The graphic design industry has changed dramatically over the last few years. With more graphic designers coming out of art school and new tools being released all the time, there are a lot of free and paid resources for graphic designers to choose from in 2021.

In this blog post, I will share some of my favourite free graphic design resources available in 2021.

Let’s dig deep into my recommendation of free graphic design resources.

Table of Contents

5 Best Place to Find Great Looking Free Stock Images

1. Pexels

Pexels is my favourite free resource for graphic designers. With over 100,000 free stock photos available on the website and with new images being uploaded every day, pexels has plenty of great options to choose from.

What’s also really great about Pexels is their simplified search and intuitively related tags.

License:

  • All resources are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full licence 

2. Unsplash

Unsplash is a website that offers completely free stock photos. They have an awe-inspiring library of high-quality images and so many different categories to choose from, such as life outdoors, people at work or play, technology in use etc.

I love scrolling through their homepage, where I can find new inspiring visuals every time I visit it.

License:

  • All resources are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full licence 

3. Pixabay

Pixabay offers millions of free stock images under the Creative Commons CC0 license that can be downloaded from its site without any attribution required! 

Pixabay also has a large variety of video content, illustrations and vector graphics where you can find anything from animals to abstracts and even some good quality historical pictures. Worth checking out.

License:

  • All resources are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full licence 

4. StockSnap.io

StockSnap.io offers free stock images for personal or commercial use under the Creative Commons CC0 license. It currently has over 20 million pictures in its library, which can be downloaded directly from its site without any attribution required!

One thing I really like about stocksnap is that they have a great variety of content. You can find images for any category you may think of. A handy resource indeed!

License:

  • All resources are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full licence 

5. Freepik

Freepik is a website that offers free and premium vector graphics, illustrations and high-quality stock photos for personal and commercial use under the Creative Commons CC0 license. 

They have millions of vectors in their library which you can download or order as custom designs to meet your specific needs.

While freepik is an excellent resource overall for all graphic designers, it is sometimes limited in the stock images. Still, I’m sure you can find some fantastic high-quality stock shots.

License:

  • Some resources are paid
  • Attribution is required for free resources
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full licence

3 Best Place To Find Great Color Palettes

1. Adobe Color

Adobe Color is an easy-to-use color picker that accurately matches any onscreen hue with its corresponding HTML, RGB or HEX code. It also gives you the ability to create new colors and save them for later use. Pixels become hex codes in seconds!

I personally use adobe color for their trends options. Adobe color displays current colors trends that are being used by different creative communities.

2. Coolors.co

Coolors.co is a color palette generator that makes it easy to create and share all sorts of different palettes in seconds, from the colors you see on the screen right now.

Coolor has many ways for you to generate your own color scheme: upload an image, enter a URL or use their “Explore” button, which provides inspiration based on trending color palettes.

Other great features of coolors.co are creating and exploring gradients, doing contrast checks and utilising their chrome extension.

3. Colorhunt.co

ColorHunt is a free, interactive color finder for creatives and designers with the most extensive collection of palettes on the web.

You can generate your own palette or explore their library, which features over 12 million colors from all around the world. They also have categories of Trendy, Popular and Random which will inspire the designers.

Color Hunt also have their own chrome extensions which can be used for color inspiration.

Use the newfound color scheme to improve your website design or your client’s, which can lead to better rankings and more conversion. Read about checking the website design in my 7-step website audit checklist.

5 Best Place For Free Illustrations

1. IRA Design

IRA Design is a free illustration website that has an abundance of free illustrations for designers to use. They present downloadable files in PNG and SVG format.

SVG illustrations will be easy to edit further using Illustrator, and you can use PNG directly in your design project.

The illustrations from this website are limited in their range of poses, and it can be challenging to find the exact pose you’re looking for.

License:

  • All illustrations are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

2. unDraw

unDraw is a free vector illustration site that offers high-quality illustrations with no copyright restrictions or a price tag.

They have an extensive collection of illustrators and artists from around the globe, so you can always find something specific to what you’re looking for.

The only downside to this website would be that it can be a bit difficult to navigate through.

License:

  • All illustrations are free for personal use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content
  • Do not use illustrations in a commercial project

Read full license

3. Humaaans

Humaaans is a creative design resource for designers looking to add emotions and liveliness to their projects by using human illustrations.

The website offers resources that can be used directly in Adobe XD, Sketch or Figma. They also present a way to edit the illustration live with blush.design.

The only reason why I don’t use humaaans in my design project is based on limitations on pre-built illustrations and a lengthy process to get to the download file options.

License:

  • All illustrations are free for personal and commercial use
  • Edit to your heart’s content

4. ManyPixels

ManyPixels is a fantastic resource that offers quality illustrations for free. You can choose from an array of colors before downloading any files, and the SVG format means you have complete customisation over the file.

Manypixels is driven by a lot of professional illustrators and designers who offer more than 2000 illustrators.

Along with the illustrations, manypixels also provides useful guides for graphic designers, which is very useful.

The license only restricts your ability to recompile these images and sell them elsewhere; otherwise, it’s completely legal if they are used in private or commercial use!

5. Freepik

Freepik is a website that offers free high-quality illustrations for use in your projects.

There are so many different kinds of illustration that you can choose from, and all the illustration are offered in either Ai or eps format.

Freepik is a freemium resource where you will be limited to 10 resources per day if you register an account there.

But it is an excellent resource that I use daily for my design projects, so it will be well worth it if you invest in it.

License:

  • Some resources are paid
  • Attribution is required for free resources
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

Related: You can use these vectors straight into Adobe XD when designing websites.

5 Best Place For Free icons

1. Flaticon

Every time you’re looking for new icons, Flaticon jumps out at you because this site delivers excellent icon designs.

