Top 10 Best iOS Apps for Designers

Top 10 Best iOS Apps for Designers

The iPhone has established itself as one of the top smartphones for designers thanks to its versatility and mobility. With the right apps, the iPhone can be a powerful design tool that allows designers to unleash their creativity anytime, anywhere.

Whether you're sketching on the go, accessing specialised tools to support your daily design work, or need a comprehensive app to manage your projects, time and finances, you'll find a wide range of apps in the App Store that are essential for designers. In addition, we've rounded up some of our favourites to help you manage your mental well-being, which can be very important for creatives under pressure.

With the iPhone and the right apps, designers can work seamlessly outside the studio, making the creative process more accessible and less daunting. So if you're a designer or a creative looking for the perfect tools to unleash your creativity, the App Store has the apps for you.

1 – Procreate

Procreate has long been the most popular art app for iPad users, but its small interface on the iPhone has made it difficult for many creatives to use. However, the latest version of Procreate for iPhone offers a new and more rewarding experience.

With a redesigned interface, customised QuickMenu and innovative features, Procreate has officially established itself as one of the best art apps for iPhones.

One of the most exciting new features is QuickShape, which can transform rough doodles into smooth and precise shapes. This tool will undoubtedly become a favourite among users as it can speed up the creative process and ensure that every design is clean and flawless. In addition, the text tools that wowed iPad users a few months ago are now available in the iPhone version of the app.

The new version of Procreate also includes the Liquify, Distort and Warp tools to help artists manipulate their designs and add a unique touch to their artwork. The advanced layer system, one of the app's most popular features, can now create animated GIFs.

If you've been hesitant to try to Procreate on your iPhone because the previous interface needed to be simpler, now is the perfect time to give the app another chance. With the latest version of the app, it's much easier to access your favourite tools thanks to the redesigned interface and QuickMenu, and the new features add a new level of creativity to your artwork.

Procreate has proven that it is a great app for the iPad and an excellent choice for iPhone users who want to take their art to the next level.

The app makes good use of the iPhone's screen, offering full P3 colour support so your artwork looks seriously good. For those thinking bigger, Page Assist turns your iPhone into a pocket sketchbook, perfect for storyboards or just getting down a load of ideas quickly.

You get access to hundreds of brushes, from basic sketching pencils to complex artistic ones, and you can even make your own or import sets you like. The layer system is pretty smart too, with layer groups and different blend modes letting you build up some detailed compositions without much fuss, even on the smaller display.

2 – Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator)

If vector graphics are your game, then you need to check out Linearity Curve, which you might have known as Vectornator.

This app is a bit of a powerhouse for creating sharp, scalable graphics right on your iPhone, and it won't cost you a penny to get started. It’s packed with all the tools you'd expect for proper vector work, think advanced pen tools, precise node editing, and those handy boolean operations for combining shapes.

It even has an auto-trace feature that does a decent job of turning your raster images into editable vectors.

The team behind it clearly thought about how people actually use their phones, because the interface is pretty intuitive for a touchscreen, making what could be fiddly vector stuff surprisingly manageable.

For designers working in teams, any real-time collaboration features make sharing and working together on projects much simpler. Plus, if you're looking to animate your designs, it often links up well with Linearity Move.

You can chuck your work out in all sorts of formats, like SVG, PDF, and even AI files if you need to play nice with Adobe software. Whether you’re knocking up logos, illustrations, UI designs for apps, or marketing bits and bobs, Linearity Curve handles it well.

It’s also known for keeping up performance-wise, even when you’re throwing complex projects at it, and they tend to push out updates with new features fairly regularly, which is always good to see.

3 – Adobe Fresco

Adobe Fresco is a versatile app developed by Adobe Inc. for digital drawing, painting and graphics editing. This app uses vector and raster technology and live brushes that can simulate real-world reactions to pressure, colour change and medium.

Initially developed by Adobe for the Apple iPad, you can now use Fresco on the iPhone, Microsoft Surface Pro devices and Creative Cloud Desktop for Windows. Unfortunately, the app is not currently compatible with Android.

What really makes Fresco stand out are its “Live Brushes”. The watercolour ones are something else; they actually bleed and blend colours on your screen in real-time, much like proper watercolour paint would react to water on paper.

Then you've got the oil Live Brushes, which let you build up paint thickness and texture, showing bristle marks, and you can smudge and blend them just like you would with traditional oils. A lot of this cleverness comes from Adobe Sensei, their AI tech, working behind the scenes to make it feel so natural.

It's also pretty handy that Fresco gives you pixel brushes, like the ones you’d find in Photoshop, alongside vector brushes, all in the same app. This means you can mix and match different styles and techniques in a single piece of artwork without having to jump between different programs. So, you can get that painterly look and then add some sharp vector lines right on top.

There are several plans for Adobe Fresco users. The free version provides access to most of the app's features, allowing users to take full advantage of the app's capabilities without having to pay.

However, users can upgrade to a premium plan by subscribing to the Adobe Design Mobile Bundle Plan, the Adobe Fresco Single App Plan, the Adobe Photoshop Single App Plan or the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps Plan. These premium plans offer additional features and tools for users who require advanced functionality.

