A list of iPhone apps for designers who use their mobile device more than just for calling. iPhone apps are a huge extension to the workflow of every professional designer. This list is a large collection of work apps for your iPhone to manage your online files, create a mindmap, record messages, send business cards, pick a color and convert it into another, make calculations and much more. This list provides over 20+ iPhone applications, some are paid, some are free, let me know what iPhone App you use.

Rulerplus

RulerPlus is a simple application for your iPhone / iPhone 3G / iPod Touch, providing you with a simple 7 cm / 2 inch ruler. Ruler+ let’s you take measurements quickly and easily. Ruler+ also allows you to extend the ruler. Simply move your iPhone to the right and press ‘+’ to create the extended ruler. Supports centimers / millimeters and inches.

• Price *FREE*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

OMNI Focus

OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch works great as a stand alone application or in conjunction with OmniFocus for Mac. It’s easy to sync your OmniFocus data between multiple Mac computers and your iPhone using your iDisk if you’re a MobileMe subscriber or a by using a generic WebDAV server.
Available for $19,99

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

AIR Sharing

Mount your iPhone or iPod touch as a wireless drive on any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer.
Drag-drop files between your iPhone or iPod touch and your computers.
View documents in many common format. Familiar Finder-like file browser. Prominent display of available space. Check the developers website for more info. Available for $ 6.99

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

OpticsCalc

OpticsCalc is a handy optical calculator for the iPhone and iPod Touch for everyone from students to engineers who know optical theory, but need a quick and efficient way to perform common calculations. It frees your mind from having to remember all the equations, and lets you concentrate on solving the problem at hand! Available for Eur 2.99

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

10base-t interactive

Mrmr is a technology that enables you to use ordinary cell phones and PDAs as controllers in audio-visual performances, or to participate in interactive museum exhibits, or to use your mobile device in the place of the mouse or trackpad from your full-size computer.

• Price *FREE*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

Airdesign Chair

Home Sizer is the perfect tool for anyone wanting to estimate the size and function of their dream home, or to just calculate the square footage of an existing home. Currently only provides for measurements in feet & inches. Available for $0,79

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

Palettes

Palettes is a productivity tool for creating and maintaining color palettes. You may create any number of palettes. Create palettes from images and web sites. Add colors from several color models, web sites, color lists, images, or by entering CSS color strings. Available for Eur 3,99

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

ZeptoPad

ZeptoPad changes as you add your ideas: sketch; mindmap; design; planning; and so on. You can scribble on the iPhone screen and also type text from the virtual keypad. You can drag and move text or picture elements at any time, cut, paste, and resize. When you meet other users of ZeptoPad, you can send a worksheet to another iPhone directly. ZeptoPad - the only limit is your imagination!
Available for $7,99

• Price *PAID*
• Developer Website
• Install this app via iTunes

Things

Other task managers either oversimplify or are too difficult to use. Either way you are not getting stuff done. Things instead has the right balance between ease of use and powerful features. With Things’ elegance and beautiful design, procrastinating never looked less attractive.

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BeamCalc

Enter the light’s height above the target and distance across the floor. BeamCalc shows the resulting throw distance and elevation angle. Enter the light’s beam size in degrees to calculate the pool width. Adjust beam size or location to achieve required pool size. BeamCalc works with any units: feet, inches, centimeters, … even miles. Available for Eur 1,59

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ColorExpert

Color Expert contains powerful tools to help artists and designers identify, translate, capture and showcase color. Designers know inspiration can come anywhere at anytime. Just look around. Some of the best ideas are waiting for you in the real world away from the studio. Now with Color Expert, you’ll have the tools to capture the moment, the moment a color captures you. Available for $9,99

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Files

Files allows you to store and view files on your iPhone or iPod touch. You can connect to Files from any Mac or PC and drag and drop files straight from the Finder or Windows Explorer, as you would with any other shared folder. In fact any client which understands the WebDAV protocol can connect to Files, available for £3.99.

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BeamMe

beamME allows you do send your personal or business card from your iPhone to any other mobile device or computer, including BlackBerries, Android phones, Treos, Macs, PCs and more.

