Free design resources for small businesses
Perhaps you’re on a budget or you want to DIY some graphics for your social media? Whatever your reason, here is our list of free resources to get you going!
Free graphic resources
Remove.bg
Have you ever spent hours trying to cut out an image in photoshop? With this tool you will be able to cut an image out in under 5 minutes. Remove.bg removes the background of an image for you, and it’s actually pretty good – we’ve tried on a whole host of images with most working great. You can download a png with a transparent background at a lower resolution for free – perfect for social media, or you can get a low cost subscription plan to download higher res images.
Creative Market
Creative Market is a great resource geared towards creatives for high quality assets ranging from $5-$49+, but look out every Monday for their free goods of the week available for download. Freebies include textures, templates, backgrounds, logo elements, vectors, brushes and much more. As this resource is aimed at the creative industry, make sure you check the file type before you download as most will require a Creative Cloud Subscription.
Graphic Burger
Graphic Burger is a bank of free assets including great mockups for both personal and commercial use. The occasional resource costs a small fee but the majority are free to download with the option to donate to the creator. The site is easy to use and unlike many other free mock up sites it doesn’t take you through a bunch of other steps before you can get your hands on the goodies.
With many psd mockups being fully customisable you can get exactly the look and feel you want without having to spend hours labouring over the build of a mockup! Resources are not limited to mockups though, there are UI kits, Icons, text effects, backgrounds and more.
Social Sizes
With this resource, you’ll never have to google “facebook post image size’ again. Social Sizes has all the up to date templates for creating content for your social media. Templates come in Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD & Photoshop formats.
Blobmaker
Blobmaker app is your solution to creating smooth, organic-looking blob shapes in seconds. You can modify the complexity and contrast to create different types of organic svg shapes or randomise them. Easily download as svgs or copy the code directly onto your clipboard. If you love blob maker - how about making some waves with their sister tool wavemaker?!
Free photo + video resources
Unsplash
Unsplash is our go-to free high resolution photo bank. We always look here first for images to use in our client work before suggesting a paid alternative. All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash. How fab is that?!
Pexels
Like Unsplash, Pexels is a free high resolution photo bank but with video too! All images are also licensed under Creative Commons Zero so you can do what you wish with them.
Raw Pixel
Raw Pixel again has a bank of high res images to use that are free for both personal and commercial use. They also have a library of public domain stock which is free for personal and commercial use with no attribution required however they do have a disclaimer that says “We are careful to only make available content that we believe is out of copyright. However, it is your responsibility to ensure it is ok to use in your country, suitable for your application and does not infringe any rights” so you might want to check that out before using anything for commercial purposes.
Coverr
Coverr is a free resource for video content featuring a library of beautifully shot stock videos that are free to download for commercial and non-commercial use with no attribution required. It’s easy to browse and you can simply hover over the video to see a preview, now that’s easy browsing!
Nappy
We could all use a bit more diversity within our imagery and Nappy is helping close the gap on that. They provide beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else. Nappy makes it easy for companies to be purposeful about representation in their designs, presentations, and advertisements.
Free font resources
Google Fonts
An open source directory of web fonts for businesses to use how they wish. All fonts are robust and created to the high standards you'd expect from Google. Top Tip: Aim to pick a font that has multiple style (i.e, bold, italic, condensed etc) You can do this by filtering by ‘font styles’.
Lost Type
Lost Type is a pay-what you want type foundry. With a diverse collection of over 50 different typefaces from contributors all over the world you are sure to find something you like. You can get the fonts for free but you can also donate money - the site assures 100% of your donation goes to the retrospective designer. Lost type is dedicated to the idea that quality fonts should be made available to anyone who wants to create an individual piece of characterful design.
Font Squirrel
All fonts from Font Squirrel are free and licensed for commercial work. With hundreds of different typefaces from corporate to calligraphy you will find what you need. They also have a great tool on their website to match a font. If you find something you like and want a similar font you can upload an image and it will give you several fonts that are similar that you can download (some will cost money and some will be free).
DaFont
All fonts from DaFont are free ONLY for personal use (there is an option to pay for a license), however it’s a great resource to download free fonts to try before you buy. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity.
Crella
Now, we will hold our hands up and say this is not a free resource, but fonts for only $1 – that’s pretty much free right? Look out every week for hundreds of fonts listed at only $1, theres limited amounts available of each but plenty of selection. Crella also has other paid resources for graphics, Lightroom presets, images etc. If you have a wishlist of assets you are looking to buy in the same month, it’s worth looking at their subscription as it might be cheaper to subscribe for a month to download all the assets you want!
Free icon resources
The Noun Project
The Noun Project brings together over two million curated icons, created by a global community and available for use for free.
Icon Monstr (yes without an e) is a free icon library in which no attribution is required. You have the option to copy the embed code or you can download as an svg, eps, psd or png so no need to convert to the file type you want after download!
Lordicon
Lordicon is a library of interactive, slick animated icons for the unforgettable website experience. You can easily customise the colour to your brand palette and even the stroke line and position. Download as a gif and voila, you are ready to upload to your site! You can download 50 for free and a full set only sets you back $49. Check out ours on our about page.
Free illustration resources
Open Peeps
If you’re looking for some hand drawn people elements then Open Peeps is the library for you. The open-source flat SVG and PNG illustrations are available for Sketch, Figma, Studio, and XD. Pablo Stanley, the creator also has a library to more doodles at Open Doodles. You can make a donation to support his work – a little goes a long way!
Undraw
Create better designed websites, products and applications with Undraw illustrations. Browse to find the images that fit your messaging and automagically customise the colour to match your brand and use it as a normal image, embedded code or directly in your design workflow.
