I am completely addicted to typography photo apps. It all started with Word Swag, the first one I downloaded a couple months ago. I told you all about that in my post about six iPad apps that make blogging easier. At first, I thought it was a totally unique app and the only one of its kind. I should have known better, but I’m still a little new to the iPad world!

Make boring pictures beautiful and turn words into works of art with my favorite typography apps that are absolutely perfect for bloggers!

Fast forward to today. I think I have about 10 typography apps and I’m always looking for more! Some I’ve used once or twice, while others are my go-to apps. I’m going to share a few of my favorites with you, including what makes them special, whether they cost money and what makes them special.

Favorite Typography Apps for Bloggers

I’ll keep this from getting wildly out of control and long by giving it a bit of structure. You know how I can get if I don’t have a plan! I’ll end up writing 500 words about one app, then get tired out and write four words about the last one! So here’s how it will go: Title of the app, an example (I’m using quotes I like to show examples), cost, number of font styles, pros, cons, bottom line.

Word Swag

Word Swag Typography App Example

Cost: $3.99 for basic app + $1.99 to unlock all features (including all future features) OR $0.99 to unlock individual features

Font Styles: Has 35 font styles, each with 5 basic variation and endless potential combinations with the randomizer.

Pros: Good integration with Pixabay (a royalty-free stock site). While it doesn’t show all their pictures available in any given search term, it does have a decent selection. If you don’t like a picture, it’s easy to go back and pick another without losing the text you put in.  Easy to learn in minutes. Saves a crisp, clear image every time.

Cons: Very little control over the finer details of the overall design.  Only about 10 color combos with multiple colors. The “paper hearts” font never looks right and some of the other fonts are just really too simple. While that’s great for those who need simple, I can achieve the same effect in PicMonkey. Doesn’t let you control the size of the crop.

Bottom Line: It has a special place in my heart because it was my first. I use it when I want something that isn’t overpowering or need to work quickly. It’s great for beginners too.

 

Word Dream

Word Dream typography App

Cost: Free for some features but slaps a watermark on everything, $3.99 to unlock all and remove watermark, or $.99-$1.99 per feature.

Font Styles: 28, with 5 variations plus a random button.

Pros: Decent integration with Pixabay. Complete crop control over the picture you choose, so you don’t have to use another program. Really cool font styles, including seasonal fonts. Great control over color. Choose one color, then choose “effect” to go with color combos. You can add shadows, outline the fonts, make them pop out more, etc. Add your logo at the bottom if you want.

Cons: Logo designs need work. It’s a new feature. I don’t use it for now because they’re too “in your face” for my tastes. They bug you to rate them within a minute after opening the app, and you HAVE to if you want to unlock anything beyond two or three fonts. Other cons have to do with glitches after updates, so I’ll hold off until I see if that’s a common thing (I had to keep liking them on Facebook to get access to stuff I already had access too).

Bottom Line: Even though they ticked me off out the gate and I almost deleted, it’s become one of my favorite typography apps, if not my absolute favorite. I’d like to see a few more font styles added, but overall, it’s $3.99 well spent!

Typorama

Typorama Example

Cost: It was free for a limited time, but they may have changed that. I am pretty sure I paid about $1.99-$2.99 for it, but I don’t remember.  The app has a few new fonts for $1.99 extra, but I haven’t gotten them yet.

Font Styles: 28, but 3 of them cost extra money. Each font has variations, but since they’re not numbered, it’s hard to tell how many.

Pros: A few really nice, unique fonts that the others don’t have. Best pro, though, is loads of control over the font stylizing. Not so much on the color (more control than Word Swag), but you can make the font look 3D, do gradient coloring, add shadows and fine tune their radius, etc. You can also make and add your own watermark.

Cons: Slow downloads from Pixabay and their own database of backgrounds. Can’t change the color of your watermark. No numbers on the variations, so if you like one and click again, you have to click and click and click until it comes back around.

Bottom Line: They’ve added a lot more features recently that took this from a simple app that I occasionally used because I liked one font to one of my favorite typography apps now.

 

Retype

ReType Example

Cost: $2.99

Font Styles: 15, tap each font to get different variations

Pros: Quick and easy to learn. Not a lot of extra features, so it’s good for when you need to do a fast typography design. The app itself works super fast. No lags, no crashing. It’s a very streamlined app.  Really nice fonts, even though there aren’t a lot of them. Some of the fonts have a neat 3D effect. Super easy to change the picture without changing text, plus a nice database of ready-to-use quotes (the example pic was one of them).

Cons: When I bought it, the description said to tap a color to toggle between multi-color options. This does not work for me. So basically, I can only do solid colors. Not sure if this feature is broken for everyone or just me. Not a whole lot of font options for $2.99 price tag. It’s also lacking in font styles compared to the others, and lacking in finer tuning options for those who want that.

Bottom Line: I am disappointed that some of the features just don’t work for me, but I do like the fonts that are available. If/when it works as it is supposed to, it’ll be fantastic. I love the 3D fonts!

There are dozens of other typography apps in the App store, but these are currently my favorites. I also downloaded Vanillapen, but haven’t tried it out. Plus I bought the Rhonna Designs apps because they looked amazing, but then read that you can’t actually use the final product for anything except maybe your own scrapbooks, so now I kind of regret paying for them. Still, the creator of the app is pretty talented, so I’ll just consider the download a contribution to her art.

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If you know of any other great typography apps that I should try out, tell me in the comments!