Creativity, skill, diligence, patience, feel of beauty and a desire to keep up with the times are only a few main qualities every creative should have. If you know the key expectations of your target customers and you understand the principles of making business online then you get a good chance to succeed in your field of expertise and even improve the Web.
No matter what type of design you’re in, you obviously utilize some readymade solutions to create your projects and complete your impressive works for everyone’s inspiration. That is the reason for why we decided to share a large collection of useful online resources which would come in handy for your next excellent creative projects.
Whenever you choose a certain resource, be sure to check out if a website requires attribution or a link to the content’s originator. This is necessary to avoid future legal troubles and make sure you can use the chosen content both for your personal and commercial needs without any restrictions.
So here are the best sites to help you express your creativity at its best.
Perfect Places to Get Free and Quality Stock Images
Stock images and photos are always helpful when you design a template of the future website. Stock photography is useful when you need to represent your conception to a client but you don’t have time and opportunity to make quality snapshots. The following resources will be very helpful.
1. ISO Republic
ISO Republic is the great resource providing exclusive free and premium photos for any creatives. A lot of free images are added here every single week to make the selection of available photos even more varied and appealing. A range of premium photo packs with high-quality images are also offered to the users. The site has its own license, so all images provided by ISO are free to use for personal and commercial projects without attribution, selling is prohibited.
2. StockSnap
StockSnap is one of the best places on the Web to find quality and beautiful stock photos for your projects. High resolution pictures are added here every day so you can choose the most appropriate ones from a wide range of various images. StockSnap provides the selective photos from professional photographers and from around the web to make your clients feel happy and satisfied with all your designs. All photos uploaded to this stock are released under Creative Commons (CC0) license, so attribution is not required.
3. KaboomPics
KaboomPics is a top-notch resource including an amazing collection of high-quality photos available for free and useful for bloggers, small businesses, website owners, freelancers, marketers, and more. Thousands of free high-resolution pictures are available here without any specific usage restrictions. A wide range of inspiring stuff provided by this resource is sure to satisfy almost all possible requirements and save your time for finding quality pictures for your creative projects.
4. Negative Space
Negative Space is another impressive resource that makes it possible to find a top quality stock photo to suit your design. The site posts 20 free and new high-res images every week to meet ever-evolving expectations of creatives and help them get more inspiration. All raw files and images provided by the website are distributed under the Creative Commons CC0 license so it is allowed to copy, modify and release the photos as well as perform your work for free. Attribution is not required.
5. New Old Stock
New Old Stock is a comprehensive resource providing vintage photos from the public archives. All images available here are free of known copyright restrictions so you can easily use them for your personal or non-commercial projects without any specific limitation. The author claims that Images are uploaded into this public domain based on the rules of Flickr Commons. If you choose a certain image, it is preferred that you link back to the original Flickr photo and mention it by name.
Top 5 Resources to Get Fantastic Mockups
Mockups are considered to be one of the best ways to explore visual design solutions before you need to live with the consequences of code. Explore the collection of outstanding resources helpful for creating an excellent design.
1. Pixeden
Pixeden is a perfect resource that collected all modern things that a good designer might need in their daily routine. Use the site to find the best free web and background graphics, PSD mockups, text effects graphics, and much more useful stuff. Pixeden is the right place to make designer’s life easier and provide them with inspiration to create splendid works. You can get premium membership to get access to the support service of the website and modify the web, design and graphic resources in your projects.
2. GraphicBurger
GraphicBurger provides premium quality design resources collected in one place and available for free to the community. Exclusive PSD files as well as featured top quality freebies are free both for personal and commercial usage. The website is ready to feature the works of creative designers that also have some useful stuff to share and want to submit it at GraphicBurger. You can also sign up for the website’s newsletter to regularly receive notifications about new available images for your designs.
3. MediaLoot
MediaLoot is another great resource to get premium mockups and other gorgeous stuff for creating your themes or applications. The authors call their website an ultimate design toolbox which includes all the best and most popular design resources for your inspiration. New brushes, icon sets, graphics, and templates are appeared frequently and allow to choose the best stuff from the wide collection of resources. You can also sign up for the newsletter to keep up with the latest news and to be informed of new free and premium design stuff for your future projects.
