By giving everyone with a smartphone the tools to make lovely images, Instagram has arguably altered the very way we see the world. With daily details of our lives on show, we’ve quickly learned to make everything a bit more photogenic.

Drawing on the belief that a good tool enables everyone to create something beautiful, new app Studio shakes up the basic format of Instagram by adding a suite of relatively powerful design tools. The app includes a toolbox of different textures, typefaces, embellishments and other graphic elements that when combined with a good eye and sense of proportion and colour, can make for some pretty nice original designs.

While apps like Studio will never truly replace more robust professional tools – just like Instagram is neither Photoshop nor a good darkroom – we think a more user-friendly versions of previously daunting tasks that yield impressive results is a good thing. Simpler interfaces for complicated processes, such as Autodesk’s 123D app for 3D modelling on a mobile device, will doubtless lead to interesting innovation in open design and collective creativity.