The UK creative industries contribute almost £90bn net to GDP, according to the Guardian. Whether you’re a designer, photographer or producer, your creative output is vital to the betterment of the wider UK. If you’re ever feeling a little bit stuck, or need some creative help, just remember that there’s an app for everything in 2017. With that in mind, we’ve put together this list of great creative apps that will help to get your juices flowing. If you’re feeling squeezed for mobile data, don’t worry, just order a SIM-only bundle from a provider like Asda Mobile and you can download to your heart’s content.

1. Simmer

The act of preparing a meal is innately creative, taking advantage of the cook’s full array of senses to produce the desired dish. Now, Simmer helps you capture your creativity, enabling you to record short step by step videos of your preparatory process, helping other aspiring chefs learn from your instruction. Create, watch and share right from your very own kitchen.

2. Assembly

If you’re not a full-time graphic designer, but you need to be able to sketch out a visual concept to a creative partner, an app like Assembly could be for you. It helps you to create beautiful vector imagery without having to master Illustrator. You can select from over 180 basic shapes that you can fit together to produce your own pieces of art, and place them over a plain backdrop or on top of a background image.

3. Paper

With a simple to use, yet innovative swipe-to-style formatting, Paper, lets you produce checklists and notes with ease. Capture and connect your notes, photos, and sketches in this brilliant designer-friendly digital wall. The original iPad version was crowned Apple’s App of the Year, and the new iPhone version is completely free, so there’s really no excuse to not own this brilliant inspiration provider.

4. Unstuck

This is a platform that should be in every creative’s toolbox. Both the website and the app are aimed at helping creative people get over their creative block through a range of instructional workshops, tricks, and techniques that help you in areas like, negative thinking, procrastination, and relationships. If you’re stuck and need help, you could definitely give this a go. Describing itself as an “in the moment digital coach”, Unstuck is your very own life coach in app form, and without the associated high costs.

5. Behance

If you believe that there’s no such thing as truly original art, then you should check out Behance. This is an online portfolio platform that’s specifically targeted at those working in the creative industries. If you’re a Photoshop pro, you can now push images directly to your own Behance portfolio, and if you’re browsing others portfolios, you can now share images straight to Pinterest – a new feature as of the 2.25 update. The phone app version of this platform is particularly slick, so give it a go.

These are only five of the plethora of apps out there designed to help creative do their jobs better. Give them a go and let us know what you think.

According to the GBrief, millennials (a person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century) are forcing companies to offer a more personalized approach to shopping, or in other words “they want to know that a company is paying attention to their specific needs.” This is something that companies need to take note of if they want to stay in the game as millennials are set to become the largest group of consumers, having finally outnumbered the Baby Boomers in 2015.

However, it’s expensive for companies to customize product design, especially as so much could change along the way. Yet, creating variants on an item and giving the customer a choice is almost as good as a complete customization, this is mass customization (the ability to make variations of products in high volume). Such customization in the automobile industry is now routine, you can choose everything from the buttons on your steering wheel to the stitching in the leather of the seats.

A lot of the results from mass customization so far have been popular as well, because it helps companies gain insights from designs that they may not have thought of themselves. This keeps them one step ahead of the competition and maintains customer loyalty.

Looking back at the GBrief study, it also suggested that Millennials distrust faceless big businesses and want to be treated like a partner rather than a purchaser. Offering customization and plenty of variation give consumers the impression that they are involved in the whole process and mirrors the feel of being a partner. Even if the product is already being manufactured, the fact that the customer is in control makes the process feel a lot more personal.

With all of this in mind, it’s clear that product design will be successful with the use of customization, you will be achieving exactly what the consumer wants. Through this, you ensure that your company is remaining competitive and successful by keeping up with the consumer.

Whether you provide this personalization tool through face-to-face contact or over the Internet depends largely on the size of your business. For example, hospitals require a lot of different equipment and they may look for some supplies online, such as online castors, but meet with a supplier for the hospital bed itself, it just depends on the customers’ situation and the use of the product.

So, if you want to stay relevant as a business and keep on creating successful products, it‘s key that you offer some sort of flexibility and customization. The Raconteur has even gone so far as to say that the “new manufacturing revolution will be defined by speed, quality, flexibility, and customization,” so it’s definitely something your business needs to consider.

Corporate culture permeates throughout an entire organisation. It can be your best advertisement or, if the culture and behavior are not in line with best practices and fair and competitive business operations, it can cause a company to lose its identity and focus and ultimately fail.

Committed to Customers

Shouldn’t businesses just focus on manufacturing or selling their product line? Why do they need to meld operations into business practices and push them across the entire workforce? It’s because a strong culture begets strong operations. Where they separate it can cause irreparable harm to the company.

Building a brand initially takes time and effort and then it must be maintained. It can’t just be a façade – there has to be meat behind it as well as legitimate and trustworthy actions. This trend toward corporate culture fine-tuning has increased during the last few years. Where companies are experiencing higher turnover rates it can often be attributed to either poor or completely absent (positive) corporate culture.

Workers Demand It

Workers already in and those about to enter the workforce desire a unified company and message. These elements are the foundation for a strong company culture – Employees want to buy into who they work for and what they’re selling as much as the customers the company targets.Take the biggest segment of individuals currently joining the professional world: Millennials. They look for a strong company culture in the jobs they go for and so companies that neglect the needs of one of their biggest sources of employees are bound to suffer from a lack of talent.

Constructive Corporate Culture Creation

A strong brand and a strong positive company culture, unfortunately, don’t develop overnight. They must be fostered and maintained. Not every company will or should have the same culture – it’s not that uniqueness is expected and there will always be similarities that exist between companies, but they must have an identity of their own.

• Vision: Companies need mission statements. These overarching compelling statements at their heart guide every decision the company makes. Setting these vision or mission parameters at a top level will help direct employees to continue them down the chain.
• Values: Embrace them. Values are merely empty words and phrases unless they are adopted by everyone within a company. A company’s mission statement is more of an idea, but values offer everyone involved clearer guidelines such as how to deal with clients, interactions colleagues, and how to manage situations. It is important that these are consistently upheld.
• Practices: Show it, don’t Say it. Actions speak louder than words when it comes to developing a constructive corporate culture. Companies should ensure their set of values are practiced daily throughout the company, at all management levels. If certain staff is exempted from behaving in certain ways, there really is not a reason for others to continue to follow the policies.
• People. Having the most eloquently written mission statement and strong values won’t be enough to maintain a corporate culture without people. Companies need individuals who strongly believe in what the company does and who want to be a part of the movement. They don’t just want to be controlled; rather, they want to active members of the organization who are guided by constructive principles. Developing these internal brand ambassadors for a company’s brand and values will ensure the positive culture continues to permeate throughout the company.

Is It Too Late?

Is there a deadline for developing a positive growth-promoting corporate culture? No, because the first step is realizing your company has a problem. Determine whether your mission statement is being followed through, or if the company values are embodied or simply being taken as suggestions. Is the mission statement actually clearly articulated? A vague directive yields vague action. How often do employees come into contact with the main values that should guide operations – if they are in the form of a handbook given to new hires and never referenced again, those points of advice are unlikely to be remembered later on down the line?

Lastly, corporate culture has to be indeed a culture, that lives and breathes in everything the company does. All levels, all the time must uphold it. Maintain these values and the business will be much more likely to remain competitive.