Best Apps for Designers (at least for me)

My husband pulled a big surprise on me this Christmas...he got me an ipad. I have spent just a short time exploring the App Store, but I still have discovered some favorites. Of course there are all of the adobe apps I would love to to get my fingertips on, $9.99 per app adds up quickly, so I will be waiting for some iTunes gift cards for Adobe Photoshop Touch, Adobe Ideas, Adobe Collage, and Adobe Proto for quick design on the go.

Two apps that I did buy and love:

IFontMaker: this app does just what it sounds like, you can make your own fonts! This is really awesome if you are geeky like me. I enjoy being able to customize the brush to enhance the letterforms, and I think I will find greater control once I buy a stylus. $6.99

LetterMpress: this my favorite app ever! It is also the app that made me want an iPad (...since I discovered that this app was exclusive to iPad my husband had been secretly saving up to get me one...isn't he sweet?!) The imagery, texture, paper ink, even the sounds remind me of my days in the letterpress room. It can never replace the joy of running a press, but it is a lot of fun to layer your prints and share them. $4.99

Iconography

i·co·nog·ra·phy [ahy-kuh-nog-ruh-fee]

symbolicrepresentation, especially the conventional meanings attached to an image orimages.

Icons are becoming a standard repertoire of  modern designers, most commonly used in logos, instructional signs, and phone apps. We are surrounded by icons: restrooms, road signs, and other everyday graphics. With these simplistic images they can inform us about rules, products, dangers, and point us in the right direction. We would be pretty loss without using images to point the way.

Humans have been developing icons since man began drawing in caves. They painted images of horses and other animals to represent the everyday life in 33,000 BCE. In the not-so-distant past magazines and advertisements required that each "job" was separate: art director, photographer, typography, illustrator, and ect...These days with the use of computers designers can really do it all, but big corporations are able to pull in experts in each field to develop design excellence (because it is hard to be the best at everything).

College instructors are encouraging visual communication students to develop icons as a part of dynamic systems to help make brochures, annual reports, magazines, and other texts easier to navigate and utilize. If this begins at university then we can bring these skills to the workforce and use it for real use that truly serves a purpose. My first project as a visual communications major I had to develop over 400 bird symbols for the first lecture, and continued to develop more symbols over the coming weeks. This was boot camp for developing various iconography using various mediums.

Symbols are used in small sizes, and tend to be simplistic with high contrast. Simple is beneficial (especially when the symbol is small), but it should contain enough details that it does not need an explanation in order to use the symbol. Icons should hit our basic cognitive understanding, based on its representation.

I encourage you to make an icon this week that represents something in our daily life, and post a link below.

New app

Having recently became addicted to my phone, I try to do everything I can on my phone. I have had the blogger app for a couple months now, but it has been a hassle to post most things. Adding links or type style was something limited to my computer. But the latest update from google has made it easy for me to blog on the go, which is perfect because most of my ideas do not come while I have time to sit by my computer at home.

Not that there aren't dome bugs that still need to be worked out. I am looking forward to the new opportunities this may bring, and hopefully I won't be so engaged that I disengage.