Designers redraw other people's interfaces constantly. A presentation shows a mocked-up onboarding flow in the style of a familiar app; a case study illustrates a proposed feature inside a chat window everyone recognises; a classroom exercise asks students to critique a messaging layout. None of this involves copying a screenshot. It involves recreating an interface, and that practice lives in a grey zone between perfectly normal and genuinely risky. This piece explains the concepts that decide where a particular recreation sits, in general terms that apply across legal systems.
None of this is legal advice
This is a conceptual overview, not legal advice, and it should not be relied on to make a decision about a specific design or campaign. Trademark, copyright and unfair-competition rules vary by jurisdiction and by the facts of each case, and reasonable lawyers can disagree about the same recreation. What follows describes the questions courts and counsel typically ask, so that you can recognise when a project has crossed into territory that warrants real advice. When the stakes are commercial, get that advice from someone qualified in the relevant jurisdiction.
What trademark law protects, and what it does not
Trademark law, in broad outline across many systems, protects signs that identify the source of goods or services — names, logos, sometimes colours and shapes — against uses that confuse consumers about who is behind something, or that dilute a famous mark. What it generally does not do is grant a company ownership of a layout concept, a two-column conversation, or the general idea of bubbles on a background. Protection is about source identification, not about pixels as such.
That distinction is the foundation of the whole topic. Copying a logo is a trademark question. Drawing a generic chat window that happens to resemble a category of apps is usually not, because nothing in it tells the viewer who made the software. The trouble starts when the recreation includes the elements that do identify a source — the logo, the wordmark, the distinctive visual identity — or when the surrounding context implies a relationship that does not exist.
Nominative use: naming a platform without pretending to be it
Many legal systems recognise some form of nominative — or referential — use: you can use another's trademark to refer to that other, when you genuinely need to name it and you do not suggest sponsorship. A tutorial titled “how to design for WhatsApp” is describing the platform. A product that presents itself as an official WhatsApp feature is not. The line runs through likelihood of confusion and implication of endorsement, not through whether the name appears.
In practice, this is why mockup work so often carries a disclaimer. A clear statement that the recreation is not affiliated with or endorsed by the platform owner is an attempt to keep the use referential. It is not a magic spell — a disclaimer cannot undo a genuinely confusing or deceptive presentation — but it addresses the specific concern that a viewer might think the software came from the brand.
Trade dress and the “look and feel” question
Some jurisdictions protect not just names and logos but the overall appearance of a product or its packaging, sometimes called trade dress or get-up, where that appearance has become associated with a single source. Applied to software interfaces, this is a contested and fact-specific area: a look and feel is only protectable, if at all, when it is distinctive and identifies a source, and courts weigh whether the features are functional or generic. The reliable takeaway is that interface appearance is not automatically free to copy, and it is not automatically protected either.
Because it depends on distinctiveness and on how the market reads the design, the answer changes with how recognisable the interface is and how it is used. Recreating a chat window as a neutral backdrop for a story is a long way from building a competing product that mimics another's interface to trade on its reputation.
Copyright in icons, fonts and artwork
Copyright is a separate question and often the more concrete one, because it attaches to specific expression: an illustrated icon set, a custom typeface, a piece of artwork, a distinctive sound. A layout of plain bubbles over a solid colour may contain very little protected expression. The instant you reproduce another company's icon artwork or embed its proprietary font, you are dealing with copied expression rather than an idea, and that is where copyright questions become real.
This is why recreating an interface tends to be safer when it is genuinely a recreation — redrawn with your own geometry, your own iconography, your own type — rather than a lift of the original's assets. The most common mistakes in mockup work are not conceptual; they are practical, such as screenshotting real artwork or using a found icon file without knowing its licence. Our messaging app colour reference exists partly so that recreations can be built from documented values rather than from copied files.
Platform brand guidelines as a private rulebook
Independent of the law, most large platforms publish brand and developer guidelines describing how their marks may be used. These are contractual and policy documents, not statutes, but they shape the practical risk: they are cited in takedown requests, app store reviews and advertising rejections. Following them is not a legal safe harbour, and breaching them is not automatically illegal, but a project that ignores them invites friction that a project that reads them usually avoids.
In practice, the guidelines often say sensible things: do not imply partnership, do not alter the mark, do not use the interface to suggest endorsement. Those map onto the same concerns the law is worried about, which is not a coincidence.
Context decides more than pixel accuracy
If you take one idea from this piece, take this: the legal and ethical weight of a recreation comes mostly from the context around it, not from how closely it matches the original. A pixel-accurate mockup used in an educational critique is a different act from the same file used to convince a customer that a platform endorses a product. Same pixels, different exposure, and the surrounding text, labelling and commercial purpose are what move it.
That is why the useful questions are not “did I get the radius right?” but “what will a viewer think this is, and what will they think about who made it?” A recreation that reads as a study of a design is comfortable. One that reads as an official artefact from the brand is not.
A workable ethics test for designers
- Would the brand object, and on what ground? If the answer is “they would think we were impersonating them,” the problem is identifiable and fixable.
- Does the recreation borrow identity or just style? Logos, wordmarks and official badges are identity. A bubble shape is closer to style.
- Is the asset lifted or redrawn? Redrawn geometry is one thing; a copied icon file is another.
- Is the context honest? Label illustrations as illustrations and keep the platform's role in the picture accurate.
- Would a disclaimer be accurate? If a “not affiliated” line would be true and clarifying, it is usually worth adding.
Habits that keep mockups defensible
None of these habits requires a lawyer, and each one lowers risk before anyone has to think about the law. Build interfaces from documented values rather than screenshots. Keep a clear, honest line between a recreation and the real product. Avoid implying official status or endorsement. Label illustrative material in finished work. When a project moves from a design exercise into a commercial advertisement, treat that as the moment to reconsider — the questions, and the stakes, change.
We build mockups on those habits. The site's Acceptable Use Policy sets out the uses we support, the about page explains the intent behind the tools, and the wider set of rules around using mockups in advertising is worth reading alongside this one. Recreating an interface is an ordinary design activity. The work is keeping it recognisably a recreation.