Your essential guide to comps and mockups.

To transform your brand’s design intent into a retail reality, brand design and production agencies often offer a variety of realization services. From ensuring precise color prints to supporting marketing campaigns, packaging mockups, prototypes and design comps are essential parts of the brand packaging design process.

In this guide, we break down these and more design realization terms to help your brand find the right services for its packaging needs.

Design Comps and Packaging Mockups

Design comps, short for comprehensive layouts, should offer a high fidelity and realistic print preview of the product package. Mockup design involves creating an accurate representation of the final product. This allows designers and brands to reliably evaluate the look and feel of the package.

For brands, design comps serve as a tangible representation of the final press process. When properly executed, they showcase reliable results for color accuracy, special print effects, and packaging materials. With high-resolution graphics and precise details, packaging mockups are essential for brands to review design intent across different package iterations.

Packaging Prototypes

Packaging prototypes are structural models of the proposed package design, created so brands can experience product packaging firsthand. Instead of focusing on the print process, packaging prototypes are meant to be interacted with.

Through cost-effective production and a fast turnaround, effective packaging design protoypes allow brand managers and marketing teams to assess a pack’s shape, form and function. Packaging protoypes are your brand’s way of testing structural integrity and user experience during the packaging design process.

Hero Comps

Hero comps are high-quality, visually striking renditions of design comps, often used for marketing purposes. These packaging mockups should highlight every nuance of a brand’s packaging and product design in a visually impactful way.

Successful hero comps are especially well suited for promotional advertising photoshoots. This means brands can use hero comps for social media marketing, landing page hero images and e-commerce beauty shots. Hero comps are also often featured in retail pop-up stores and other brand activation events.

Sales Samples

Retail sales samples are production-feasible prototypes specifically tailored for client and partner presentations. Sales comps are often provided by brands to give retailers a tangible representation of the product, helping them make informed decisions in the pre-sale process.

Packaging sales samples are also an essential sell-in tool at customer meetings and vendor showcases. These high-quality packaging mockups should enable stakeholders to make informed decisions with a sales-oriented preview of the product.