4 Free Apps to Unlock Your Creativity

Our phones provide us with the access to modern conveniences that have crossed the threshold into necessity: GPS? Check. Text messaging? Check. Email? Check. Camera? Check. Dynamic creative tools? Um, check? If you aren’t already utilizing your mobile device to harness your creativity, here are five apps that will unlock your imagination.

Paper transforms your device into a canvas of possibilities limited only by your imagination. The app provides users with stunning 3D journals in which to sketch, write, diagram, draw, color, insert photos, annotate and more. Users sing Paper’s praises for seamless navigation and intuitive tools that work well with a stylus or just your fingers. An auto-correction feature fixes rough drawings into smooth lines and sharp shapes and structural tools such as grids, lines and storyboards are available to guide your ideas.

Fontli 

Do you love logos? Does a fine font make you feel faint? Does beautiful lettering on a sign make you swoon? Behold, Fontli! A social network for typography lovers in which members can take share photos of typography from their everyday lives, from stunning signs to lovely letterheads to bold book covers and everything in between. Through a partnership with myfonts.com, users can even tag a photo with thousands of fonts from the library.

Artsy (Android, iOS)

Dubbed the art genome project, Artsy is the world’s most extensive database of contemporary and historical art. With 300,000 works by 40,000 artists, you can view works from every medium imaginable: photography, painting, sculpture, print, film, design, jewelry and multi-medium. Complete with comprehensive artist biographies and exhibition histories, you can explore artists’ entire bodies of work and even bid on pieces at auctions, purchase works for sale and find information on current exhibitions taking place around the world.

HaikuJAM (iOS, Android)

This app beckons you into a world of poetry and collaboration. HaikuJAM invites users to add one line to a three-line poem, which when completed is called a “jam.” With writing prompts that range from the broad (memories, purpose, strength) to the very specific (waking up, life on Mars, grandparents) and a required word count for each line, this app accomplishes more than just spurring on your inner poet: It allows you to be as serious or as silly as you’d like. Plus, you can view, like and share other jams and create writing prompts for others jammers to write poetry to.