10 creative iPad and iPhone apps

Brushes
[£2.99] | developer STEVE SPRANG | http://brushesapp.com

This is one of the most sophisticated artistic apps available for iPhone and demonstrates how much power can be squeezed out of the device. Essentially it can be seen as a paint doodler for crafting simple artworks with touch-based gestures, but the ability to export images out at high resolutions or as QuickTime movies hints at something more powerful. The app records your actions within a bespoke .brushes file that syncs with a web server and allows you to replay each effort stroke for stroke. A free desktop application called Brushes Viewer facilitates additional operations, but an incredibly simple iPhone interface still enables users to select brush styles, widths, shapes and colours with ease – even adding support for multiple image layers, opacity levels and extreme zooms. An iPhone classic, destined for creative greatness on the iPad.

WordPress for iPhone 2.0
[FREE] | developer AUTOMATTIC, INC. | http://iphone.wordpress.org/

The explosion of CMS-based blogging has changed the way we publish webpages in a manner that really lends itself to mobile. This official app for blogging giant WordPress provides the key tools in an iPhone-friendly interface, allowing posts to be written and comments approved in just a few steps. Version 2 offers comment reply, editing and highlighting facilities alongside features for attaching images stored on your camera roll and intelligent recognition of hyperlinks as you type. What this app suggests most is that pretty powerful tools for updating and managing
online content, across multiple blogs, can exist on handheld devices quite happily. Add to this the open source nature of the application’s development and it makes potential future iterations for iPad really exciting, perhaps adding theme editing capabilities into the mix. That’s if you’re not keen on simply using iPad Safari of course.

WhatTheFont
[FREE] |  developer BITSTREAM INC | http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Fonts come in many shapes and sizes and it is almost inevitable that while browsing the web, one will grab your attention. Then curiosity kicks in and you begin to wonder what font is that? This is where the WhatTheFont app kicks in and takes over. Users can use the camera on an iPhone to take a snap of the favoured font and crop the image to a specific word. Each letter is then identified by the user and WhatTheFont comes up with a selection of matches. The font matches are not just visual, a single tap reveal details of the font’s origin and the complete range on offer, ie uppercase, lowercase, numbers. Finally, if you are loving a font there is in-app website access that takes the user directly to the ‘Buy it’ page.

HTML Editor (Dirty)
[£1.79] | developer TAWCS | http://tawcs.com/htmledit/HTML_Editor.html

The usual practice for editing HTML documents is to do so locally, then upload the changes to your host using FTP. However, this becomes tougher on mobile devices like the iPhone as it doesn’t offer an open file system and the kind of workspaces needed to make workable HTML design very practical. This app offers capabilities to view, search, copy/paste and even edit HTML source markup or indeed compose new documents from scratch. Common coding constructs such as brackets and semi-colons are easily added via the quick keys and FTP export support enables you to save iterations of edited pages online. Despite a few quirks in terms of saving files out with CSS, PHP or JavaScript extensions it does offer a very tidy glimpse of what is possible. To be able to compose or make edits to live pages on-the-fly and preview the changes graphically is really useful, so a bigger screen and greater processing power might be useful. However, by then Adobe may have launched a Dreamweaver iPhone/iPad app which if anything like the Photoshop, one could be superb…

PMS|HEX
[£1.19] | developer RICHE EN PULPE | www.pulpe.nl/iphone/

Colour is the lifeblood of good design and while web design is based on hexadecimal code, design is not. Print design uses the Pantone colour range to determine its colours, not much help for any web designer looking to convert specific colours. The PMS|HEX iPhone app is the help that web designers need. It is a simple app that negates the need to spend time searching for the appropriate match. The layout of the app is easy
on the eye and simple to use. Sitting side-by-side is the Pantone spot colour code and hexadecimal code both accompanied by a preview of the colour. Users simple need to keep scrolling to find more and more codes. When viewing on screen it is worth remembering that the colours may not be an exact representation, but the code will be. As the creators also point out, hexadecimal colours are an approximation of the PMS spot colours.

