Flagship is a prompt-based device mockup generator. You upload a screenshot, choose a device, describe the scene you want it sitting in, and get a polished mockup back. Josh and I built it because good mockups were either expensive or interchangeable - I've freelanced long enough to have watched two competitors ship the literal same stock template - and generating each scene from a prompt meant every one could be unique to you. I designed it, drove the product, and wrote a good part of the code that runs it.
Features
Upload an image, pick a device, describe the environment in plain language, and Flagship generates the mockup. Every generation gives you two variations to choose from, so you're never stuck with a single take. You can reopen any mockup with its settings pre-filled to tweak it, rename and organize them in a gallery, and download at a resolution that holds up on an App Store listing, a landing page, or a pitch deck. It supports iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Strategic decisions
- Anti-commoditization as the angle. Template tools hand everyone the same scenes, so the mockup you ship is one a competitor can download too. Flagship generates each scene from scratch, and we built the whole pitch on that: your mockups are yours alone. We even cut a generic line about keeping your images private in favor of it - every tool promises privacy, and almost none of them promise you won't look like everyone else.
- Failed generations don't count. Image models fail sometimes. When one does, the retry is free and it never touches your quota. Paying for the model having a bad day is the kind of small thing that quietly erodes trust, so we designed it out.
- Benefits over internals. Every generation hands you two variations to pick from. There's some machinery behind how those two get produced, but a user doesn't need to carry it around, so the product talks about the options it gives you and keeps the mechanism out of the way.
Learnings
A mockup tool lives or dies on the quality of what it makes, which made the honest test an easy one to name: did we use it for our own work? We did, and still do. Most of the visuals on my portfolio came out of Flagship, and so did our App Store screenshots. Being our own most demanding customer is what told us it was good, and it's still the bar we hold it to.
You can see Flagship at yourflagship.com.
