Top iPhone Apps for Web Designers

• Collecting inspiration
• Fun to play with
• Make it easy to pull ideas into your design or code flow

Top 10 iPhone Apps for Web Designers at $7.98

Getting a unique web design concept is about collecting inspiration, code concepts, and seeing trends. Having a mini computer in your pocket can be quite handy for web designers seeking to tie all these concepts together.

Killing a few minutes waiting for a coffee? That’s time enough to explore different variations of a color palette using Saturation. Saw a great chunk of text? Snap a pic and have the app tell you the font.

We rated an App based on a couple criteria:

• Does it help you collect, organize, and execute ideas?
• Does it let you capitalize on your down-time?
• Can you get an idea off the phone and into your program of choice?

Below are the Top 10 Apps we’ve been using when finding our muse. Total cost is $7.98 or about the cost of a latte and a pastry.

Evernote: (free) - Indispensable. This app let’s you access all your notes, links, images from the cloud from your phone. Be sure to grab the plugin for your browser, so you can capture websites and ideas on the fly and have them all synced effortlessly. Set up a custom notebook like “sidebar inspiration” and fill it with screenshots as you look at sites. It will prove a lifesaver when you’re stumped.

(Use Evernote for capturing and organizing all your inspiration)

Dragon Dictation (free) - This free app transcribes your audio into text that you can then email or SMS. It’s super handy if you’re out and about and have a Eureka moment but don’t want to stop and type it up. Tap, Talk, Done.

(Talk, not type, your ideas and then text or email yourself)

Action Method (free) - Everybody has ideas but it’s execution that counts. This App from Behance works great at helping you get ideas out of your head and broken down into small chunks using their Action Method process. Particularly helpful for managing creative teams as well.

(An easy way to stay organized when working on creative projects)

Adobe Ideas (free) - Fun for sketching ideas with basic tools like an “undo” button, opacity, and line width. You can even underlay photos and the paid version gives you layers. Email yourself the sketch when you’re done.

(A quick scribble done over an image)

saturation (free) - This one surprised me at how much I use it. Based on Adobe Kuhler’s website, you can pull up and visualize different variations of color themes. When you find one you like, you can email it to yourself, complete with an image and hex and rgb values. Can’t get much more productive than that when you’re waiting in line.

(Explore different color palettes using Adobe's Kuler website)

WhatTheFont (free) - This makes most Top 10 lists but it’s still pretty handy for identifying fonts by snapping a pic and uploading it for analyzing the font family. Not always 100% accurate but you get some happy mistakes that way as well.

(Snap a pic to see what the font is and the history behind it)

PHPRiot (free) - I hope the developers of this app ride unicorns to work. Not only is it super helpful for looking up PHP functions it also includes quizzes, tutorials, and articles to grow and test your knowledge. Bonus: Check out cheatsheet apps for subjects like jQuery and CSS.

(Study, learn, refresh on the go for PHP)

Dropbox (free) - At 2GB of free storage, this comes in handy for getting content off your phone and organized in the cloud. Be sure to set up folders to keep things tidy and you can make them publicly viewable to share with your team.

(Upload images and files and share with anyone or keep it private)

Instapaper ($4.99) - a bit pricey as apps go but completely worth it, especially if you travel. Similar to Evernote, in that it works with a browser plug-in on your machine. As you pull up links off Twitter or email you can simply hit the Instapaper “Read Later” icon and when it’s convenient the app let’s you read the articles later on a Kindle, computer, iPhone, or iPad.
Tip: set up areas of study as folders to help keep content organized.

(Catch up on all those Smashing Magazine articles when you have time)

ProCamera ($2.99) - This takes the admittedly weak native iPhone camera app and replaces it with a much more robust tool. Focus independently, correct the color balance, and enjoy a 6X zoom. You never know what you’ll find inspiring and having a good camera is key for capturing that moment of Zen.

(Capture great photos on the go)

Wishlist: One app I’ve been interested in seeing but have yet to see a great review for is a sort of stripped down IDE. Granted you probably don’t want to code on the iPhone screen but it would be fun to whip up little snippets and test them out in Safari.

But then again maybe that’s blurring the lines between work and life balance just a bit too much.

Got an app you think is invaluable for your creative process? Leave it in the comments below.