Are you super into making graphics or websites? Are you interested but not sure where to start? Have no fear! I have compiled the ultimate list of free resources to help you stay on your A-game.
Some of these sites have paid options. You do not have to purchase them, but the option is available if you are interested!
Table of Contents
Fonts
Brushes/Patterns/Vectors
Icons
Stock Photos
Optimize Your Website
Misc. Cool Stuff
Fonts
- DaFont
- 1001 Free Fonts
- Font Space– One of my favorite features of this site is that you can just click, click, click and download straight from the list with no work-arounds.
- Lost Type– This is so artistic and the fonts are fantastic, but one drawback is the “pay what you want” feature. It’s an extra step I wish it didn’t have. You don’t have to pay anything though.
Brushes, Patterns, Vectors
- Stripe Generator– Seriously my favorite thing. It generates a seamless stripe pattern using the width of stripes you choose along with the colors you choose. You can even add shadows.
- Brusheezy– Get ready to spend hours on this site. There are thousands of free resources on this site. I use it primarily when I need freebies for designing. Watch the licenses though- they vary by user.
- Vecteezy– This is Brusheezy’s big brother. It’s thousands of vector images and patterns you can download for free.
- Tartan Maker– This is pretty much just like the stripe generator.. only for a nice tartan (plaid) seamless pattern.
- Fuzzimo– This site has a ton of scrapbook-like textures and images. Unfortunately, they stopped updating years ago, but you can still download plenty of things they uploaded beforehand.
- TextureGen– Over 1000 free real-life textures you can use for personal and commercial use.
Icons
- The Noun Project– Thousands of icons that are all black and white. They are all somewhat simplistic and you can pretty much mix and match them and no one would know the difference.
- Glyph Search– INSANE! Instead of using tons of little icon images, everyone is turning to glyphs to reduce load times and server requests. For example, instead of using an icon image on my posts for my categories folder, I use a glyph. (Or check this out: <- That's not an image!)
Stock Photos
This is a BIG list! Watch the licenses on some of these- they are not all for commercial use. I will try to note the ones that are free for commercial use.
- Albumarium
- Ancestry Images– This site has a lot of really cool old maps. It’s a bit different than a typical stock photo site.
- BucketListly
- Budget Stock Photo
- Burst
- Canva Photos
- Cepolina
- Cupcake
- Death to the Stock Photo– You can download the packs of stock photos and they also email you a new pack every month.
- DesignersPics– Free for personal and commercial use, no attribution required.
- Epicantus– All photos are CC0 licensed.
- Every Stock Photo
- Fancy Crave– They add two new photos per day.
- Foter
- FindA Photo– CC0 license!
- Franken Foto– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Free Images.com
- Free JPG
- Free Media Goo– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Free Nature Stock– Photos of nature.
- Free Pixels
- Free Range Stock– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Free Stocks– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Good Free Photos– Free for personal and commercial use.
- HD Wallpapers
- IM Free
- Image After– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Imagebase
- ISO Republic– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Jay Mantri– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Kaboom Pics– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Libre Shot– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Life of Pix– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Little Visuals– This site is no longer updated because the owner sadly passed away at the age of 26. (Sad time!) You can still use his images, however.
- Magdeleine
- MMT Stock– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Morguefile
- Moveast– These are neat because the photos are a dude documenting his move. Free for personal and commercial use.
- Negative Space– Free for personal and commercial use.
- New Old Stock– These are super cool old photos. Very awesome, if not just for the history they represent.
- Photober– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Photo Crops– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Photogen– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Pickup Image
- Picography– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Pixabay– Free for personal and commercial use.
- PliXS– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Public Domain Archive– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Refe Real Life Photos
- Realistic Shots
- Resplashed
- Shot Stash
- Shutteroo
- Skitter Photo– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Snapwire Snaps
- Splashbase
- SplitShire– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Startup Stock Photos– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Stock Image Point– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Stockmile
- StockSnap– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Stock Up
- Stock Vault
- StockPic– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Storyblocks
- Super Famous
- Totally Free Stock Photos– Free for personal and commercial use.
- Unsplash
If you really want to take your stock photo and resources to the next level, you really need to consider using Shutterstock. It isn’t free but it’s the ultimate tool! Here are some stock photo examples:
Optimize Your Website
- WebPage Test
- Google’s PageSpeed Insights
- CompressorRator– This minifies your javascript files, which speeds up your site’s loading time drastically.
- Clean CSS: CSS Minifier– This minifies your CSS which also speeds up your load times significantly.
Misc. Cool Stuff
- Embossed Label Generator– Do you remember having an embossed label maker and labeling everything? This generates one for you to use on images or websites.
- Can I Use– This is a neat tool for developers. Not all browsers allow all markup. This will tell you, just for an example, what browsers support a CSS drop shadow. This makes sure your design looks neat and tidy across all browsers.
- Built With– Oh, this sneaky little tool. Have you ever wondered what the heck that plugin is your favorite blogger uses? Type in a web address and it shows you from ground-up what someone’s website is built with. Server, plugins, CMS, Analytics, Advertising… etc, etc. NOTE: The cache on this site is ridiculous. It is not updated very frequently, so there is a high chance that some of that information is outdated.
- Colour Lovers– Originally when this site was launched, it was a cool community where you could make and share color palettes. You are able to like, comments, add friends, and join groups. Now you are also able to make patterns to share as well. (If you join, look me up! Emily’s Colour Lovers profile)
- How To Type– Type accents and symbols. I use this site for my fractions: ½ ¼
- What the Font?– This is cool! If you see an image that has a cool font on it but you can’t figure out what that font is, just save the image and upload it here. It can usually identify it for you. NOTE: I’m fairly sure they only “identify” fonts that they sell on their website, but you can still find alternatives this way!
- Majestic– This checks the number of backlinks your site has and also displays where they are coming from.
This is a light-version alternative to Colour Lovers. It’s very clean and basic color palette inspiration.