Looking for an innovative way to quickly capture thoughts, sketch visual ideas, take notes during client meetings, and gain a little extra tech cred? Launch Agency art director Reuben Miller relies on his iPad and the Adobe Ideas app to do all that and more.

Adobe Ideas is a revolutionary app that allows users to capture thoughts and draw vector images on the fly. It also makes it far easier to create your own “handwriting” font, but whether or not you should make (or even use) a handwriting font is another matter entirely.

After creating an image in the app, like the robot to the left that Miller sketched,  you can throw it into Illustrator to adjust your Bézier Curves, add some copy, or combine your new design with other work on your computer. You can even add a background image in Ideas and and create separate layers for drawings and photos.

Miller uses Adobe Ideas to aid him in keeping his notes organized, sketching out ideas, and making notes directly on designs during client meetings. Before a meeting, Reuben sends himself a PDF of his work. He opens the PDF on his iPad, takes a screen capture to quickly save it as a jpg (hit the “Home” and “On/off” buttons simultaneously), and then opens it in Adobe Ideas to mark-up as he pleases. This is not only faster than making edits on paper, it also saves trees.
Adobe Ideas is a free app that can be “purchased” from the iTunes store. Let’s just hope that Apple and Adobe make up soon so we can see more apps like this one.