Looking for fresh materials or simply want to derive some inspiration? Check out these free design resources, they will help you to figure it out.
Regardless of what type of design you are doing, it can be extremely beneficial to seek the help of various graphic design resources. Still, plenty of illustrators, developers, web designers, photographers, and so on, skip this step simply for reasons of economy. And they can be understood: most of us know what it is like to work on a tight budget. Luckily for us, the time when you could get to create engaging visual content only on condition of financial investment is a story long forgotten. Nowadays, the act of providing yourself with a sizeable collection of all the free legal design assets you need (like stock images, photography, fonts, graphics and videos, etc.) is not a big deal anymore. Today any person is able to design high-quality visual stories almost effortlessly. Is it not great to have access to a lot of excellent stuff free of charge, or get the opportunity to try out some experimental design or several modern visual styles?
Of course, orienting oneself in all these editing tools, online images, fonts and palettes is easier said than done. A number of them require membership, others require prior authorization, and still, others charge a fee for high-quality material.
Here we present a list of some wonderful free design resources, which encloses different websites that offer free, high-quality sources; which, as you will discover, are all brilliant valuable assets: backgrounds, fonts, images, videos, icons, and much more.
Check out the list of 21 free graphic design resources.
1. MasterBundles
Masterbundles is a website that supplies designers with any sort of bundles you might require. Animated photos, icons, vector, watercolor – everything is in here. Masterbundles team claims that help in self-realization is their main mission. Therefore, you can count to acquire top sets at a reasonable price. In addition, they sometimes provide all this absolutely free of charge, so you can try, study and see for yourself the convenience of the site.
2. Snappa
Snappa is built towards non-technical professionals. It produces infographics. On the one hand, you will not have the possibility of such super control over the tools, which, in turn, can give you more sophisticated designer-oriented programs. On the other hand, in just a few minutes you can design attractive infographics.
Here you can find different pre-set alterations and ready-made infographic patterns that will speed up your workflow and lead you to amazing results in the end. Also, Snappa gives you tons of no-paid high-quality photos, plus a drag-and-drop interface. All of this will definitely enhance your creations.
When using the free version, it is possible to make and save only a few infographics monthly. In case you are going to go beyond an implied limit, it will be necessary to purchase the premium version.
3. Coolors
With the help of this website, you can not only compile color palettes but create them yourself too. In such a way, you can either use already designed pallets (the number of which reaches almost a million) or create new ones. Need perfect matching colors? Done in seconds. Works even if you are not a pro when it comes to design. To generate a random color palette, you just need to press one button, then choose a color that suits your work, and fixate it. That’s it.
A wide range of color spaces (CMYK, RGB, HSB, LAB) and a lot of color libraries (Copic®, Pantone®) are available to use at Coolors. To create the desired palette, it is also possible to remove some color from a photo, for example. This can be done using the image picker. Its Collage Maker can be handy if you need to share your palettes. It is also possible to download your palettes but only if you are registered and have an account.
4. Pexels
Pexels is considered being best of the best places to search for stock images. It provides extremely high-quality completely free photos and videos. It does not require any compensation. If you are struck with the quality and diversity of material at your disposal, this is all due to its talented photography community. Since the payment is not required, Pexels encourages its users to give credit to these generous benefactors, when using one of their illustrations. Not only it will make it legal but will show them their work appreciated. Also, it is possible to donate to your favorite photographer and Pixel will keep none of it.
5. DesignBundles
DesignBundles suggests wide-ranging design elements of all kinds and manner. There is probably nothing you cannot find here: graphic packs, fonts and templates, icons and illustrations, an enormous number of free design elements to download. The only requirement for utilization of all this stuff is to complete a registration form.
6. Freebies
Freebies is a blog created to enlighten some hot topics in web design. It is written by designers and developers, and that is how we know it can be trusted. They cover topics like responsive design, usability, typography, and so on. Another very significant advantage of Freebies is that here you can find free templates, icon packs, texture packs, etc.
7. DFB
If you are a web designer, you have to bookmark the DFB website. It is another resource where you could find a great deal of design tools collected in one place. It provides more than one thousand up to date freebies: from stock imagery to backgrounds, from fonts to templates, from icons to UI kits and more. Plus, it has a handy category menu that allows you to familiarize yourself with a thousand of free items with no trouble.
8. Pinspiry
On the Pinspiry website, you can find amazing freebies released every week. And it also supplies various free items: templates, fonts, photos, graphics, mockups, etc. Moreover, here you can find practical tutorials and get inspiration.