4 – Canva

The Canva graphic design app on the iPhone is the perfect tool for hobby designers who want to create amazing and unique designs easily and quickly. With a simple and fun interface, you can create stunning graphics from scratch or use the app's wide range of ready-to-use designs to get started.

This app is particularly popular with Instagrammers who want to create visually stunning Stories. The app offers a variety of templates and designs to help you create captivating stories that stand out from the crowd. In addition, professionals can use Canva to design logos and other branding materials to make their businesses stand out from the crowd.

Beyond the easy templates, Canva's got some neat tricks for designers who want a bit more control. The “Brand Kit” feature is a good example; you can store all your brand colours, logos, and fonts in one place, which really helps keep your designs consistent across everything you make. And their library of elements just keeps growing, with plenty of stock photos, videos, and audio tracks you can pull into your designs.

Canva has also been adding more AI-powered tools. “Magic Resize” has been around for a bit, letting you quickly change a design to fit different social media sizes without starting from scratch, which saves a load of time.

They’ve also introduced “Magic Write” in some areas, an AI text generator that can help you come up with captions or marketing copy right there while you're designing. These sorts of features are making Canva a much more serious tool for quick, effective design work.

The best thing about Canva is how easy it is to put text on photos. With just a few taps, you can add text overlays to your images to create stunning invitations, quotes and other graphics that will impress your friends and followers. And when you're done, you can share your creations directly to Instagram, WhatsApp or email with just a few taps.

Whether you're a beginner or an experienced designer, Canva is the perfect tool for creating stunning graphics on the go. With its simple interface and wide range of customisable designs and templates, you can create beautiful graphics that will make your social media profiles and marketing materials stand out.

5 – Tayasui Sketches

Tayasui Sketches is a powerful and versatile sketching app designed specifically for mobile devices. It is a comprehensive toolbox for artists that allows users to create stunning sketches, vivid paintings and impressive illustrations on the go. The app has 20 ultra-realistic tools that behave like traditional drawing tools.

One of the standout features of Tayasui Sketches is the ability to sync and back up your drawings to the cloud. This feature ensures you won't lose any graphics, even if you switch devices or accidentally delete the app. You can also easily import photos into the app to reference or create artwork based on your photos.

Tayasui Sketches also allows you to export your designs as PNG and Adobe Photoshop PSD files. This allows you to quickly transfer your designs to other programmes or platforms for further editing and sharing. The app also supports the pressure pen, enabling you to create even more realistic and natural artwork.

Whether you're a professional artist or love to draw and paint, Tayasui Sketches is a user-friendly app perfect for creating artwork on the go. With its ultra-realistic tools, cloud backup and easy import/export options, this app has everything you need to create stunning sketches, joyful paintings and illustrations.

6 – Pantone Studio

Pantone Studio is an essential app for designers, artists and anyone who works with colour. Available for iOS, this app allows you to create stunning colour palettes and test them on 3D-rendered materials and designs.

With the ability to customise your colour palette or choose from dozens of pre-made palettes, you have the flexibility to create the perfect colour scheme for your project.

The app offers a variety of features to help you design with colours. You can easily extract colours from your favourite images and create a colour palette with up to five colours, each with SRGB, Hex and CMYK values. Pantone Studio also lets you visualise Pantone colours on pliable 3D papers and fabrics to get a better feel for how they will look in real life.

One of the outstanding features of Pantone Studio is the ability to share your colour palettes with your Adobe Creative Cloud account and social networks. This makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues or share your work with clients. The app also allows you to create and save your favourite colour palettes so you can access them later.

Pantone Studio gives you the tools to make the most of colour, whether designing a new brand identity, creating artwork, or decorating your home. So if you're looking for an app to create beautiful colour palettes, Pantone Studio is worth a look.

7 – Behance

Adobe's Behance app is a great social network for designers and photographers to share their projects with the world. With a straightforward and easy-to-use interface, you can browse work curated by people daily, follow your favourite designers and explore stunning designs and photo galleries.

The app lets you share your projects to get feedback and connect with other creatives in the industry. You can also watch live streams to learn new techniques and get inspired by other designers. The app allows you to send and receive private messages and job offers, making it an excellent platform for building your professional network.

Whether you're an aspiring designer, an established creative professional or simply a design enthusiast, Behance is an indispensable tool for discovering new design trends, keeping up with the latest projects and connecting with other designers worldwide. Download the app today and start exploring the world of design.

8 – Sketchbook

Sketchbook® is an exceptional graphic design app for the iPhone that is perfect for unleashing creativity with its wide range of functions.

The app is designed to meet the needs of every user, from a quick sketch to a finished piece of art. The highly customisable brushes, clean interface and flexibility make it one of the best design apps for the iPhone.

Sketchbook offers a complete set of brush types, including pencil markers, airbrushes and many more, which you can customise according to your preferences.

