an iPhone, there is no need to transfer files from one device to another. It can easily be accessed through the iCloud. A free MacBook mockup will also generally translate well with a MacBook Pro mockup and MacBook Air mockup.
– iMac mockups
This is basically just the same as a MacBook mockup except the lineup of prototypes here would look best on a desktop. This generally means that the design project is mostly for a product or service that will work best for an office—whether it is for a home office or corporate office. There are also so many kinds of mockup template that uses the iMac just because the market for workplace product or service is large.
Working with an iMac is also very convenient just because of the large screen display. The high resolution known among Apple products is also a great advantage.
For designers who want a single source for mockups for an iMac or MacBook, digital product design company Ramotion provides four iMac Clay and four MacBook Clay mockups to showcase different web applications.
– Devices mockup
While free MacBook mockups are great at showcasing a web design, there are times when clients prefer to know what the proposed landing page and other successive online pages will look like on different screens. Then a devices mockup becomes necessary. This is important because there are some aspects of a design that may not translate well with other devices. For example, a web or application design may look great on a phone, but once you open the landing page on a desktop, the color may look different and the font may be too glaring. Or it could be the other way around: What looks perfect on a desktop may look constricted on a tablet.
There are also different kinds of devices mockup, and not just those that will show you the frontal view of the desktop, tablet and phone side by side. There are also devices mockup that showcase the different angles of the technology.
– PSD mockup
This is the most popular form of a design model: PSD mockup. Photoshop or PSD provides a realistic concept, which is important during web design demonstration. A designer would want to present a concept that will be as close to the output as possible. Doing the actual website or application will be very expensive, which is why mockups were invented. These are very helpful creative tools that will help designers explain and show best how the design will look when used in the real world.
The PSD mockup also means that the designer will be working with a PSD file, which is a layered image document. The layers make it easier for designers to work on the file because these can be edited individually.
– Smart layers
Smart layers give designers the ability to scale their work without pixelating the quality. This is not automatic, though. The designer has to convert a layer from Adobe Photoshop into a smart layer so that the object can be scaled up or down. It is called smart layer because the system basically remembers the information of the object—usually an image—from its original scale.
Smart layers are very important when working on logos and layouts.
– Sketch
A Sketch file is a vector drawing program. It also has layers like the PSD file. These layers include text, images, symbols and shapes. But whatever design made in Sketch can easily be transported to the different file formats: .JPG, .PDF, .PNG, .TIFF, among others.
PSD and Sketch are generally not compatible with each other. However, they are both equally important because designers sometimes want to work on graphics that are in Sketch file. But since PSD is an easier platform to navigate and edit, designers would prefer to work on the Sketch file via Photoshop. However, Sketch doesn’t have a PSD export and vice versa. Manual conversion is tricky as well. But there are always ways to convert PSD to Sketch. In fact, there are online converters that are free, making it easier for designers to concentrate on their creative task.
Flat design
As the name suggests, a flat design is a minimal use of style in the design process. The design will look flat (literally, and not boring like its figurative meaning) because of the lack of drop shadows, depth and gradients that will give the design a more three-dimensional look.
The flat design allows a designer to work freely on the layout because it seems more streamlined. It also makes visual communication easier to convey. Most importantly, the design is the best at appearing the most consistent across all devices.
