
Your iPad Pro is a design powerhouse, but let’s face it: it’s only as good as the apps you’ve downloaded. Here are the top 3 apps for designers; apps you’ll want to download, experiment with, then utilize for your own design creations. If you’ve got the best iPad, the best iPad Pro 12.9 case by Zugucase, and the three top apps for designers your studio can be anywhere!
Procreate
There’s a reason Procreate tops the list of everyone’s favorite designing apps: it’s just that good. That’s even in spite of the fact that this app is focused more on sketching than designing per se. Every designer needs a sketch pad . If it’s a sketch pad powerful enough you can do your vector art in situ, all the better.
Brush options are extensive, and you can even make your own custom brushes. You can play around with almost anything you might play around with on an actual palette— for an instant, oil paints mix just as they would on a real-life canvas, just with less mess. There is less interaction between different mediums, however; you may be disappointed at your results when you try to add a pencil line to a painted landscape, for instance.
If you’re into 3D, you’ll love procreate’s 3D painting tools, which debuted in a 2021 update. Though you need to import from elsewhere, this update allows you to use all of your favorite brushes, tools, and other effects on your 3D model. There’s even an AR feature that allows you to see your painted model anywhere your camera reaches— your desk. Your bed, peeping over the garden wall.
Marvel IPad Pro 12.9 Case
Marvel is a nifty little app that allows you to take your sketches— drawn on paper. On your iPad, or anywhere else— and turn them into full-fledged prototypes. The app is easy to use, and a favorite with UX designers and newbies alike. According to App Store reviews, it’s got a ‘zero learning curve’ and is ‘intuitive and uncluttered’.
The collaboration tools are decent, and you can leave comments and invite viewers. Sketch or voice comments are not supported. The app is cloud-based, and there are offline access options, as well as the ability to browse through shared prototypes in their directory and get inspired.
The main downside highlighted by reviewers was an occasional lag, which we can imagine would be super annoying if you’re excited about putting something together quickly. This tends to be a more of a problem for free users, and less for the paid folk. Still, users who ran comparison tests say it is 1.6 times faster than InVision, a major competitor.
If you’re all about app design POP is another app from the makers of Marvel that allows you to connect your sketches via hotspots to form a quick, low-fidelity prototype that fully demonstrates your design idea
Affinity Designer Of IPad Pro 12.9 Case
Affinity Designer for the iPad is like Affinity Designer for desktop computers— just customize (‘optimize’) for the iPad experience. You’ve still got all the power, the full specs, and 95% of the capabilities. The app boasts 1,000,000% zoom, which is pretty cool if you care about resolution. It’s easy to switch between vector or raster modes, and there are extensive import and export options.
Affinity Designer features full support for every color space, including CMYK, RGB8, RGB16, Greyscale, LAB, and RGB32. You get unlimited layers and can mix and match text layers, vector layers, and pixel and image layers to your heart’s content.
If there’s any downside to Affinity Designer. It might be that there are no gesture customization options. But the app does have support for a whole host of native iPad gestures. So you might not miss the chance to make your own. Pinch to zoom, tap with two fingers to undo, and do a three-finger tap if you want to redo.
Although the UI is generally user-friendly, not everything is immediately obvious. The good news: Affinity is on top of documentation. With 60 video tutorials that demonstrate all the ins and outs of the application.
More Apps For Designers
If you’ve got Affinity Designer, Procreate, and Marvel downloaded onto your iPad, you’re pretty much ready to go with your mobile design studio. Of course, the apps you ultimately choose will depend on your own design type, your own workflow, and your own personal preferences.
If you use Adobe on your desktop, go ahead and download the whole suite of Adobe design apps on your iPad! Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Capture, they’re all here in a mobile version. Adobe’s suite of programs does work well, but the key here is seamless transition: you’ll be able to start something on your desktop, get in almost done while traveling cross country on a train, and add a few final touches, if so you wish, from your laptop at a lakeside cabin.
Here are few more favorite apps for designers you may want to have a look at in the App Store:
- Vectornator X— A completely free professional-grade vector editing app with an easy-to-use, card-based design.
- Concepts — A digital sketchbook with a limited free tier that allows you to sketch out your ideas when you’re out and about
- Typorama— a typography-focused app that makes it easy to add fancy text to your designs.
- Graphic— another full-featured design program that started on the desktop but now has a ready-to-go iPad version.
Of course, you need more than just design apps— while you’re at it, download yourself an organization tool like Trello, an executive planner like Omniplan, and a reminder app like Thing to keep you on top of all the hundred and one things you have to do. Make sure you’ve got iPad versions of your favorite networking apps, including Slack or whatever your team likes to use. More Information