if leonardo da vinci was alive today imagine the 3d renderings the modeling the animations
the ar filters for instagram that he could be designing
hey you guys welcome back to our channel the number one place for people who love design
art and everything creative my name is laszlo i do graphic design and illustration here at D & B and
today i want to talk about the best mobile apps for graphic designers in this day and age there
are many smartphone apps out there that you can download to do a bit of content creation on the go
and after doing my research for this video i can safely say that the landscape of these apps are
well how to put this mildly confusing some of them are alright some of them are way overpriced some
of them are useless and there are a selected few that i actually really like but before we begin i
want to establish my basic set of rules a designer has to fulfill in order to stay on my phone as an
actual useful graphic design software rule number one it has to be clean clear and user friendly if
it's full of bloatware or if it has adverts and all that stuff if it freezes on me at least once
i'm out rule number two an app should either be free or have a usable free version because
come on and rule number three it has to offer something unique that is actually useful in
my practice something that either simplifies a task that you would do on a desktop setting or
better yet it offers something that a desktop software like illustrator or photoshop can not
do also let me just say we're not gonna talk about apps for tablets because in my eyes it's a
whole different ballgame and also we're not gonna mention apps that are git over project management
or productivity we are focusing on pure digital graphic design software on a smartphone let's jump
straight in the first app on my list is sparkpost if you are familiar with canva this is basically
adobe's version of the same thing it's an app that you can use to make social media posts on the go
by using some pre-designed templates for layouts colors and font combinations and the like
it's got all the image dimension presets you could ever need for any social media platform
and also has some free stock photo libraries integrated within the program
i use this tool on the other occasion here you can see i have designed some quick instagram highlight
covers for my personal account the design board itself is quite simple and intuitive
as you can see you can bring in some stock icons customize the colors and so on
apart from imagery you can also animate text based designs within the program granted it is
not giving you too many customization settings nevertheless it is quite a handy little tool
if you ever want to design something simple quickly on your phone for your social media feeds
okay before we continue i feel like we have to address the elephant in the room i feel
like i have to state i am not a fan of these template-based design solutions no self-respecting
designer is but that being said i think it's very important to also recognize that the times
they are are changing and the fact that graphic design software is getting more mobile
getting better and more convenient and easier to use is just the natural
progression of technology and the mind said that these apps are coming after our careers
and they're you know killing graphic design and all that stuff there is a toxic mindset that you
just shouldn't endorse it's counterproductive the thing is graphic designers have to get
with the times and adapt instead of hiding away from progression but that's just my two cents
the second app on my list is photoshop sketch i have to admit i used to hate apps like this
in the past as they are nothing more than dummy versions of photoshop which i often times found
very limiting but as the years go by and phones are getting more and more powerful these apps
are starting to get developed to a level where they are becoming actually useful i use this app
to create our story templates for the john cena and blog instagram account jaclyn has created
these nice looking jpeg templates then what i do is every week i put our present thumbnail here
on top of the design whenever we got a new video posted as i said it's basically photoshop light
so it can be handy if you want to do something very quickly and you don't
have a computer on hand i for one am trying to limit my screen time especially on the weekends
so whenever we publish a new video on a sunday i just quickly put these together on my phone
app number three is adobe capture this is a tool that can do a number of very clever things using
your phone's camera some of these do feel a little gimmicky but i quite like this one where you can
create a color palette by pointing your phone to different things around you by matching your
surroundings with hex codes the main function i really like in this app is this kaleidoscope
effect that you can do it is such a nice and quick way of creating your own unique patterns
i guess it is a personal thing you may or may not find this function useful in your practice
but i have used this to create background patterns in the past just by taking photos like these and
then edit them in illustrator what i also want to state is this is an app that is so much fun to use
and there are actual functions here which you could not do with a computer which is the
main reason why i felt like i had to include this one i think the intuitiveness of design