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i41CX+

Advanced programmable and expandable RPN scientific calculator with virtual thermal printer/plotter suitable for a wide variety of scientific, engineering, mathematical, financial, and technical applications. Available for Eur 11,99

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iBlueSky

BlueSky is a brainstorming and mind-mapping solution for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Collect and organise ideas you have at odd moments, then email the complete project in PDF and PNG formats to any contact. You can even print a hard copy of your work from the PDF file. Availabe for Eur 5,99

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Equivalence

Equivalence is the last conversion tool you’ll ever need. Designed from the ground up by engineers and for engineers, Equivalence makes your tedious, day-to-day conversions between unit systems a breeze. Less intensive conversions are even easier, which makes it great for simple and advanced users alike. Available for Eur 3,99

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Units

Units is a simple unit conversion utility for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Unlike most other unit converters, Units looks and works a lot like a calculator. You punch in digits and Units does the conversion on the fly. Easy for converting typographic points to milimeter or inches. Available for $0,99

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Scale Rule

The app is essentially a caliper, the top and bottom jaws can be freely dragged while the distance between them is constantly updated in the middle. White areas are being measured, black areas are not. You can switch between metric or imperial measurements with one click. Selecting the scale button will give you a list of over 100 commonly used scales to choose from. Available for $0,79

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Caliper

Adjustable caliper jaws for pixel-precise measurements
Multi-Touch control - move upper and lower caliper jaws simultaneously. Available for Eur 0.79

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Google Calender

View your schedule from anywhere. Check your Google Calendar schedule from anywhere on your iPhone. Browse any day to see all scheduled events at a glance. Add events on the fly. Type event details, press “Add now” and you are good to go. Google Calendar will add the event to your schedule.

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Order Design Work

Looking for a designer? Now you can get quotes on graphic design work directly off your iPhone/iPod touch. You can choose from iPhone pages, widgets, websites, logo design, postcards, business cards, brochures, 3D images, and even flash and 3D animation. 18 years of experience with clients such as a PGA tournament, Miller Brewing, NBC Universal, Snap-On Tools, Johnson Wax, American Heart Association and many small and mid size companies.

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Dexigner News & Events

Dexigner application delivers latest design news, events, exhibitions, conferences, and design competitions. Get latest design news, current & upcoming design events and design competitions from Dexigner Design Portal on your iPhone/iPodTouch.

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Show me your favourite iPhone Apps

Please let me know in the comments about your favourite iPhone app that changed the way you design have another workflow or any other purpose your want to share. Thank you!

Signsphere a monthly collection of inspirational links and resources for typography, design, architecture and more. Do you want to be featured in next months signsphere? Just send your design work to my email adres as specified in my about page. Thank you for sending this months links, enjoy reading.

Introducing my new corporate signage website

Baumann Sign is the name of my new corporate website (at the moment Dutch only). For quite some time I haven’t had the time to implement the new corporate signage website for my company. We are a signage & wayfinding company in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Designing & producing signs for office buildings, parking facilities, public buildings, hotels and more. We are specialized in create unique signage systems through the use of well thought out design in combination with color, architecture and typography. Our main goal is to create signs & wayfinding systems that work in the environment and lead visitors in the right direction. As a wayfinding product I designed a sign system called SignSwitch, a flexible signage system with a touch of design using materials such as stainless steel in combination with colored acrylic.

Please take a look at our signage projects page to see some of the things we have done in the past. Please let me know what you think of the design of the website, your comments are highly appreciated.

• Please visit my new corporate signage website Baumann Sign for more information.

Use of DesignWorkPlan Arrows collection

Logo Designer Kathy Moore used various icons from my arrow & icons collection as a basis for the logo design of South Logan County Rural Health Care Network. Great work! Thank you for sending your materials.

The reason I chose the circles with the arrows is that I needed to represent the community as a whole and the healthcare community coming together. I liked the idea of having the arrows intersect to represent that connection. Sustainability is a major goal for our project so the circles help to express that because circles are often representative of something that goes on and on. Overall, the graphics I used from your site couldn’t have been more perfect to represent the project and the goals of it and all of the members were very happy with the final product. Kathy Moore

• Visit the website of Kathy Moore to see more of her work.
• See the professional arrow & icons collection.