4. Pixel Buddha
Pixel Buddha is a useful resource which represents the selective graphic and web products absolutely for free. The products uploaded at this website are available for personal and commercial usage and applicable to be utilized for developing software, designing apps, web-pages, themes and templates. Every item on the site has its own license terms so follow them after you upload any stuff. The content offered here is sure to be helpful for completing professional tasks, improving your skills and increasing your capabilities.
5. Perfect Pixels
Perfect Pixels is an excellent website including a collection of up-to-date and beautiful mockups for the most effective presentations of your work. Unparalleled quality PSD templates and vectors are available here absolutely for free so you can use them for your personal and commercial projects to showcase your best works to the customers. All products by Perfect Pixels are also available at Dribble and Behance. You can subscribe for the newsletter and get the new uploaded templates by email on a regular basis.
Wonderful Resources to Get Free Vector Graphics
Vector images are often necessary when a designer makes something scalable. If you design a logo, just get a vector allowing to scale it to any size without losing quality and sharpness. Vector graphics is very important when you design photorealistic things to showcase them to your customers. Check out the following sites and get the unique products for your creation.
1. QVectors
QVectors is a popular resource visited by many designers and artists who always find the best free vector graphics for their top-notch design projects. Every vector submission is carefully checked to avoid any copyright abuse and provide the users with the hand-picked web products applicable for utilizing in modern designs. The site is easy to navigate so you can browse the categories to find the right vector or search for the item via tags to get what you require. If you design vector templates and want to share them, try to submit your product and feature it here.
2. Vector Me
Vector Me is another valuable resource that includes an extensive database of free vector graphics for almost any type of design project. The collection of more than 150 thousand vectors is easy to browse through the keyword search tool without an effort. A tremendous collection and flexible searching capabilities allow to easily find any product within a few seconds and download it for further use. If you’ve got some personal designs to share, you can also upload them here right after you join the community.
3. Vectorportal
Vectorportal is a useful resource to get free stock vectors allowed to be used in commercial projects. If you are an artist and you’ve got a desire to showcase and share your works with other creatives, you can upload them here to get the website distribute them in the future. The site is considered to be one of the top 10 free vector resources for web and graphic designers among other related portals. Except for the stock vectors, here you can find logo objects, symbols, extras, and other related items available for free.
4. Retro Vectors
Retrovectors is a precious resource for creatives including a large collection of quality vintage vector stock files available for personal and commercial work. All material provided by this website is really helpful when you are short of time and budget to find quality snapshots to use in your retro design and showcase it to your customers. Original products have fallen out of copyright so they have been scanned to the highest possible resolution and improved to be available for free download on a public domain.
5. Vecteezy
Vecteezy is one of the largest global communities for creatives providing them with the best vector graphics, illustrator brushes, vector wallpaper backgrounds, silhouettes, and more. Here you can either find a great freebie for your ideal design project or discuss the creations of other artists from all around the world. Most products are free to download or depend on the type of license allowing to use the items for free and without any specific restrictions. The collection of vectors is often updated so you are always free to find fresh freebies for your next projects.
Interesting Resources to Get Brilliant Collection of Textures
Texture is a key element which plays the important role in any type of design and defines both visual and tactile aspects. Texture in web design is something that adds warmth, personality and feeling. It can be accomplished through typography, hand-drawn illustrations, background patterns, photos, UX and UI elements, and so on. The following resources are here to help you find good textures for your inspiration.
1. Subtle Patterns
Subtle Patterns is a high quality resource to find tillable textures that are absolutely free to use. The authors have created this website for designers and developers to provide them with top-notch patterns for their inspiring projects. The immense library of useful stuff is available on this website so you can easily find the right pattern for your design and download it for free. In addition, you can buy premium Photoshop and Sketch plugin from Subtle Patterns and feed all the website’s library of patterns directly to your graphic editor.
2. Texturer
Texturer is a great resource developed for 3D artists, web designers, animators, and other creatives to provide them with extensive selection of high resolution textures. All images available on this website are created personally by the authors of the website. A growing repository of high-class texture photos is available for free and sorted into categories and subcategories, so it is very easy to find the necessary file in the library. All images are stored and presented in the industry standard JPEG format.
3. TextureKing
TextureKing is an amazing resource providing a tremendous amount of various textures for creating the most impressive designs. All textures are available for free but if you download them you aren’t permitted to resell, reassign or distribute the product, however, you are allowed to use them for your personal and commercial works. You can modify the textures as per your clients’ requirements and showcase your projects to the clients to give them an insight on how they will look when completed and discuss the final results.