software on phones that's something that we as designers should welcome and not shy away
from i mean we can do so much more with so much less effort than ever before i mean why wouldn't
you embrace that this is a bit of a technological revolution that's going on right now and it's not
entirely dissimilar to the times when photoshop became a thing even now in common language the
fact photoshop sort of became this this naughty term like this naughty word for images that are
not real you know they are fake they are edited and the actual skill lies in you know
the photographer's hands who went out and took a nice photo and then anyone can make it look better
you know that sort of mindset which is true to some extent but at the same time let me just
quote the advertising legend dave dye is it cheating to use spices when you are cooking
if you have the best tools available to up your worst quality why wouldn't you use them let me put
it this way if leonardo da vinci was alive today do you think he would be doing paintings with
oil and canvas maybe but just imagine what he would be doing with today's software and
hardware capabilities imagine the 3d renderings the modeling the animations the ar filters for
instagram that he could be designing technology is fine it's good and the tools are getting better
okay the next one on my list is lightroom if you have used lightroom on a desktop before you
know it is essentially a color grading software for images that is widely used by photographers
i tend to give our photos a little lightroom treatment before i post them somewhere there are
some decent color correction settings available here for free starting with this auto button
that takes your photo and automatically tries to correct it to its best recommended settings and
i gotta say it's quite good at guessing what you want there are some advanced settings like ways
of masking and only editing parts of an image if you can be bothered to upgrade to the paid version
but that being said the free version is surprisingly powerful and very easy to use
i would say easier than the desktop version which is a huge plus for beginners
and last but not least i wanted to show you this thing called auto draw now this is not an app
per se it's a website that you need to open in your smartphone's browser it's powered by google
and what it does is you draw a shape any shape onto this white canvas and then the artificial
intelligence tries to guess what you are drawing and match it with a free to use png icon just like
that it's like magic i mean if you do read up on it a little bit it's not actual magic just
a work in progress most of these icons have been created by one design studio in new york
and as time goes on people will add more and more icons to its free-to-use library at this point in
time the software can guess a couple hundred common icons but this is only the beginning
is this useful well much less useful than the other apps on my list but is it fun to use
absolutely and i think that's the key takeaway here these apps provide a unique new user
experience that desktop software cannot computer software like photoshop figma or sketch basically
the older siblings of these mobile apps obviously they are much more powerful much more versatile
much more professional much more efficient but design is not all about efficiency you know what
i mean let me give you an example is the ipad an efficient tool does anyone need a tablet when
you already have a computer and a smartphone you don't no one does it's still a very very
successful product do you know why because it's fun to use because it's new because it provides
a new unique user experience that makes you approach your digital life in a different very
exciting way if you do design work i think it's very important to challenge your way of thinking
because let's be honest we're all guilty of you know getting stuck in our own ways the longer you
are in the field the more likely you are to fall into this trap of you know coming up with the same
very similar design solutions to every design program that comes in your way and i'm guilty of
this as well i've been using photoshop since 2012 which is almost 10 years at this point and i used
to hate apps i used to hate this idea of designing on a small screen when i have a big screen what is
that about but that's the thing if you just keep coming up with the same solutions to every design
problem it's just not an exciting enough way to approach this job the graphic design industry in
2020 is very much a technology dependent industry and technology as a whole develops incredibly
fast the thing is if you work in design to some extent you're working in tech and there's no point
ignoring the evolving nature of the the technology industry landscape that's why it's so important to
never stop learning and to keep an open mind and this is exactly what these apps are forcing you
to do you know what i'm somewhat sorry that this video has become a bit of an adobe adword i know
that some of you have starting to really hate the beast that adobe has become over the years for all
the right reasons i'll struggle with that as well but you know i just wanted to make an honest video
showing you different types of my phone that i do actually use almost on a daily
basis that i feel like actually making my job as a graphic designer somewhat easier
and the mobile software that adobe is producing is honestly just too good to ignore okay i hope
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you