We are a design agency, and we love finding and exploring free graphic design resources. So, I thought, why not share some of our favorites with you?
In this article, I’ve compiled 37+ of these free resources, including tools our design team swears by and a few of my personal favorites. Since there’s a lot to explore, I’ve added a table of contents below so you can jump straight to the categories you need.
- Stock Photos & Videos
- Royalty-Free Illustrations
- 3D Illustrations
- Icons
- Online Designing & Editing Tools
- Design Inspiration Websites
Stock Photos & Videos
Every free graphic design resources list starts with stock photos and videos because they’re some of the most useful assets to have in your creative toolkit. You can use them for everything from social media posts and website banners to ad graphics and presentations.
We have a whole article on some criminally underrated free stock photo websites and free stock video websites, but these are some of our top picks:
1. Lummi
Lummi offers a collection of free stock images that do not look like stock images. These are unique, creative, and really high-quality visuals that’ll add so much personality to your designs. We prefer to use them on our blog, social media graphics, and other marketing collateral.
2. Coverr
Coverr is a really popular website for stock videos. So much so, they get more than 5 million downloads and 1 million views every month. But that also doesn’t mean the videos look overused or templatey. The content is still awesome and fresh and can be used for both personal and commercial projects.
3. Gratisography
If you want to add a little humor and quirk to your designs, you need to check out stock images from Gratisography. They offer a unique collection of interesting photos from across various niches, including nature, people, animals in costumes, etc.
4. Mixkit
Mixkit is a platform that offers many free assets, but I especially love their stock video collection. These are free to download in 4K resolution or vertical format for websites, music videos, promos, and display ads. There’s also no watermark or sign-up hassle when you want to get started.
Royalty-Free Illustrations
If you don't prefer using stock images, you’ll love illustrations. They add a creative touch to your designs and help you communicate ideas in a more engaging way. I also have an article on my favorite royalty-free illustration websites, but these are my top picks:
5. Magnific
Magnific, formerly known as Freepik, is usually the first website I visit when I need illustrations for a marketing campaign. Although they’re now focusing on their new editing platform, I still use it for the extensive library of design assets.
The best part is that here you’ll find illustrations in all kinds of styles, from playful cartoons and line art to hand-drawn artwork and isometric graphics.
6. Blush.Design
Blush.Design is a place where a bunch of artists with creative superpowers come together. They offer some of the most unique, high-quality illustrations that can even become part of your entire brand identity. The only snag is that most of these require a small fee, but there are some great free options available.
7. Absurd.Design
Absurd.Design features some, well, absurd illustrations created by a single artist. She describes the work as a way of turning her emotional energy into illustrations that, despite their name, actually make sense. The result is definitely worth exploring!
3D Illustrations
2D illustrations aren’t your only option. There are also 3D illustrations that help add depth and dimension to your designs. But in complete honesty, I feel some of these are a bit overused. This makes it all the more important to find websites that offer something unique. And that’s exactly why I’m including the following picks in my list of free graphic design resources:
8. Unsplash
I believed Unsplash was only useful for finding free images for blogs, until I discovered their 3D illustrations collection in the most unexpected niches. This is the best option for brands that serve in a specialized industry or cover a unique topic.
9. Figma Library
Figma has a community-made library that features hundreds of 3D illustration styles. You can browse various sets, but these are my favorite ones:
- 3D Icons Set
- Fluent Emoji
- Halloween 3D Illustrations
- Kawaii 3D Ghost (can even be used as a brand mascot)
The last one especially would be perfect if you’re looking into how to design a mascot. The good thing is if you find something that matches your vision, you can even start customizing it directly in Figma.
10. Wannathis
Wannathis offers a random collection of free 3D illustrations. These would be great if you don’t need a whole pack, just a bit of character to your design. You can find household objects, alphabets, abstract shapes, decorative elements, and other playful 3D assets.
Icons
Icons, if used properly, can help enhance usability and improve the design of your app or web page. They’re also great for simplifying complex information and highlighting important details.
Here are a few places where you can find free icons for website:
11. Iconbuddy
Iconbuddy is an open-source search engine for icons. It gives you access to over 180k+ icons that can be customized and personalized according to your requirements. You can also change colors and size in one click before downloading.
12. Glyphs
Glyphs offers more colorful and creative icons that are designed in Figma. These cover a wide range of categories, including education, business, multimedia, transport, gaming, and healthcare. Also, each icon has multiple variants and can be customized in size, stroke, and color to match your design.
