Twitter was a-buzz yesterday when careful searching revealed that applications for the iPad had become available in the app store. Among those accepted into this very first round of iPad applications was Ideate: an application for collaborative sketching by EffectiveUI (full disclosure: I work for EffectiveUI.)

At EffectiveUI we've given out a single piece of collateral since the beginning of the company that remains wildly popular with designers and developers: sketch pads. The pads started off with simple grids in the back-ground and later versions contained typical monitor resolution dimensions or basic iPhone shells. The goal was to give you a starting point to build a great design and then get out of the way. Ideate was born when Juan Sanchez and Jonathan Branam looked at how we could combine the benefits of sketching and the experience of our sketchpads with the rich interface, quick collaboration and digital persistence provided by the iPad.

Sketching is a key and often overlooked component in the creative process, especially where any sort of design is concerned. It allows the designer to abstract away the problem into a space where a few simple lines can begin to direct creative solutions and ignores the details in favor of a few key ideas.

Ideate reproduces sketching on the iPad in a way that is simple, intuitive and engaging to give as good an experience as possible without a physical pen and paper. Ideate takes the opinion that simplicity is a key component of sketching, and does not clutter the interface or user's ability to problem solve with extra tools or too many features.

The one key feature Ideate brings over many other simple sketching apps is a large number of starting background objects, called Templates. Building on our physical sketchpads, Ideate comes with a large number of UI-related backgrounds, including a variety of grids, monitor resolutions, phone shells and an iPad screen. For Ideate we expanded on this idea by thinking about how sketching could apply to industries other than UI design, and so the app features templates for things as varied as fashion design, anatomy, music composition and landscaping. The goal of each template is the same: a simple starting point to ignite your creativity.

Ideate also features a large number of built-in clip art objects (called Clips) for each of the different industries we looked at along with the ability to pull in objects from the iPad's photo library or clipboard so you can pull inspiration or reference images straight from Safari. In this way you can expand your sketches using other images, just like you might do with magazine cut outs or prints on your sketchpad.

Beyond Sketching, Ideate focuses heavily on allowing designers to collaborate. Ideate comes built with the ability to easily save and email sketches as well as upload to Flickr.

Ideate is available in the app store now for $3.99. For more info about the application, view the Ideate webpage or check out the official press release.

Do you have an iPad app or RIA the works you'd like me to review here? Email rjowen@insideria.com.

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