10 Best Apps for Newbie Designers

Starting out as a designer can be overwhelming, but the key is to work smarter not harder. There’s seemingly an app for everything these days, so we’ve rounded up some of the ones that make our lives better. Some are design focused, some more productivity related, and some might even help you dodge some rookie errors. Hey, we’ve all been there.

In no order, here are some we use to organise our days/get us out of pickles/procrastinate/get inspired.

VSCO Cam

FREE

Now you’re a designer, you’ve got no excuse for boring or poorly lit photos. Introducing VSCO Cam. If by some miracle you haven’t come across this elegant photo editing app, get excited because it’s more than just a pretty interface. Three individual points of in-camera control (all lockable), decent filter presets with a sliding scale to customise, and all the usual cropping/vignette/grain. Your edited photos can be collated into a journal, apply filter presets to entire libraries and seamlessly sync across devices.

Boomerang

FREE

Boomerang is Instagram’s fun new way to spice up image sharing. It’s a mini video maker — not quite a video, not quite a gif — just a second or two of footage that loops back and forth. It’s such a simple idea, but the creativity is kind of unlimited. Our favourite so far is a levitating cat. Challenge accepted…

Hyperlapse

FREE

Also from Instagram, Hyperlapse is another fun, simple app that allows you to shoot handheld time lapse videos. The in-app wizardry stabilises your video and smoothes out any minor bumps, resulting in beautiful cinematic videos. You can control the speed of the video, up to 12x real time, then save them or publish to your devoted followers. Brace yourself, the sunrises are coming.

Slack

FREE
(Additional cost for extra features)

If you miss MSN or AOL and also have an inbox full of emails from your work buddies, Slack is definitely for you. It’s an instant messaging app for streamlining communication within teams — and it rocks. You can have channels, which are essentially chat rooms, or direct messaging/group messaging. Slack integrates with heaps of other apps too, so you can do work stuff like embed google docs, or ‘work stuff’ like sending gifs by typing /giphy (keyword). It’s what we use here at Tractor and we love it.

Paper

FREE

It’s almost hard to believe Paper is free — creating checklists, notes, connecting your notes and photos — this digital sticky wall of post-its is so cool. The usability of Paper is smart; gestures like swiping and pinching are used to navigate through the features and create notes. This intuitive behaviour also comes through when creating notes — draw a circle-esque shape and it will be smoothed out to a proper circle, draw a line and hold a moment longer for arrows will be added either side. We won’t go through all the cool features, just download it, go through the tips at the beginning and get the most out of this bad boy.

Ruler Plus

FREE

A designer without a ruler is like… a queen without a crown? Anyway, a simple application but a vital one, Ruler Plus provides a 7cm ruler on your phone. Whether you fear or revere the old measuring stick, you can now check your spacing on the fly. If you need longer than 7cm, the you can extend the measurements and just take it from the last point.

ColorSchemer

FREE

Apparently an Apple staff favourite, ColorSchemer is a no-brainer app for designers. Browse and search over a million palettes created and shared by other app users, and connect with the community if you want to talk colour. Good for getting to know harmonious and complementary colour schemes when you’re starting out, until one day when it’ll be second nature.

Harvest

FREE

Whether you’re freelancing or not, tracking your time spent on projects is really useful — if not crucial. From being able to bill properly for projects to evenly dividing your time between tasks, Harvest is a really easy way to track where you spend your time. The other awesome thing is when a project is finished you can see how long the whole thing took, which will help you scope future projects. After all, “Time is money. Track it wisely.”

What The Font

FREE

Finally, Shazam for typography. Take a picture of a font IRL (in real time), and this handy app will attempt to identify the typeface, then link you to more info like where to buy it. The app comes from MyFonts, so as long as the font is on there, it should come up. It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s mighty useful.

SimpleMind+

FREE
(Full feature version $7.99 / Pro version $9.99)

For our brains, mind maps are often the best way to visually represent information and ideas. SimpleMind+ is a cool app that lets you organise your ideas in an intuitive way, starting with a central thought and growing from there. The basic app is easy to use, with editable notes on branches, free form or horizontal layout, and plenty of customizable styles. Export by email or save to desktop. Great for brainstorming, great for backtracking, great for documenting. Just great.

Special Mention:

Pinterest
FREE

We’ve included this because it is essential for any designer, but we also assume you already use it. If you don’t, the desktop version has always been awesome and the app is really easy to use as well. Mood boards, inspiration for later, interior decorating goals — the pinning is endless.

myPANTONE
$14.99

This official app from the gods of colour is basically a digital swatch book, with 13,000+ colours from the Pantone Plus series and more. At $14.99 it’s not cheap, but aside from the namesake, you’ll get hue matching from photos, harmonious colour palettes that make you warm and fuzzy, plus easy sharing or syncing with your design software.

If you’re just starting your design career, check out our online courses in graphic design or digital/web design — learn from anywhere and launch your design career today.