9. Humaaans
Funny illustrated human shapes are an inevitable design trend that does not seem to loosen its grip on the industry anyway soon. Of course, you can simply draw them on your own, or find standard drawings, or order your own set of illustrations, but why to? Pablo Stanley created Humaaans so that you could skip all those steps. It allows improving the design with modular, vector graphics of people. Rotate, mix, match, and place items in your models in whatever way pleases you. It is exactly like building from a constructor.
10. Alphateck
Alphateck is a website created by a UI/UX designer, who specializes in photography, HTML/ CSS, and identity/ print design. It presents a free multiplicity of collections of vector shapes. It comes at a very affordable price.
11. Pixabay
At Pixabay you may discover suggestions of free images and royalty-free content that was generously posted by the creatives’ community. It permits free usage of vectors, illustrations, a lot of images and videos on business and marketing themes.
12. Canva
Canva is rightfully ranked at the top of the best free resources for designers. In this online editor, you can design multiple graphics, such as logos, images, backgrounds, graphs and digraphs, etc. Canva is just a storehouse of mockups and templates for free or at a very reasonable price, each of which can be customized. It allows changing the background, customizing text and fonts, or adding your own elements. Plus, by using Canva, you will get the opportunity to download your project in various formats (PDF, JPG or PNG).
13. Vecteezy
It is by far the better-known resource for both payment and free vectors. Vecteezy is well-known for its advanced search feature, where all the tools display their license and explain it so that there is no doubt about their correct use. Another plus is that they have a balanced number of free and premium vectors, there are equal numbers of them, and paid content is distinctly marked with a banner.
14. Magdeleine
Magdeleine is the place where images from all over the web can be found. The main feature that differentiates it from others is its advanced search function, where you are able to search by color, category, license or simply by keyword. The site is free, yet some images demand attribution.
15. FreeDesignResources
Well here the name speaks for itself: FreeDesignResources, and it is as it says. A resource, where all kinds of freebies are collected, including UI kits, templates, fonts, and icons. They are mostly intended for personal use merely, but if conduct some search, you may find a few free pieces for commercial use
16. Fontjoy
Matching different fonts correctly can be challenging. If it is done in the right way, it will attract customers, and if done wrong – repel them. This tool makes it much easier to decide the best combinations. At Fontjoy you can mix and match fonts until you find the perfect one.
17. HueSnap
If the previous tool was all about fonts, this one opens the world of colors. At HueSnap it is easy to find tenacious and eye-pleasing color combinations. It not only provides an enormous collection of user-created palettes but an opportunity to create your own palettes as well. It can be done either by choosing shades from the uploaded image or by using the color picker.
18. Dribbble
On a famous design resource called Dribbble, you will find a great collection of good designs with a freebie tag attached to it. Even so, not every design here has this tag. That being the case, it will be reasonable to search attentively, in order to get grip on beautiful designs that are not tagged. Dribbble is a vast collection of free design materials. Elements are updated very often so be careful not to miss anything. Well, and if talking quality, undoubtedly, Dribble can be considered one of the leading sources.
19. Colormind
Colormind is a great helper if you are interested in reading color schemes from video or images. Just upload your video or photograph and with a simple click of a mouse make a beautiful color scheme. You can adjust it in whatever way you like. You can easily get the perfect color palette for your next design project with this color palette generator.
20. Google Fonts
Typography takes center stage at Google Fonts. All fonts are free and publicly available, and licenses are provided so that their fonts can be available. Here you can also find information about trends and demographics.
21. FontPair
It is another great tool for font pairing, which can be tiresome without help from analogous sources. With FontPair, you have access to a gigantic package of ready-to-use font pairs, classified in such a way that it is easy to find the right, and also a very accurate, combination.
Conclusion
So, what is the best free resource for those, who are somehow associated with web and graphic designs? A universal answer is not possible here. We are all unique, and so are our demands. Yet, in a nowadays high-tech era, we are able to pick and choose. Lucky us!
We are supplied with such a great variety of tools, sites, and software. Moreover, each and every of them presents a variety of nuances and specialties. To come to a decision, narrow this list so that only those tools remain in it that can satisfy the needs of your professional activity. If you enjoy and get value from these resources’ free trials, it might be reasonable to invest in premium versions. Everyone, whether designer or not, may need a push from time to time. Previously mentioned valuable resources for designers come in handy not only to expand your knowledge or improve skills but serve as a splendid source of inspiration as well. You can use them in order to add some peculiarity to your work and gain a huge upper hand before competitors.
