Essential free resources for Graphic Designers

Whether you’re working on a side project and are short on funds, or have been handed a tight budget by a cash-strapped client, there are many free design resources that can help you out. But using free images, fonts, tools and other assets can often come at a price. They may be low on quality. Or even worse, on disreputable sites they may have been stolen from their rightful creators… who never intended them to be free.
On these sites, you’ll find free design resources that are reliably high-quality and legitimately free to download. Whether you’re after images or videos, fonts or design tools, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for.



Free stock images

1. Burst

E-commerce platform Shopify has created a site where anyone can download stock images for free, whether or not you’re a Shopify user. You can use them for both non-commercial and commercial purposes without attribution. Images are available in low or high resolution, and the quality is very high throughout.

burst.shopify.com

2. Freephotos.cc

FreePhotos.cc is another place where you can find free Creative Commons photos for your design projects. A new photo is uploaded every day, and you can use them in both your personal or commercial projects without attribution. Just be aware that the images in the far right-hand column are not free, but link through to paid-for images from iStock.

freephotos.cc

3. Landing Stock

Landing Stock is a niche site providing free stock photos that are suitable for your website landing page. Created by London-based product designer Craig Barber, it features only high-quality, clean and minimalistic photos, that crop well and provide space for copy.

landingstock.com

4. New Old Stock

Looking for a copyright-free vintage photo from the public archives? Cole Townsend, a product designer in Boston, has compiled a ton of them via Flickr that can be used for personal and non-commercial use.

nos.twnsnd.co

5. Photo Creator

Want a photo for your site that no one else has? Photo Creator from Icons8 allows you to combine different stock photos to create your own unique image. Combine objects, people, backgrounds and even images of your own using a browser-based drag-and-drop interface that’s very quick and easy to use.

photos.icons8.com/creator


Free icons

1. Noun Project

Co-founded by Sofya Polyakov, Edward Boatman and Scott Thomas, The Noun Project brings together over two million curated icons, created by a global community and available for use by designers for free.

thenounproject.com

2. Ionicons

Ionicons are premium icons for use by designers in web, iOS, Android and desktop apps. Built by the Ionic Framework team, they’re all free and open source.

ionicons.com

3. Simple Icons

Started by Dan Leech, Simple Icons makes free SVG icons for popular brands available to download for free.

simpleicons.org

4. Streamline Emoji

Streamline Emoji is a free collection of cute emoji, designed by Vincent Le Moign and made available to download for free under the Creative Common Attribution licence.

emoji.streamlineicons.com

5. Animaticons

Animaticons is a set of high-resolution animated GIFs that you can customise. They are small in file size, compatible with all major browsers, emails, and smartphones and don’t require any special plugins or libraries.

animaticons.co


Free fonts

1. Google Fonts

An intuitive and robust directory of open source web fonts for designers to use how they wish. All created to the high standards you’d expect from a web giant like Google.

fonts.google.com

2. Emotype

Emotype is a curated collection of free fonts that allows you to search based on the emotions you want to convey on your website.

emotype.webflow.io

3. BeFonts

A good collection of free fonts, including display, script and symbol fonts, as well as blackletter, retro and non-Western styles.

befonts.com

4. Dafont

An enormous archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity.

dafont.com

5. Font Squirrel

Another extensive archive of free fonts, all free for commercial use.

fontsquirrel.com


Free mockup tools

1. Shotsnapp

Design your own device mockups in seconds with free tool Shotsnapp. Choose a device, add an image of your design or screenshot, make the tweaks you want, then download your mockup image.

shotsnapp.com
32. Screely

Screely enables you to instantly turn a screenshot into a mockup, without the need for Sketch or Photoshop templates. Just upload your image and the app will do the rest.

screely.com

2. Screenpeek

Copy and paste a URL into Screenpeek and it will generate an attractive mockup in just 10 seconds. Created by Hans Pagel and Philipp Kuhn, this app is free for iPhone mockups only.

screenpeek.io

3. Smartmockups

With Smartmockups and its ever-growing mockup library, you can create nice looking mockups right inside your browser, both on desktop and mobile devices.

smartmockups.com

4. Mockup World

Mockup World claims to be the biggest source of free photorealistic mockups online. It’s packed with free, fully layered, easily customisable photo realistic PSDs from around the world, ready to use in your projects, app showcases, and presentations.

mockupworld.co







Comments