A mockup-design-tool built with Processing

Published by Tim on Thursday November 18, 2021

Last modified on June 7th, 2023 at 14:36

Mockups can be used to effectively simulate and visualize graphic design applications. i’ve been using this technique for years to showcase ideas and how they work in urban environments.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with open source design tools for a few years now. I find the idea of breaking away from dependencies on big players like Adobe or Apple and exploring the multiplicity of unusual solutions exciting. For my animated mockups, I tried various open source software (Natron and Blender) and quickly reached their limits. Both solutions are too complex for my simple use case and would have required quite a few more hours of learning.

So I decided to develop my own tool with Processing. The first prototype took me a few hours of development time. I intentionally designed the tool with many constraints and wanted to position the motifs only flat and in color on black and white photographs found on unsplash.com. This was a conscious choice and with a little effort it could definitely be refined. For me it was also an aesthetic decision. In this way the result looks honest: it doesn’t even try to look as if it were real. The tool in this case is therefore also the design system.

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