Nigerian Mockups was created to bring you a collection of high-quality, high-resolution photo impressions of brands and designs. There is such a wide array of free images, that it is easy to find what you are looking for.
In this interview, Nigerian Mockups takes us on a journey of what the library represents, why it is curating these images, how it is staying ahead of competitors, and its future plans.
What unique problem does Nigerian Mockups solve and how is the library doing that?
Mockups are pre-made image templates that allow anyone to seamlessly and easily place their own content, thus serving as excellent showcases for brands and designs, whether it be on a billboard message, the outside of a bus, on-screen application design, or print ads.
Mockups give viewers the opportunity to accurately visualize how the final product will appear, bringing life to brand designs, web pages, or applications and allowing designers to test how various visual elements work in the context they are planned for before said designs go live.
However, until now, creatives all over Africa have had to rely on using foreign mockups and elements to represent these brands— that’s never felt right to us at Check DC, as they just could not portray the authenticity needed to contextualize our designs.
We decided to solve this problem by creating Nigerian Mockups— a library of photorealistic mockups, to showcase our designs in a relatable, Nigerian context. We also decided to make access to this resource completely free for everyone, particularly, designers and creatives in Nigeria and Africa who need these mockups as part of our commitment to helping the design community grow.
Who exactly are your clients/customers?
Nigerian Mockups was developed for Nigerian designers that want to showcase their work in the most relatable context. However, other creatives looking to make presentations, whether they be marketing executives, startup CEOs, product developers, and many more, can create and test visual representations of their ideas or designs using Nigerian mockups.
What’s the biggest thing you are working on at the moment?
At the moment, the library has about 32 mockups, capturing outdoor signages, billboards, LED screens, and iconic landmarks in locations including Lagos Island, Yaba, Lekki, Gbagada, Ikeja, Ikorodu road, and Surulere. We are currently working on a second phase that incorporates other Nigerian cities and even more landmarks in Lagos. We are also planning on opening up Nigerian Mockups to contributors in the shortest possible time to accelerate the number of mockups available for download.
Taking into account the peculiarity of content creation in Nigeria, what are some of the biggest risks to creating these mockups?
Curating the images used to develop the library was definitely the most challenging part of the project. Some of the challenges we faced had to do with safely navigating the streets of Lagos to capture the base images that were used to develop the mockups, being harassed by thugs as well as run-ins with the Nigerian Police Force. We’ve written extensively about the actual experience here.
How are you poised to make a significant impact in the face of these risks?
The risks experienced so far lean towards the logistics of curating the images for the mockups. We’ve had quite an amazing reception from the creative/design community so far and we can already see the impact of the work we put in. More and more designers are beginning to use these mockups for their projects and some are already volunteering to become contributors to the library.
We think this bodes well for the positive impact we envisioned the platform could have at an even bigger scale, faster than we imagined. We are definitely taking note of feedback that is flowing in to make improvements and also expand the platform.
As you think about the future of Nigerian Mockups, what are you most excited about?
We are excited at the prospect of having Nigerian Mockups as the foremost resource for designers from all around the world looking for authentic mockups that capture the essence of Africa and showcase African designs in African contexts.
What are your five-year projections?
We hope to get started on a second phase that incorporates other Nigerian cities and even more landmarks and then subsequently expand to other notable African cities, with our eyes set on curating mockups in cities like Accra, Nairobi, Marrakech, Cairo, Capetown, Johannesburg, and Kigali in the near future.
We also want to foster the power of the design community by inviting individual contributors to upload their own mockups to the website, which will then be reviewed by our in-house design team, and once approved, made available to the public.
Finally, we plan to develop short video tutorials on how to use mockups for everyday users who may not have design experience so that Nigerian Mockups are truly available to everyone!
Anything else you’d like your clients/customers to know?
In less than 3 weeks, we’ve had close to 3,000 downloads on the platform with just 32 mockups available. This reflects the high demand for relatable mockups in Nigeria and Africa. We’re strategizing and working tirelessly to ensure that creatives get a plethora of choices soon, as the number we currently have can be limiting for a start.
Creatives should expect more mockups and a future where every mockup type you can think of would be on Nigerian Mockups.