April 27th, the anniversary of the founding of the International Council of Design (ico-D), is World Graphic Design Day. ico-D is the international body that promotes and defends activities related to design, essential as it has become to communications, marketing, and practically all professional activities done online.
Though Gutenberg’s printing press was the primogenitor of modern design, the arrival of digital technology has extended it to many other related fields – what with computer-assisted design, web content creation, and the development of new broadcasting platforms. Now any user can learn to apply design techniques in their personal projects. Plus given the integration of mobile devices in nearly every area of our daily lives, it’s possible to find all sorts of tools to do design and typography projects using free apps. This smattering offers a good sample of the kinds of things you can do with even a modest smartphone.
Autodesk Sketchbook
Design in its purest form is just freehand sketching on paper. In fact, lots of people mistakenly believe that that’s the essence of graphic design when it’s actually just the tip of the iceberg. Still, if you’re looking for a complete tool to do all sorts of freehand sketches and compositions on your smartphone or tablet, Autodesk Sketchbook is one of the best digital sketching and painting apps you can find, with a giant array of brushes and assisted tools that make it suitable for both casual and professional users.
Logo Maker & Logo Creator
Iconography and the art of the logo are among the most representative facets of publicity design, at the heart of a profession that could well be considered more of an art than an isolated set of marketing techniques. Logo Maker & Logo Creator offers a practical wizard to create a unique, fully customized logo in a few steps out of more than 3,000 shapes in the public domain that you can edit as desired.
Desygner – Creative Design
Today we’re highlighting how mobile devices can help you get oriented when working on design projects. Desygner bets on simplicity and precision in offering a huge array of templates to create all kinds of banners, header images for blogs, or profile pics for social networks, among lots of other things. Once you select the type of image to create, you have an easy-to-use object editor to drag and drop it elements in the composition with taps on your touchscreen. A great example of how a well-elaborated tool can help you get professional results regardless of which platform you’re designing for.
Photoshop Express
For obvious reasons, photo retouching has inevitably been thrown into the graphic design bag, to the point that the two things are now completely linked in the collective imagination. And if we’re talking about retouching we of course have to mention Adobe Photoshop as the most popular and widespread tool for that purpose. With all sorts of filters and post-processing tools, Photoshop Express is the pocket version of the popular Adobe suite, and more than sufficient for making adjustments to your pictures. That retouching is now a mundane thing that basically everybody does is an unmistakable sign that graphic design is seeping into our daily lives, even if you’re barely interested in or know hardly anything about the subject.
Adobe Comp
While we’re on the subject of Adobe, it’s also worth highlighting a tool to do website mockups that you can move into production later by exporting to another Adobe program. With Adobe Comp you can create compositions with text, shapes, and images for any purpose, be it for posters, print editorial content, or website layouts.
this app is excellent, I have downloaded it, thanks for sharing.
WOW. that’s fantastic. wasn’t aware of this day. graphic designers day is something I have never heard before. I have certainly downloaded the apps. being a graphic designer myself I cheer all the graphic designers from around the world and my own team at http://sda-zone.com/ Would love to follow you and get updates. have a great day.