Free Graphics designers Resources

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RESOURCES GRAPHIC DESIGN

50 free resources for your graphic design projects in 2020

Image licensed via Adobe Stock

Image licensed via Adobe Stock

If you happen to be short on funds right now or have been handed a tight budget by a cash-strapped client, there are many free design resources that can help you out.

WRITTEN BY: Umar mark VICTOR

We're talking free fonts, templates and mockups or vector illustrations, stock photography, icons and even videos – all the essential assets you might need to complete your projects without costing a penny. And they're all of the highest quality, too – freebies don't mean you have to compromise.

To make life easier for you, our designers and teachers at Shillington have collaborated with the Creative Boom team once again to bring you this comprehensive list of recommended resources, which you can download for free (at time of writing).

Free stock images

1. Pexels

As far as free stock photo sites go, we think Pexels is one of the best. With a community of photographers and videographers generously donating their work for everyone to download and use, royalty-free, it's also the first to respond to current affairs, providing the images we might need to illustrate our timely projects.

pexels.com

2. StockSnap

Known for its high-quality offering of free stock imagery, StockSnap has a whole host of different categories you can browse through, so you'll never struggle to find what you need. No credit is required but always welcome.

stocksnap.io

3. Unsplash

Unsplash is a stock photo site powered by a friendly community of photographers, all uploading free stock pics for you to download and use. A must for any discerning designer.

unsplash.com

4. Nappy

As creators, it's our duty to ensure our work is diverse and inclusive, representing the whole of society. Nappy is a relative newcomer to the free stock photo sites out there, bringing "beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people, for free".

nappy.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. We especially love the way you can add filters to your search.

photos.icons8.com/creator

Nappy

Nappy

Free illustrations

6. Drawkit

DrawKit is a collection of free, beautiful, customisable MIT licensed SVG illustrations in two styles, to use on your next website, app, or project.

drawkit.io

7. Humaaans

In Humaaans, Pablo Stanley has created something quite special: modular, vector illustrations of humans that you can mix, match, rotate and position to create your own designs. Whatever you make is free for both commercial and personal use.

humaaans.com

8. UnDraw

Describing itself as "open-source illustration for any idea you can imagine and create", unDraw is a constantly updated design project by Katerina Limpitsouni featuring beautiful SVG images that you can use completely free and without attribution. We particularly love the ability to quickly add your own hex code to tailor the illustrations to your own projects.

undraw.co

9. Open Peeps

Need something a little more hand-drawn? Open Peeps is the illustration library for you. Created by Pablo Stanley, the open-source flat SVG and PNG assets are available for Sketch, Figma, Studio, and XD. You can even make a donation if you're able to support Pablo. A little goes a long way.

openpeeps.com

10. Lukasz Adam Free Illustrations

Lukasz Adam is an independent web designer who's made a bunch of high-quality vector art illustrations and icons available for free. They can be used for personal and commercial projects.

lukaszadam.com

Open Peeps

Open Peeps

Free icons

11. 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

12. 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

13. Simple Icons

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

simpleicons.org

14. Icons

This fabulous resource courtesy of icons8.com gives you a whole library of free icons in PNG and SVG. They're on the ball, too, as they've just released a "coronavirus related searches" section for those of you requiring something very current.

icons8.com

15. 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

Animaticons

Animaticons

Free fonts

16. 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

17. Use & Modify

A personal selection of "classy, punk, professional, incomplete, and weird typefaces", Use & Modify provides open-source fonts that are free to use and...you guessed it, modify.

usemodify.com

18. Fontfabric

Fontfabric is a digital type foundry that creates retail fonts and custom typography for various brands. Rather generously, they also provide a selection of free fonts for anyone to download and use. We love Nexa and Intro, but there are lots more to browse and sample on its nicely designed website.

fontfabric.com

19. Dafont

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

dafont.com

20. Font Squirrel

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

fontsquirrel.com

Fontfabric

Fontfabric

Free stock videos

21. Coverr

Coverr is a source of beautifully shot stock videos that are free to download for commercial and non-commercial use, no attribution required.

coverr.co

22. Mixkit

Brought to you by Envato, Mixkit is a curated gallery of high-quality videos and animation, made by some of the world's most talented creators, with all content licensed for free.

mixkit.co

23. Videezy

Free HD stock footage and 4K videos courtesy of Videezy. Calling itself one of the largest video communities in the world, its collection is provided by its members – most is free to download and use, but there are some paid options, too, should you wish to extend your search.

videezy.com

24. Life of Vids

Life of Vids offers free videos for web designers, filmmakers, advertisers, agencies, or anyone else who can make use of them. You can create infinite loops with most of them, and they're all available to download for both personal and commercial use.

lifeofvids.com

25. Videvo

Videvo offers a ton of free stock videos which can be used free of charge, in both personal and commercial productions. Video clips that carry the Creative Commons 3.0 license must be attributed to the original author.

videvo.net/stock-video-footage

Coverr

Coverr

Free graphic design tools

26. Crello

Claiming to be the "easiest online design tool to create animations and graphics for social and web", Crello is our new favourite website for our projects. You don't even need design skills to get started. There are lots to choose from as well with more than 4,000 pre-designed animated layouts alone.

crello.com

27. Pencil

A free alternative to Adobe XD, Pencil is an open-source and powerful tool that allows you to design the prototypes for web, mobile and desktop applications. Available for all platforms. Perfect.

pencil.evolus.vn

28. Canva

Simple to use in the browser, with no downloads required, Canva is a surprisingly powerful and flexible graphic design tool. It's no Photoshop, but it can do a lot of basic design tasks quite efficiently using drag and drop.

canva.com

29. Inkscape

Created by a non-profit organisation, Inkscape is a professional quality vector graphics software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. It's open-source and free to download.

inkscape.org

30. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a full-featured vector graphic design app that works on all platforms. The free version comes with 500MB of cloud storage.

designer.io

Crello

Crello

Free mockup tools

31. 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

33. 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

34. MockupsJar

Another great website where you can create realistic mockups for your websites, apps, and more with no Photoshop or plugins required. Everything is organising under helpful categories, too, like 'Macbook' and 'packaging'. It's all right there.

mockupsjar.com

35. 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

Shotsnapp

Shotsnapp

Free image editing tools

36. Remove

Need to remove the background from a photo? This free tool can do it surprisingly quickly, and it just takes one click.

remove.bg

37. Social Sizes

Created by Peter Assentorp, Social Sizes pr