Top 8 iPhone Apps for Graphic Designers {Guest Post}
Graphic designers and design students at technology colleges often feel as though they have more work to do than hours in the day. Between obsessing over fonts to hunting for the perfect colors, you can quickly get overwhelmed when you try to take your inspiration and organize it into concrete ideas for your current project. Luckily, app developers have decided to take pity on the overworked graphic designer and offer apps to help sort and save design information. Here are 8 of the best.
1.) cliqcliq Colors
For graphic designers, finding the perfect color can be a consuming and frustrating chore. Colors by cliqcliq is an app that can help you find and create color palettes based on colors that you like then allow you to adjust shade and hue from your iPhone.
2.) Color Expert
As with any artists, inspiration for a graphic designer can come from anything and strike at any time. Color Expert allows you to identify colors from whatever sparked your imagination and then provides you with the means to save and manipulate that color to fit into whatever project you are working on.
3.) WhatTheFont
This app might have a funny name, but it also provides a valuable service to any graphic designer that has ever seen a font in a magazine or on a billboard and spent hours trying to identify it. With WhatTheFont, you simply take a picture of the font you wish to know and the program tells you what it is in seconds. One more way to capture inspiration without capturing all of your time.
4.) The Typography Manual
This app offers all of the content of a good desk reference right on your iPhone. The Typography Manual provides a comprehensive anatomy guide, ruler for font sizes, an em calculator, and more. Best of all? It fits in your pocket.
5.) Palettes 2.0
Graphic designers are constantly on the lookout for inspiration and often think of color palettes even in their sleep. This handy app allows designers to explore and manipulate palettes anywhere and anytime, turning your public transit or car pool commute into additional constructive work time.
6.) Loupe
Have you ever seen the perfect color for your latest project while you were away from your work computer and then struggled hours later to try to recreate it with no success? With the Loupe app, you can simply snap a picture of whatever color has inspired you and it will identify and save the shade for you.
7.) Color Stream
Graphic designers obsess about colors, always on the quest to find the perfect shade. Color Stream allows you to create combinations of colors from photographs, opening up even more color inspiration for your projects.
8.) SimpleMind+
Mind mapping can be a valuable tool for graphic designers to sort their ideas on a project into a cohesive plan. SimpleMind+ is an easy to use app that allows you to mind map right from your iPhone.
Being able to find more hours in the day and work with inspiration as it strikes is imperative for graphic designers. Utilizing the right iPhone apps not only save you time, but also frustration.