4. Transparent Textures
Transparent Textures is a perfect resource to get the best transparent textures for your stylish designs. The great library of transparent textures to be used in the foreground of your works are available here for free. The best transparent effects created in Photoshop are uploaded to the website on a regular basis to provide users with a wide selection of useful stuff for their creative projects. Feel free to modify them and use for your personal and commercial projects but don’t distribute or resell them to the third party users.
5. Patternico
Patternico is an excellent website providing a unique opportunity to generate high-quality icons for your next design project. You can make seamless icons easily without any Photoshop wizardry. Just upload your custom bg, choose the background color, shape transparency, and canvas size, make other modifications and download the ready item in jpg format. You can also use the convenient search tool to look for the ready “font awesome” and “line icons” available in the library.
Valuable Resources to Get Quality Fonts
It is impossible to imagine a perfect design without beautiful fonts because they often bring the aesthetics of print design to the web. It is known that fonts provide specific style and visual interest to the website’s appearance and if chosen correctly, they make it easier to perceive the written information. The following resources will be helpful to pick up the right font for your next creative work.
1. Google Fonts
Google Fonts is one of the Google’s projects created to provide designers with amazing collection of fonts and quality typography for their apps and web pages. The goal of this resource is to create a good directory of web fonts for the world to use. Its API service makes it easy to add fonts to a site in seconds. All available fonts are open source ones so you are free to share them with friends and use them for your various projects. You can also customize the fonts for your own use or collaborate with the author to improve them.
2. Font Squirrel
Font Squirrel is the resource where you can find only high quality and user-friendly free fonts to be used in your professional works. As the authors of the project are informed that it’s pretty hard to find quality freeware licensed both for commercial and personal work, they decided to create this resource for designers. All typefaces are hand-selected and presented in an easy-to-use format. All items are sorted by categories so it is very easy to find the right one in a matter of minutes.
3. DaFont
DaFont is a top-grade resource offering a wide selection of professionally designed fonts available for free personal usage. Every author can submit their own fonts here to share them with other designers and sometimes ask for donation. All fonts are their author’s property so users aren’t permitted to sell or distribute them as their own. However, users can modify these fonts and utilize them for their own projects. Sometimes it is necessary to contact the author to ask if the font is allowed to be used in commercial projects.
4. Abstract Fonts
Abstract Fonts is a perfect resource to get fresh and professionally designed fonts for almost any type of design. All fonts are sorted into categories to make it easier to find a required font in the library. You can sort fonts by alphabet, category, author or popularity and get the necessary one in a matter of minutes. Use the resource to upload your own fonts, view them in the library to make sure they look good and share them with other creatives. The website also includes a forum where all designers can discuss the related subjects.
5. FontSpace
FontSpace is another useful resource allowing to download fresh free fonts updated on a daily basis. The website includes its own blog where every visitor can leave a comment and express their opinion on any font they downloaded. Random, New and Popular categories available here make it easier and quicker to find the right item designed especially for your projects. You can also upload and submit your custom font to feature it on this website. The fonts are available for personal and non-commercial use.
Fascinating Resources to Find Beautiful Colors for Your Designs
Color is the main element of any design, cause this is the actual part of design which is used to convey emotions and express a certain mood. The ability to manipulate colors is one of the main qualities of every creative designer not only to make real masterpieces but also earn recognition in their field. The following resources are collected to help you choose the right colors and color palettes for your creation.
1. Adobe Color CC
Adobe Color CC is a great project by Adobe including the second-to-none color themes for your next ideal designs. Most Popular, Most Used and Random categories are available here to sort the items and ease the search process for a user. You can also sort the items by date that is you can choose the latest or the most popular ones. Each product includes the key information about the author, the date of publishing, the rate, and the comments. You can also appreciate the product, edit its copy and, of course, download it for free.
2. COLOURLovers
COLOURLovers is another interesting multinational creative community which helps people express their creativity and discover their inner designer. The website provides user-created and shared color inspiration and useful tools which make the process of creation really simple. If you also wish to become an author featured at this resource, submit your designs here and share them with others to get the recognition in your community. The site is offering tools and services to find an appropriate color palette and kickstart your next project or produce a piece of vector art.