Re-design of InspirationBit

The long awaited re-design of InspirationBit, a faboulus website about design, inspiration, art, photography and much more, written by Vivien. The re-design is great work, I really like the way she has put up the website, the focus on the content and thoughts on navigation. At the homepage at the top you will find the three latest articles with below that the latest featured article. At the bottom of each page you will find a huge footer containing everything you want to find at InspirationBit. The website is scalable, with a wider screen the tree on the left will have a bigger impact on the design. A nice drawing and looks great aswel! The color usage is purple and green which is a colorful yet professional look. The content of InspirationBit is just superb, posts are really thought out well and giving a in-dept look on the articles topic. Take a look at InspirationBit and tell us what you think!

You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• Visit InspirationBit or comment on the new design in this article. Do you want to know more about Vivien then subscribe to InspirationBit.

Launch of Typerepublic

Typerepublic is an independent type foundry based in Barcelona (Spain). Founder and principal designer Andreu Balius has designed (and designs) an exclusive collection of typefaces to be distributed throughout this website.

• Visit Typerepublic for more information.

Source Creative: Inspiration

An English design company who publish their design work on the website. They update their website a few times a month with new creative work. A inspiration to look at the design work they accomplish.

• Visit Source Creative for design inspiration and more information.

Japanese Icons

Via iLT I discovered this page, the website is completely written in Japanese, so cannot read anything. But the icons are superb. Nice balanced and beautiful designed.

• Take a look at these faboulus designed icons

Largest LED advertising screen: Podium

Via The Inquirer I found this image of the biggest ever build LED advertising screen. Size? 100 x 20 metres, that is huge! Build by Dubai-based construction company Tamee and will be placed on a office building at the Kingdom’s Majan district.

Visible at a distance of 1.5 kilometers, the magnificent screen on the façade of Podium is designed by the L.E.D. technology. This curved façade will be a powerful medium for advertising, messaging and art. Highly-reflective tinted glass will be utilized to achieve astounding visual quality, as the massive screen gives off an elegant bluish sapphire glow.

• Visit the website of Tameer for more information about this LED screen

Name that Pantone code:iPhone App

In one word, what a faboulus app for your iPhone. I recently got mine and can’t stop working with this tool. It contains the complete PANTONE® color books, so you can quickly search through PANTONE® solid coated, PANTONE® solid uncoated, PANTONE® Goe™ coated, PANTONE® Goe™ uncoated, Web Safe Colors, HTML Colors. The real power of this app is the snap-shot function. Take a photo with your iPhone and select the color, voila ColorExpert will tell you the PANTONE color. I’ve checked it with several colors and it matches almost everything correctly. Beautiful!

• Take a look at the website of Code-Line for the ColorExpert and install the app for only just under ten Dollars (or 8 Euros).

Graphic ExchanGE Design

A graphic design website that shows showcases of inspirational designs. Graphic ExchanGE covers many different design topics, but this page is full on (laser) engraved design graphic, on different materials with superb taken photos.

• Visit Graphic ExchanGE for more inspiration resources and be sure to take a look here.

The visual history of 11 successful blogs

Over the years blogging has become more popular than regular websites, this post from Royal Pingdom compares the design of 11 successful blogs from the start to the current design. Interesting readings.

• Visit Royal Pingdom to read the complete post

Environmental Graphic design

In this post from +KN Kitsune Noir the author writes about the importance of environmental graphic design. The examples are of great design and serve their purpose.

• Visit Kitsune Noir for the complete article

Zabox: Design News

Yet another voting design news website has been born: Zabox. So why is Zabox different than the other design news websites? It is a bit more focused on just design than other news websites. I submitted a story recently and I will post my findings in a future article.

zaBox is a design related social bookmarking website, focused on offering its users design news, tutorials and resources in a spam-free environment.

• Visit Design News website zaBox for more information & news

Viscom Fair Frankfurt

One of the largest media fairs in Europe will be hosted in Frankfurt this year. With over 260 exhibitors in various fields of print media, visual communication, singage, digital signage and more will bring you their latest information. It will be a great fair, although the exhibitors list is quite the same as last year in Italy. I really enjoyed the Italy fair… So anyone is going to Frankfurt? Let me know and we can meet there.

Viscom frankfurt 2008 will be opening its doors at the Exhibition Centre Frankfurt from 30 October.

• Check the website of Viscom for the latest details, programms and more.

Enjoy reading

Thank you for your visit at Designworkplan.com, enjoy reading the above recommendations. If you have anything to share please type a comment or let me know via contact.

