Armature
Save time when mocking up ideas with a drag-and-drop graphics library
A crucial aspect of designing a software or web interface is prototyping: going through ideas to refine them down to one that works. Mocking up an interface can take almost as long as actually building one. That’s where Armature comes in. It’s essentially a collection of pre-made graphical elements designed to assist you with planning or wireframing projects. Rather than build your own generic graphics to illustrate how something might be laid out, you simply pull them from this library.
Previously an extension for Adobe Illustrator yet now a standalone Mac app, Armature is simple to use: select a category of interface elements, find the one you want and copy and paste it into your app of choice. Obvious candidates for building mockups include Photoshop and Illustrator, but Armature also works well with Microsoft Word, TextEdit and OmniGraffle.
Objects are easily resized and manipulated once inside your design app, and Armature’s selection of graphics is good, covering most of the kinds of interface elements you
Armature’s a handy timesaver for app developers and web designers, though it’s a little pricey for what it is.
need to create plans and wireframes.
Although it’s very efficient to use and certainly speeds up prototyping, the price seems a little high for what is essentially a collection of 150 graphical elements to paste into other apps’ documents. If you do a lot of wireframing, that’s maybe not such an issue. Hollin Jones