The reason behind its success starts from FreepikCompany, which specialises in delivering stellar visuals, so naturally, they created their own website dedicated to custom icons – Flaticon!

What makes Flaticons stand out among all other similar websites are two things: firstly, a wide variety of icons for every situation (over 4m vector icons). Secondly, they offer free icons in either png or SVG format.

License

  • Some resources are paid
  • Attribution is required for free resources
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

2. Iconfinder

Downloading free icons is now easier, faster and better than ever. Iconfinder has tens of thousands of these beautiful icons that are all available for you to download absolutely free under the CC 3.0 license!

With over 5.5m icons, they have you covered for any situation or design projects.

License:

  • Some resources are paid
  • Attribution is required for free resources
  • No commercial use for free icons

Read full license

3. Material Icons by Google

Material Icon’s potential is undeniable, but not everyone uses it in their day-to-day projects. Their designs can be limited, and they only offer white and black icon colors.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of icons available that are totally free, and they provide icons straight to use on the web, iOS, Android and Flutter.

All the icons from material designs are free to use for any design project (personal or commercial) without attribution.

4. Font Awesome

Font Awesome is by far one of the most popular and best free icon sites out there.

With more than 4,000 different icons to choose from – Font Awesome has attracted millions of users around the globe.

For a quick change in font color or adjustment for rotation, you can use their easy-to-use editor as well!

License:

  • Some resources are paid
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

5. Icons8

Icons8 is one of the best new sites I’ve found in recent years. Not only do they publish great design content and tips for designers, but also you can edit icons right from your browser!

Icons8 is a real-time vector editing software that’s available directly from your browser. What’s more, the quality of their icons are phenomenal and downloading them couldn’t be easier; it takes only seconds to do so!

License:

  • Some resources are paid
  • Attribution to Icons8 is required for free icons
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

4 Best Place For Free fonts

  • Google Fonts
  • Dafont
  • Font Squirrel
  • FontSpace

1. Google Fonts

Google Fonts is a popular website for finding and downloading fonts.

It has 800+ fonts of various types, from sans serif to handwriting fonts, monospaced fonts, and more.

A web designer can easily incorporate these fonts into their projects as they provide a helpful guide and blazing fast font hosting.

Plus, all the fonts are open-source, which means they can be downloads for any purpose (personal or commercial).

2. Dafont

DaFont offers a plethora of amazing fonts that are completely free to use.

Most of the fonts in DaFont are only licensed for personal use, but many more come with commercial licenses.

One thing that makes DaFont stand out from other font sites is its category system. They have font categories ranging from fancy to gothic to foreign look.

Downloading the fonts and using them is also very straightforward.

3. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is a personal favourite among designers because it offers high-quality fonts that are free and easy to use.

The site also features helpful tools, including the Webfont Generator, which lets you create your own web font with just a few clicks of the mouse.

And if you need inspiration for new designs, Font Squirrel can help by identifying fonts based on images posted online!

License:

  • Most fonts are free to use in personal and commercial projects

Read full license

4. FontSpace

FontSpace is a site with an enormous selection of free fonts from over 2,100 designers. Registered users can create their own favourites collection and contact the font designer if they choose to make donations for each download.

I recently found my favourite new home on Fontspace, where I can easily search through thousands of fonts with different licenses and conveniently store them in collections that are easy to access at any time.

License:

  • Free to use for personal projects
  • Do not use for any commercial purpose or any public display

Read full terms

5 Best Place For Free stock videos

1. Pexels

Pexels is a fantastic stock video site, where the entire website and all of its content can be accessed for free. It’s worth noting that Pexels doesn’t sell their videos or images as they are entirely free to download from this site.

Pexels also provide free stock photos, which makes this site a precious resource.

Pexels also provides you with an option to download videos in HD, SD and original sizes, which is helpful depending on what your project requires.

License:

  • All videos are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is an amazing free stock video website that features a wide variety of videos and images.

The site has millions of high-quality pictures, vector graphics, illustrations, photos and footage available for download without registering or signing in to the service.

Pixabay offers videos in 4K resolution so that you can crank out ultra high-quality content.

License:

  • All videos are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

3. Mixkit

Mixkit is a no-fuss free stock video website where you do not have to sign-up or provide any attribution. And all their high definition videos are available for commercial/noncommercial use.

You have access to more than 150 categories of HD footage with over 5 million clips in total.

Whether you’re looking for business shots or fashion films, Mixkt has it all ready to download instantly without registration requirements–talk about making life easier on busy professionals like myself who can’t afford the time (or money) wasted downloading low-quality files from other sites out there on the web.

License:

  • All videos are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

4. Dareful

Dareful is a free stock video website with no sign-up or attribution requirements. You can find both business footage and fashion films on the platform and different categories of 4K footage.

The only drawback of dareful is the limited quantity of stock footage. But don’t let that stop you as they have some very unique video clips which are not available on any other platform.

License:

  • All videos are free to use
  • Attribution is required
  • Edit to your heart’s content

Read full license

5. Coverr

Coverr is a fantastic platform that provides hundreds of videos to you for free! After downloading, your download will include a high-quality video as well as a picture thumbnail.

License:

  • All videos are free to use
  • No attribution required
  • Edit to your heart’s content
  • Reselling is not allowed

Read full license

Final Thoughts

Being a graphic designer is challenging. It’s one thing to make something look good; it’s another to be mindful of elements like color, typeface, perspective, etc.

But what if you could save yourself some time by picking up assets from different websites which other creative professionals create. This is one reason why you may need all these resources mentioned above.

Another reason could be the inspiration. Whatever the reason, it is best to have some of these resources in your arsenal.

If you liked the list, let me know in the comments. Or, if you have some more resources that I can add, let me know in the comments.

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