3. Design Seeds
Design Seeds is a resource setting itself up as a daily dose of inspiration. The project is launched for all who love color and need to find great images of crops, flowers, countryside, and the related ones. The author says that a resource is created to celebrate colors found in nature and the aesthetics of purposeful living. Colors can be sorted by color or by collection, and you can Pin, Tweet or share them in Facebook. The site also includes the Seeds Shop where you can purchase premium color collections to use them for your own design projects.
4. Pictaculous
Pictaculous is an easy-to-use resource allowing to generate a color palette from JPEG, PNG and GIF images and photos. It allows to receive color suggestions and download Photoshop swatches to get an idea on what colors to use with an image. Browse the image on your computer and upload it to the website using a user-friendly tool. After that you will be able to get your ready palette. Pictaculous is absolutely free and very helpful color generator which is sure to come in handy for your inspiring design projects.
5. Material Palette
Material Palette is a brilliant resource created to help every designer find the excellent color palette for their works. Just pick two colors from the collection and get the right color suggestion. You get eight additional colors and tones for every pair of colors you picked, so it is easy to use this tool when you have no idea on what palette to choose for your project. By the way, you can download the ready palette in CSS, SVG, XML, PNG, SASS, LESS and Polymer formats. You can also share it on Twitter.
Great Resources to Get Original Videos
Videos that automatically play in the background will add a lot to a web-page. They will tell a story and reduce the volume of other content required to explain your business. Short promotional videos are sure to become good variants to represent the concept of your business. Short product or feature videos are also necessary to highlight a specific use case. They are great at bringing your specific solution to life while not overwhelming the user with a long experience they must sit through. The next few resources are picked especially for you to find the best videos for your custom works.
1. Fancy Footage Club
Fancy Footage Club is a remarkable resource which helps designers to get great footage and push their designs forward. The talented videographers, in their turn, will be fairly compensated and will get the opportunity to become highly recognized in the industry. The goal of the site is to combine these two communities to get better expression on the web. If you are a talented creative you can sell your works to the Fancy Footage Club and get an income. If you are looking for quality stock footage on the web you can also find it here. All videos are loopable, beautiful and royalty-free.
2. Videvo
Videvo is another perfect resource to get completely free stock video footage and motion graphics to use them in any projects. This is the largest online resource to find free HD stock footage and use it without a limitation. As the website is steadily growing it is gradually moving to the point where they can become one of the largest online resources devoted to free useful motion graphics and videos. A lot of fresh content is uploaded here on a regular basis, and new improvements complement the overall user experience.
3. Videezy
Videezy is another perfect place not only to get free HD stock videos but also share your custom ones. You can also upload b-roll, backgrounds, and different video footage. You can explore and discuss the footage of other videographers from all over the world or only find the suitable cutaway for your next design project. All clips are available here to download and free to use in your designs under the terms of a definite license. You can use the resource to share and promote your footage and become recognized in your community.
4. Pond5
Pond5 is the great resource to help designers discover what is possible when their creative process meets the ever-growing and vast library of this website. The resource owns really intuitive platform and tools that enable the users innovate and accelerate the working process and allow to get the best content for creative projects. The site includes a lot of quality footage as well as freelance artists’ testimonials that make its reputation stronger and get customers trust the resource more and more.
5. Vidsplay
Vidsplay is the top-notch resource allowing to get the best video clips for your various design projects. It is easy to download the footage just with the right-click on the download link and saving the link. If you enter the site from your smartphone, just press and hold the video to download it. New footage is uploaded here every 7-10 days so you can easily find it on the homepage. Refresh the page to see new additions. All stuff available on the website can be used both for personal and commercial projects for free. However, you should add a credit link to the resource on your website.
Second-to-None Resources to Get Unique Audio
Audio is used everywhere in design, especially on mobile and consumer devices, on websites and in gaming applications. Speech recognition and robots are also widely used today. Interaction is the main point of almost any user-friendly web design and it is more exciting with audio. Sometimes it is difficult to get the right sound clip for your particular project. That is why we’ve decided to help you in finding the right audio for your creative works and collected these resources for you.
1. Vimeo
Vimeo is a great community of filmmakers which has started as a simple personal project. The resource is growing bigger every day allowing people with a wide range of passions have fun and enjoy the opportunities to find the best stuff ever. The website allows to sell your creative works, learn how to make good clips in a video school, edit and share cinematic videos on a mobile phone, and of course get free music tracks and HD videos both for free and on a fee basis. All content is divided by categories so you can easily find it in a matter of minutes.
