Working as a web designer no longer has to be something you do slouched in front of a laptop or desktop. Modern mobile devices, with their thousands of different available apps, large crystal clear touch screens and high powered computer technology will let you take a lot of your programming and design work with you regardless of where you are, so long as there is an internet connection handy.
The mobile and tablet apps market place is immense and growing by the day; many of these thousands of apps are designed with programmers and designers just like you in mind. With apps available for nearly every aspect of all the different needs in the design field, the amount of work you can get done through your mobile device or tablet while on the go is enormous.
The largest and most developed of the apps marketplaces is the iTunes store, where hundreds of thousands of apps for the iPad and iPhone are found. Let’s go over the best of these apps for web designers who want to take care of images, site design, programming, FTP or maybe even billing right form their Apple mobile devices.
1. Dropbox (Free, pay for additional space)
Dropbox isn’t specifically a design app of any kind, it’s a file sharing tool, but in terms of usefulness to any web designer it’s probably essential. With Dropbox you can easily and quickly share your work files across your different devices or send them directly to your clients in no time. The first 2.5 Gigs of storage space are completely free and amounts beyond that are very cheap to buy.
2. Adobe Ideas ($10)
Adobe is known for its series of enormously versatile desktop creative suites, most of which are huge, complex and very expensive. However, with Ideas, they’ve created a small, lightweight designer’s sketch tool that lets you quickly jot down visual design ideas for storage and later use on a more robust piece of design software. The app works for both iPhone and iPad but is at its best with the iPad and a display friendly sketch pen.
3. Evernote (free)
Another must-have design tool that isn’t specifically a design tool, Evernote lets you write, copy or sketch all sorts of notes to self and design ideas into a central archive that synchs across all your different electronics. You can also use the app to capture shots from websites and web content for easy storage and retrieval. This is an excellent tool for when you’re surfing the web and see something you’d like to use on your own design ideas.
4. Flipboard (Free)
The Flipboard app is useful for taking all your digital feeds on others design websites and programming related pages and turning them into a magazine style feed that’s easy to navigate and useful as a summary of possible idea and information sources. Its newspaper style feed display keeps screen clutter to a minimum.
5. Paper ($14)
Imagine an app that lets you simulate paper sketching with colors or in black and white right on your iPad screen. This is what Paper does very well. With this neat little app you can sketch out design ideas, color them, add text in and outline everything as well. The app also lets you share anything you’ve drawn to anyone across the social networks, your site or through email.
6. What the Font (Free)
This simple but very useful little app basically lets you take a snapshot of any font you find either on the web or in the real world and send it to the app developers font identification service for naming and purchase if you don’t already have it; a great tool for developers and designers who suddenly run across a beautiful font that they’ve never seen before and want to use.
7. Palettes Pro ($5.99)
The extremely handy Palettes Pro app lets you take snapshots of your favorite websites, images and grab their color patterns for your own use. You can also choose from any one of 5 general color models on the app itself. The palette tools in Palettes Pro let you create your own mixes and blends of colors you like from almost any source and use them for your own design ideas.
8. iMockups ($6.99)
This brilliant app lets you create an extremely diverse assortment of wire mockups of for your web design ideas, app designs and interactive visual designs of any kind. The app also has built in organization tools that let you build rapid frames with customizable grid lines and design features. You can also share your mockups across email to clients and collaborators.
9. Gusto ($9.99)
This is one very diverse app whose two most useful features are its code editing capacity and its built-in FTP client that lets you upload programs, documents and images to your website while on the go.
10.Harvest ($12 per month)
This subscription based app takes care of your time tracking, time analysis and work billing under one simple and highly graphic interface. You can then go ahead and create versatile invoices that can be customized by appearance, currency and preferred payment method.
