Specific, or cohesive. Pick one.
Or don't... Because you can have both, as demonstrated by this week's field note.
A field note on a branding mockup tradeoff I’ve been making my whole career, and didn’t have to make this week.
I finished a logo this week for a business ministry at a local church in San Diego and the mockups ended up doing something worth examining.
The thing about a mockup set is that every image in it has to be a specific element that is relevant to the industry. I can't use a business card mockup for a ministry like this, there are other motifs and artifacts that would make this more relevant and special, and that extra relevance would help my case for the logo that I was pitching.
Here’s what I wanted:
- A wooden bookmark, the mark engraved into it, lying across an open Bible
- A flag on a pole, backlit against a sunset carried by someone
- An embroidered cap, on a guy who looks like he owns a contracting business
- A polo, logo stitched at the chest
- A leather journal, the mark debossed into the cover
- A group around a table, Bibles open, shot from directly overheadSix very specific requests, which is precisely why they came back looking nothing like each other.
These aren't bad, they just don't look like a delivered package.
But it's 2026 and not having a cohesive package of brand mockups isn't acceptable anymore.
In the past, there was a tradeoff between the specificity of the mockup and getting a cohesive set.
It is impossible to find a mockup for a wooden bookmark resting on a bible that also looks and feels the same as a mockup of a dude in a carhartt jacket waving a flag.
Sure, you could make these adjustments manually, if you don't mind spending hours within Photoshop... but this week I didn't have to make the tradeoff.
The fix was almost embarrassingly simple. I went and found a set of images I loved, had the canvas read them and tell me what they had in common stylistically, and then ran all six of mine back through whatever it found.
The logo was approved within 2 minutes of receipt and I think the cohesion of the mockups had a substantial impact on that decision.
AI is really scary for a lot of designers.
When it allows me to do things like this and feel like I actually have more control over the output of my work that looks magnitudes more professional, fear gets obliterated by excitement.
It's a wonderful time to be a creative.
— Zach 😎
