A lot of creativity can happen on the iPad tablet computer. Here’s a rundown of some useful apps for designers and visual creatives.
FontBook (69p)
This is a useful tool for designers as it offers an up-to-date library of typefaces from 134 international type foundries. That means there are more than 730,000 typeface samples within the app for you to browse through.
You can browse by Class, Foundry, Designer or Name, there is also a search function if you’ve got a particular font in mind. Plus, there are Font Lists that let you search by criteria such as genre, stylistic period, similarity or popularity.
Add fonts to your favourites to come back to later when you’re about to start a new project or get to work on a design that requires type. Get it on the App Store here.
Adobe Ideas (Free)
Cutting edge payroll software
- Powerful and easy to use
- HMRC & RTI compliant
- Used by payroll pros
The CRM platform to grow your business
- Great for entrepreneurs
- Powerful data analytics
- Manage sales and data
Powerful web builder and advanced business tools
- Great for startups
- Powerful web page builder
- E-commerce available
Supercharged content planning
- Great for marketing
- Better than lists or sheets
- Manage social media
Create a new website in 10 minutes. Easy.
- Launch your website fast
- Powerful data intuitive
- No coding skills needed
This app brings the ability to draw vector illustrations to the iPad, and therefore the fingertips of designers.
Tools you’ll find in Adobe Ideas include customisable brushes, vector-based drawing tools, Paint Bucket, Eyedropper, layers, Eraser and 50-level undo/redo. Plus, there are shortcuts for frequently used tools to improve workflow. Find the app here.
Flowboard (Free)
This elegantly designed iPad app allows you to create portfolios, presentations and photo slideshows, and it produces beautiful results. You can start from scratch or choose from a large number of templates. After selecting a template option, you tap on a box and add an image, video or some text. The boxes themselves can be dragged around and re-sized, and their content can be scaled using the familiar two-fingered pinch and un-pinch gestures. Learn more here.
Paper by FiftyThree (Free)
Paper is a wonderfully designed sketchbook app that could come in really handy for doodling ideas or sketching up designs while on the move.
The expressive ink engine means that, even when you’re using your finger to draw in the app, the results are generated by reacting to your movements, so the lines won’t be consistent in thickness for a more natural sketching experience. The app is on the App Store here.
Quill (69p)
Tailored for both the iPad and the iPhone, this app lets you work in vector format with full vector functions like zoom and scale without loss of detail, the creation of Bezier curves, path picking, and soon things right out of Illustrator, for example, are coming like basic shapes, grouping, and gradients. In short, it’s a great app for very, very little money that allows you to not only work anywhere but save in a variety of formats and email your work as you like. Learn more.