5 iPad Apps for designers

Whenever a new medium emerges, services change. This is true in case of tablets.  Tablets lie somewhere between the lines of a smart phone and a traditional computer. They are able to satisfy entertainment needs in ways that smart phones can never compete with and at the same time they offer business services for the users like delivering presentations and making timelines.

Being more portable and easy to use as compared to laptop computers, Tablets are increasing in popularity among digital designers. Third party developers are launching applications on platforms like the Apples iPad for designers to do their office work on. Some of these applications are covered here.

iMockUps

iMockUps is an app exclusively for the iPad. It allows UI designers to quickly design wireframe mockups for their websites or apps. The touch interface is very natural and easy to use. With templates available for iPad or iPhones and drag and drop elements wireframe creation is as simple as it gets.

The iMockUps is extremely user friendly, and has all the functionality that a professional application or website designer needs.

Autodesk 123D Creature

Got an iPad and love to play around with digital design? Autodesk has something for you. Autodesk 123D Creature is a new iPad app that lets you create and print amazing 3D characters. It starts with a stick figure which is further processed by modeling, thickening and texturing with tools and lightning effects. Multi-touch gestures are used to thicken, stretch and sculpt their creature. The app uses many of the popular features of the 123D Sculpture app.

Adobe Ideas:

Adobe ideas is a vector based digital sketchbook app. The app is for iOS and is designed for extreme simplicity in use and simple user interface.

Adobe Ideas is not heavily loaded with features. It is a basic app that is good for noting down ideas and creating simple vector sketches. It provides only one type of pen that can be varied in width and opacity. Finger strokes are smoothed out along the way. A new feature of layers is added to the app which makes it all the more useful.

TypeDrawing

TypeDrawing is an app for the design geeks. It’s not much of a production app, but pure entertainment and art. The main concept of the app is designing the typography of the given text.

To use the app, the user places some text in the text box. The speed, text style and background are chosen by the user. With swipes of finger, the user can move the text in a given direction. Multiple layers can be added to increase the complexity of the model.

ColoRotate:

When the user opens ColoRotate, a Radish looking three dimensional colored object appears on the screen. The colors can be plotted using the dots on the object. The vertical dimension represents lightness and darkness whereas the horizontal dimension represents saturation.

ColoRotate is not exactly easy to use. But with proper know how of its operations, it can turn out to be a very powerful tool.