myPANTONE
[£5.99] | developer PANTONE LLC. | http://www.pantone.com

So we have featured a palette app already, but this one from Pantone demonstrates how rich a design app interface can be. It shows most of all that screen size needn’t hinder the imaginative execution of a simple and intuitive GUI. Again the concept is all about picking suitable
schemes for print and web but in much more of a way that designers will respond to, with sets of virtual Pantone colour cards forming different configurations of the interface. You can easily imagine this app replacing the physical wheels or wall charts that many designers have used previously. One of the screens for Layout features a concept noticeboard that allows virtual Pantone cards to be pinned next to each other to get an idea of how swatches sit alongside or contrast. This approach is great for conveying context within designer applications, a more web-centric implementation on iPad could involve dropping web colours into mock blog templates.

SketchBook Mobile
[£1.79] | developer AUTODESK INC. | http://tinyurl.com/ycy3qcp

Not merely a very capable drawing app, SketchBook Mobile provides a more genuine solution for concept work. You can easily imagine this being adopted by designers to visually brainstorm graphical ideas more casually, literally providing a digital sketchbook that can output the results for further development. The larger canvas and workspace area, coupled to support for multiple layers, and the ability to export sketches out to the iPhone image library or email makes it a viable tool in its own right. Images are saved in PSD format with layer information kept intact so you know that colleagues or clients will have no trouble
previewing the results or making additional edits. The iPad’s larger screen should empower apps like this and provide the extra level of usability needed to make it useful in a practical context, making this an essential one to get now and keep hold of for the future!

cliqcliq Colors
[£1.79] | developer CLIQCLIQ | www.cliqcliq.com/support/colors/

A big part of web design and certainly the crafting of attractive templates is in being inspired to create new styles. Colour usually plays a huge part in this process and often the look and feel of a page can be completely determined by getting the colour palette just right. Those who use Adobe’s Kuler RIA online will recognise how helpful it can be to get assistance in establishing harmonious and web safe schemes, which is effectively what cliqcliq’s Colors allows you to do. Palettes can be quickly derived from photos taken on the iPhone, from selected Flickr pictures or manually created from scratch, then stored locally or posted to the cliqcliq.com facility for future reference. Colour hues can be quickly edited using slider controls and simple swipe gestures and each swatch provides Hex values, RGB/CMYK codes and HSB percentages. Most vitally, the palettes can be emailed out in formats optimised for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver.

The Typography Manual
[£2.39] | developer JUSTIN STAHL | www.typographyapp.com

At face value the world of typography is a seemingly simple process. However, it is type and fonts that make up a huge slice of the web. Using different sizes,
colours and styles to create visually appealing pages is an art form in itself. The Typography Manual app has a collection of features and resources that will help every web designer create pixel perfect typography for the web. To kick-off there is an extensive guide to the history of printing, the basics of type and using typography on the web. For the more discerning there is a style guide to assist with producing the correct copy. There is also a visual anatomy guide which defines typographic terms. A more practical feature for web designers will be the HTML character codes list. Plus, the Em calculator, which translates pixel sizes, based on a default, into ems.

FTP on the go
[£3.99] | developer HEADLIGHT SOFTWARE | www.ftponthego.com/

Designing locally or viewing via the web are two very important components of the web design process. However, linking the two together is the simple process of transferring via FTP. This powerful and useful app gives users the power to get connected and upload and download via a secure connection. The very nature of FTP means that web designers now have the freedom to make amendments the moment inspiration strikes. The FTP on the go app has a built-in text editor for making instant changes. There is a find and replace feature, ideal for producing multiple changes in one hit. Then it is simply a matter of saving and ploading ready to view. There is even an option to change file permissions on the server. Finally, like all good FTP clients users can use it to download and store files, but best of all there is a file sharing option for viewing files from another iPhone.