What if your mockup is focked up?

Most mockups live in a very nice world. The poster hangs perfectly flat in a spotless station. The business card rests on marble next to a flawless cappuccino. The phone floats in soft light against a clean backdrop. It's aspirational, and after the hundredth one, a bit hard to believe.

Fockups is the other world. It's a series of "f*cked up mockups" that show your design the way it will actually end up: a banner peeling off a construction fence, a poster that's been rained on, a flag that's seen better days. The line on the site is "Because the world isn't as perfect as many mockups pretend."

It was made by Wytze Hoogslag, a Dutch graphic designer and art director and co-founder of the Amsterdam studio Thansk. He photographed every scene himself, the first pack around Amsterdam, which is why they look so real. They are.

What's in the packs

There are two releases, and each one is a set of Photoshop files with smart objects, so you drop your artwork in the usual way.

The first Fockups has eight: a business card, a phone, a beach flag, a flag on a pole, a billboard, A1 and A3 posters, and a roll-up banner. Fockups 2 adds ten more: a highway billboard, a 100 x 70 cm flag, an A2 poster triptych, A0, bus shelter and MUPI street posters, a banner on a construction site (that's the one at the top of this article), a bottle label, a presentation in front of an audience and, yes, a urinal ad.

The conditions are the point. Wind, rain, time, graffiti, and what the site calls human stupidity. Posters get torn, banners flap loose, things get stuck on crooked.

Why you'd use it

Partly because it's funny, and a good laugh in a presentation never hurts. But there's a practical side too. A design that still reads when it's half torn off a fence is a design that works in the street. Putting your poster into a Fockup is a quick stress test for contrast, hierarchy and how much of it survives when things go wrong.

It's also great for social posts and case studies. Everyone has seen the perfect billboard mockup. A slightly wrecked one gets a second look.

The pricing

Both packs are sold through FilterGrade, with personal, commercial and extended licenses. The first pack lists at $16 and Fockups 2 at $18, and both are often on sale.

Heads up

These are a bit of fun, not a full mockup toolkit. You're working with a fixed set of scenes, and some of them, like the urinal, won't suit every client deck. For polished, adjustable presentation mockups with real materials, LiveSurface is the better tool.

Each scene is a real photo too, so the angle, crop and damage are what they are. If your artwork doesn't suit the composition, there's not much you can do beyond picking another one.

Who it's for

Poster and campaign designers who want to show work in the real world. Studios looking for a lighter way to present ideas. Anyone who has ever seen their beautiful print job six weeks later, faded and flapping, and laughed so they didn't cry.

Pick up the first pack, drop in your latest poster and see how it holds up.

Written by Steve Salgado