Is the iPad a legitimate business tool for designers?

There has been a lot of discussion revolving around how designers can use the iPad in their workflow, which helps us validate our purchases to angry spouses who doubt our need for new toys. In all honesty, though, the thing that we all realize — but aren’t owning up to — is that all of these roundups of iPad apps for designers are full of super basic sketching apps and to-do lists, not exactly enough to merit a $500+ purchase or pull us away from our Mac Pros for anything but some fun distractions.

Don’t get me wrong, products like Adobe Ideas are great, but do you really find that they have dramatically improved the way that you design websites, brochures, business cards or even logos? Are they really that far beyond a good old pencil and sheet of paper?

At Archimedia, we have put a lot of time into exploring how designers can really use this device as a professional-level tool instead of an expensive paperweight that plays Angry Birds and lets us read our email in a bigger font than our iPhones.

The following are some of the best accessories and applications that we have found to help meet this goal.

First get a Stylus – While the iPad wasn’t designed for a stylus, as a designer, you simply must have precision beyond that offered by your chubby little fingers. If you’re typing or navigating the general iPad interface, use your hands, but for writing by hand, drawing and manipulating graphics, you’ll want to check out a stylus. Here are a few of our recommendations:

Griffin has a nice stylus with a rubber tip that is still soft but a bit firmer than the foam.

There are also a few really unique products out there like the iClooly stylus, which is more like a paint brush, the Dagi stylus, which is tipped with a transparent circle for serious precision and the Stylus Socks Pro, which uses conductive fabric stretched over a pen shaft.

Next get a serious Drawing App. After much test driving our recommendation is:

iDraw: A Real Graphics App!

iDraw,  is a genuine vector-drawing application with many of the same features that you find in Adobe Illustrator.

Far beyond a simple drawing app, iDraw packs a serious punch and is a steal for $8.99.