The app has a digital version of its physical component, making it more realistic and enjoyable. It is also designed exclusively for sketching and drawing, so you can fully explore your creativity with this app.

With its highly customisable brushes, Sketchbook lets you explore where your innovation takes you. The app also features tutorials and stroke tools, making it user-friendly and practical for all skill levels. In addition, the app has an extensive colour library, making it easy to find the right colour for your artwork.

Overall, Sketchbook is a top-notch graphic design app for the iPhone that caters to everyone, from beginners to professionals. Its versatility, customisability and user-friendly interface make it the perfect app to let your creativity run wild.

9 – Pixelcut

Pixelcut is a versatile graphic design app for the iPhone that offers traditional design tools and a tool for creating AI graphics. The design tools, templates and pre-built elements are similar to those of Canva and Adobe Express, making it an excellent option for essential functions such as creating posters, social media posts and presentations.

The tool for creating AI graphics needs improvement, but it is still very useful. As with other AI generators, you enter a prompt and wait for your artwork to be generated.

When it comes to the AI side of things, Pixelcut does more than just general art generation. For instance, its “AI Product Shots” feature can be a lifesaver if you're trying to get professional-looking photos for an online shop; you upload your product image, and it can generate all sorts of suitable backgrounds or entire scenes around it.

The “Magic Eraser” is another useful tool for cleaning up photos by removing unwanted objects or photobombers, which it does pretty well.

There's also an “AI Writer” built in, which can help knock out product descriptions, bits of ad copy, or captions for your social media posts, supporting the visual work you're doing.

For anyone running e-commerce sites, handling social media marketing, or just getting a small business off the ground, these AI tools can seriously speed up the process of creating content. It positions Pixelcut as a sort of all-in-one assistant for designers who need to manage different parts of their visual branding.

Pixelcut's background removal and magic eraser tools are standout features that worked well in our tests, although they can affect image quality.

There is also an animation tool that makes it easy to create moving images and GIFs from your illustrations. In addition, Pixelcut lets you create a website to showcase your work and add it to social media apps as a “link in bio”.

While most users find the free version sufficient, the Pro version of Pixelcut unlocks all the templates, cut-outs and other elements to enhance your graphic design experience.

While the interface generally works smoothly, some users have reported problems logging into the app. Nevertheless, Pixelcut is typically stable, making it an easy recommendation.

10 – Assembly

Assembly is a popular graphic design app optimised for mobile devices that offers users a wide range of features and tools for creating stunning designs on the go. The app is perfect for creative professionals and aspiring artists who want to create beautiful and engaging graphics using only their smartphones or tablets.

With Assembly, you can easily choose from predefined dimensions or import an SVG to take complete control of the canvas. Once you have selected a canvas, you can add stickers, shapes and text to the image to create a wide range of design elements.

The Styles tab at the bottom gives you great control over the details you have added to the canvas, including the ability to change the opacity via a slider and add strokes or shadows.

One of Assembly's most important features is its extensive colour selection tools. You can either change the colour of these shadows and strokes via a colour slider or switch to colour swatches, where you can select a specific colour from colour groups. With these colour selection tools, you can easily create beautiful, appealing graphics that capture your creativity.

Assembly also has a Gallery tab to view other users' popular creations. You can like, comment and share the designs. This makes it easy to connect with other graphic designers and get feedback on your work. The app also allows you to see how your work compares to others. This way, you can improve your skills and get inspired for your next project.

With Assembly, you can start with two projects and use a 7-day trial to see if the app is right for you. After that, you'll need to sign up for a subscription to use the app's full range of features and tools. Assembly is an excellent choice for a powerful, versatile, user-friendly graphic design app for mobile devices.

11 – Concepts

Concepts is a different beast altogether when it comes to sketching and designing on your iPhone. Think of an infinite canvas where you can explore ideas without ever hitting a boundary, combined with a clever mix of vector and raster tools. It’s built to give you a flexible space, whether you're doing quick initial sketches, detailed illustrations, or even quite precise technical drawings.

The app offers a great selection of realistic pencils, pens, and brushes, and you can adjust how they react to pressure, tilt, and even how fast you draw. Because it's vector-based at its core, any stroke you make can be picked up, moved around, and tweaked later on without losing any quality, which is a massive help. You're not stuck with destructive edits like in some other apps.

Concepts also includes things like customisable grids, including perspective grids which are great for architectural or product sketches, and precision tools like snap-to-grid and measurement guides.

The layering system is solid, letting you organise complex drawings easily. It’s become a favourite for product designers, architects, and illustrators who need a tool for brainstorming just as much as for hammering out the fine details of a design. You can get your work out in formats like SVG, DXF, and PSD, alongside the usual image files.

Wrapping up the Best iOS Apps for Designers

In summary, with increasingly powerful mobile devices, designers are using iOS apps for designers to inspire and work on the go. The apps listed in this article offer various features and tools that make designing more manageable and accessible, whether sketching, creating colour palettes or generating AI art.

Each app has unique features and benefits that make it suitable for designers and artists. With these powerful tools, designers can easily take their creativity to the next level and bring their visions to life.