Otl Aicher one of the leading German graphic designers developed in 1988 the typeface Rotis, named after the town Olt Aicher lived in. With Rotis he tried to create to maximum legibilty face with a high x-height. Available in four font families from sans to serif, Rotis typeface can be found everywhere around you. Unfortunally Olt Aicher died in a traffic accident in 1991. Linotype currently owns the Rotis Font Family, where all of the font variantions can be bought.

Rotis® gives an impression of both strength and generosity and all four versions can be used interchangeably with one another. Rotis® is suitable for book/text, documentation/business reports, business correspondence, magazines, newspapers, posters, advertiments, multimedia, corporate design. from Linotype

During my holiday in the beautiful German Steigerwald (near Nürnberg and Bamberg) I came across the Rotis Font Family quite often, this is a photo showcase collection of the Font Familiy Rotis Sans.

A book about photography

This is where I first spotted Rotis, during a visit at the bookstore and came to the idea to putting this post together. As you can see, Rotis works well for legibility and design.

Street Signs

We were walking down the streets where I took this photo of a small billboard, The font family Rotis has enough detail to show at large points. Good readable from a distance.

Cafe Signage

Sitting down for a espresso where I saw this acrylic nameplate, clearly the usage of the noticable ´e´ of Rotis. A good color usage as where the brick will look dark from a distance the off-white lettering will stand out.

1000 Jahre Bamberg

During the celebration of 1000 years of the city Bamberg various information signposts has been put up in the city (now only available in the Church), a clear usage of font Rotis.

Museum Nürnberg

We went to various museum in Nürnberg, but this one got my attention. The openinghours and detailed information folder about the museum was all created using Rotis.

Shopping

My wife wanted to go shopping, so I sat down and read some magazines. Here I spotted Rotis in a Loreal print ad, see the payoff.

Escape route plan

When walking down a mayor cityhall I spotted this Escape signage. All type is printed using Rotis font family, easy to read.

Bookstore

Going to a bookstore in Germany is a pleasure for all typophiles, you can recognize a font on almost every cover you see. I spotted the Rotis on the cover of this book.

Door Signage

A small signage for a local company called Temme uses Rotis on their door signage, a bold versions and a regular are displayed in the design.

Museum Gerolzhofen

When visiting the museum in the small city of Gerolzhofen you can find the openinghours plate created using the font Rotis. With so many lines and text Rotis proves a clear legibilty.

Arte Caffe

At the tourist guide shop I found this business card all designed using the type Rotis. Unfortunally we could not find the coffe shop, but I sure liked the design.

Kind of noodles

At the grocery we bought some kind of noodles (Spätzle), you can get this typical German kind of noodle with many dishes. At the package I spotted the Rotis, small printed but readable.

Rotling Wine

With food you can drink wine, I bought this dry Franken white wine of 2007. The label was printed using the type Rotis. If you can find a bottle I can suggested it, tasted very good.

Steigerwald walk

The area we stayed was Steigerwald, a great forrest area and we went for many walks there. Our guide was a map of the area, with on the frontpage a design using Rotis.

Shoppingbag

At the local bakery we bought typical German bread (really dark with good taste), we carried the bread in this paperbag, printed with the details of the bakery using Rotis.

Franken Brunnen

Water is good for everybody and Franken Brunnen does it all the way, they use Rotis on almost every form of visual communication.

Availability of Font Family Rotis

The font package is available in four type families, via Linotype:

• Rotis® Serif Font Family
• Rotis® Sans Serif Font Family
• Rotis® Semi Sans Font Family
• Rotis® Semi Serif Font Family

Personally I like Rotis Sans Serif Font Family (2nd on the list above) the best, it has a very distinctive look and feel with a high legibilty for usage in many fields of visual communication.

More information about Olt Aicher

There is much written about Olt Aicher who was not only a font designer but also a graphic designer who had a big part in designing the Münich Olympic Games in 1972.

• Information about Olt Aicher at Wikipedia.
• Great article about Olt Aicher at Underconsideration.
• Work from Olt Aicher at a huge flickr pool to be found here.
• The graphic design work he created for the Münich Olympic Games at this website.
• Other interesting and informative article about the type Rotis, here at manic.com.

So tell me..

Did you have your Rotis today?