15 Great Apps for All Freelance Designers – from Stickers to The Web

Applications have just changed the way a lot of designers and those involved in industries related to design and print carry out our lives. As they commonly say ‘there’s an app for that’ and to be honest I think there is for almost everything nowadays.

Whether it’s sorting out your workflow, sketching out the latest design for a sticker or webpage, or just taking notes and completing invoices – there’s an app for everything. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there. We’ve decided to list some of the apps we feel are the perfect match for freelance designers.

design apps
photo credit: Juhan Sonin

Adobe Photoshop Express

For simple design touch-ups and edits, our sticker designers use this commonly and it’s a great tool. Though it’s not as powerful as the desktop suites it still offers plenty of options and the learning curve is quite gradual. There are plenty of tools included and the Adobe application offers a lot more control than the likes of Instagram.

Behance

This app is great and perfect for those quick meetings with clients. It allows you to easily showcase all your work in seconds on a very attractive board. Essentially, it’s a portfolio at your fingers and offers a full website’s functionality in an app format. It’s great for those involved in the visual side of freelancing. We regularly use it to showcase whole sticker and printing campaigns and are often grateful for its beautiful layout.

Color Schemer

How often do you see a tone when walking down the street and think you want to use it for your next design project? Color Schemer is great and as it allows you to create palettes, pair RGB and HEX colours using photos or a colour wheel and those on COLORlovers can add their account to the app, syncing all their information. 

Fontly

This is the font app for Instagram lovers. The app allows font geeks to picture share and explore new fonts they come across and is a fantastically inspiring application. It’s been used for numerous new vehicle stickers font designs recently by us and is especially useful when travelling or away from the usual spots as you’ll be more likely to see something that catches your eye. Fontly is a great app for designers with a love of fonts.

What the Font

A great app that identifies typeface from images and so it works very well with Fontly. It sometimes doesn’t work, but in most cases it’s 100% accurate.

MyPantone

This digital swatchbook has over 13,000 colours from the influential colour company. It’s fantastic for matching tones, creating wheels of colour or just checking out the colour you want to use on your next project.

HoursTracker

This is a fantastic app for freelancers and is essentially an online version of a time card that helps keep tabs on time spent on a task. It sync with your PC or Mac so you can send the info there automatically.

Skype

What can we say, Skype is a freelance designer’s must have app – great for video messaging and also for showing off your work online, quickly and in the spur of the moment.

Paper

A free app that’s ideal for sketching new ideas, writing down thoughts and making mind maps. We’ve added plenty of sticker and poster designs to this app in the past during moments of inspiration.

Awesome Note

Looking for an app to manage events, times and to do lists? Awesome Note is ideal and offers plenty of options. It syncs with Google Docs too.

Evernote

This app is also great and is simple to use, very effective and you can jot down whatever information you need and it will sync with your DropBox and Google Docs if needed.

Pomodoro.me

A question most freelancers will have been asked is how do they stay on task? It can be hard, however the Pomodoro technique and related app Pomodoro.me helps you manage your time to a far greater degree by breaking it up into segments. The app is a countdown timer that you set and helps you focus on a task for a set period helping limit procrastination.

Inkist

Inkist is a really beautiful app to use and one that comes with a simplistic and stylish interface and is great for layering. It works with pressure sensitive styluses and is amazing in its customisation options. We have used it for a number of high quality posters and pictures and can testify to how excellent it is.

Computer Arts Print Glossary

If you’re heading to us to print off your items, then the Computer Arts Prints Glossary is a great app to inform you of all sorts of printer terms. From Deckle Edge, to Bleed, to Against the Grain. This is a great app to learn the lingo when printing images, posters or stickers.

iDesign

This is another great app and a must when creating logo designs for your new stickers or on a trip to the printers. Ideal for creating vector graphics or illustrations for logos or images and creates a high quality end result. It’s the best option for creating amazing logos on the move.