2. Bensound
Bensound in an individual project of French composer writing music for animations, corporate videos, commercials, short movies and documentaries. The tracks available on the site are allowed to be used by a person or company only. For those who sell projects as corporate videos, websites or messages, it is compulsory to buy a Bensound Pro license. If the music is synchronized with another media, it can be resold. All royalty-free music is available in the corresponding category and divided into subcategories, so it is pretty easy to find anything you wish.
3. Looper Man
Looperman is a great resource allowing to download audio samples and loops for free to use them in commercial and non-commercial projects. You can also download music software, acapellas and tracks by different authors. The site includes the detailed search forms which allow to look for a product sorted by a developer, tags, keywords, format, date, and other criteria. The resource also contains a shop where anyone can buy Looper Man T-shirts, forum – to discuss the subject related questions, and blog to read the exciting post and get the valuable material for their inspiration.
4. Free Music Archive – FMA
FMA is an interactive library including high-quality legal audio for everyone who can’t imagine their lives without creativity. The website is directed by WFMU – a renowned freeform radio station in America that has always offered the public free access to new music. Every mp3 file available on this resource is pre-cleared for certain types designed for the digital era. Curators and artists can use this platform for collaboration, and of course for getting the best quality music for their projects. The site works under the Creative Commons license.
5. Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Library
Converse Rubber Track is a vast library of royalty-free loops, one shots and stems recorded at Rubber Tracks studios. The library provides a unique resource for musicians all across the globe at no cost. Every creative is free to explore, experiment, download, and create music using the samples from the library which are available here to utilize the resulted works in unlimited ways. Get kits, mixes, tools, packs, and other audios absolutely for free. All tracks are divided by categories to make it easier to find them in the list. All samples are completely royalty-free ones – no strings attached.
The Best Tools to Create Exquisite Texts and Typography
Content is one of the most important things for every website, so if you write articles or create typography, it is much required that your works will be quality and engaging. It is also necessary to make your content relevant and up-to-date to attract more visitors to your pages. The following tools will be helpful to check your content for relevance and quality.
1. Grammarly
Grammarly is an amazing site built by linguists and language lovers. Its writing app is developed to find and correct the most complex writing errors instead of you. The site offers plenty of free and premium products licensed by more than 600 leading universities and corporations. Here you can get different editors, writing resources, and other useful things for your creation process. Grammarly is there to meet your needs by giving you the confidence of mistake-free writing every time you make a new copy.
2. Hemingway Editor
Hemingway Editor is a good tool to help writers make perfect pieces of texts avoiding any common mistakes and long complex sentences usually being hard to read. You can use the editor online or download the desktop app to enter it and use it without opening a browser. The yellow sentence means that you should shorten or split it. A red highlight means that a sentence is complex and dense which will make a reader get lost trying to follow its meandering. Adverbs are shown in blue to hint that you’d better get rid of them and choose verbs with force instead. If your word is highlighted in purple, the phrase has simpler alternative.
3. WordMark It
WordMark It is a useful tool which helps to select the right typeface for what you are trying to communicate. Just type the word in the text box on the homepage and click the “Load Fonts” button to see and browse the selection of appropriate fonts to choose from. You will just have to scroll through the previews and click on any font you are interested in to select it. Share your selections in social media and sign up for the website to save your selections. You can also try the typography in positive and negative modes, adjust the size of the previews by entering a pixel value or clicking smaller/bigger buttons.
4. Typegenius
Typegenius is the resource to help you find the perfect font combo for your next design project. Just select any starter font from the available list and click the “View Matches” button to see what font will become the perfect pair for the selected one. Of course the resource is completely free to use and a user-friendly one. This is very helpful for designers to save their time and deliver themselves from the duty to select the font pairs manually. You can share the resource on Twitter and help other creatives discover its advantages.
5. FontPair
FontPair is another useful resource which helps people pair Google Fonts together. The site includes the paired font-families in the categories and each of them includes the examples of paired typefaces that match best. Every pair is available in special text-boxes with editable content to allow users post their own content in the fields and see how it will look with this font combination. The resource is made to help choosing the accurate font pairs and make it a very easy process.
Conclusion
Have you ever used some of these resources? What one do you like the most and how does it help you in your work? If you have something to share, we will be happy to discuss it in the comments section.