13. Flaticon
With over 18 million vector icons, Flaticon is hands down one of the largest databases of free and premium icons. This is also a place where you can find animated icons that work perfectly for modern websites and apps.
Online Designing & Editing Tools
This section of free graphic design resources is further divided into subsections. Here I will introduce you to various free tools that can be used to create designs from scratch, remove backgrounds, generate color palettes, or resize images.
Free Online Editing Tools
Finding a perfect stock photo or illustration isn’t enough. You need good software or a design tool to edit and customize them for your projects. Thankfully, there are a lot of free and beginner-friendly options worth exploring.
14. Canva
You’ll probably have heard of Canva or even used it before. It’s that popular! This is a great option to create or edit anything, whether it’s a social media post, presentation, print materials, or even a landing page design. I especially love their extensive template library that makes it easier to get started.
If you’ve never used this tool before, check out my article on how to use Canva for free. And if you’ve tried it but aren’t impressed, take a look at some free Canva alternatives.
15. Photopea
Photoshop is a great advanced editing tool, but it requires a subscription, so I recommend Photopea. It’s a great Photoshop alternative that offers similar editing capabilities for free. It also runs right in your browser and supports a range of file formats, including PSD, PNG, JPG, SVG, XCF, XD, Sketch, and CDR.
I personally use it for quick edits, retouching photos, removing or adjusting elements, and adding text.
16. Biteable
Need to create or edit videos? Biteable is an online video creation platform that makes it easy to produce professional-looking results. You can use its templates, animations, stock footage, and other built-in resources to create content for both YouTube and Instagram.
If, in case, it doesn’t quite meet your needs, check out some Biteable alternatives.
18. Mockups-Design
Mockups-Design or MD is a simple website where you can find premium mockups for your projects. This is a great option if you want to showcase your product in a more realistic setting. It’s also beginner-friendly, as you just need to download the mockups and paste your designs.
19. Visme
What about infographics? Visme is a tool used by more than 3 million marketers, communicators, and educators around the world. It lets you create professional, shareable infographics without any design experience.
Background Removal Tool
Sometimes, you only need a good free background removal tool to make an image fit your design. You can use these:
20. Remove.bg
Remove.bg is one of my most used tools online because it’s so simple and straightforward. You just upload an image, and voila, the background will be removed instantly. You will also be able to download the new edited image in one click without signing up.
21. Magic Studio
If you need something more precise, check out Magic Eraser by Magic Studio. It’s great if you want to remove the whole background, but it can also remove only a small section from your image. For example, you can erase an unwanted object or remove a distracting detail.
Color Palette Generators
Brands are always looking for unique color combinations for a website to make it stand out. But this can be tricky, especially when you’re starting from scratch. That’s why I’m mentioning these two color palette generators as free graphic design resources:
22. Coolors
Coolors is an all-in-one tool as it suggests great color palettes, allows you to generate a palette with an image, and even makes a gradient. You can then export and save the palette as PDF, PNG, SVG, SCSS, or COPIC.
23. Khroma
Khroma is a tool that uses AI to learn what colors you’d like and creates limitless palettes. All you have to do is choose a set of colors, and Khroma will produce great combos that you can view in different formats, including palettes, typography pairings, gradients, and custom images.
Font Pairing & Typography Tools
You also obviously want to use the best fonts for your website. But there can be a lot of confusion about font licensing agreements, especially for commercial use. That’s why I recommend sticking to reliable platforms. These will be my top suggestions:
24. Font Squirrel
Font Squirrel is a great website for finding high-quality fonts that are free for commercial use. You can browse fonts by style, explore curated collections, and even use its Font Identifier to find a typeface from an uploaded image.
25. Google Fonts
Google Fonts is probably one of the most popular places to find free, open-source fonts. It offers an extensive library of typefaces that you can preview, customize, and download for personal or commercial projects. You can also easily add them to your website using CSS, making it particularly useful for web designers.
Image Resizing & Compression Tools
Large image files can slow down your website, and incorrect dimensions can make even a great design look awkward. Therefore, you need to keep the following resizing and compressing tools handy:
26. Image Resizer
Image Resizer lets you resize your images at the highest quality. You just need to upload your image and enter a target size. There’re also other options, like changing the file format to PNG, JPG, or WEBP before downloading.
If you're resizing an image for social media, this tool has preset dimensions for different platforms, so you don't have to look up the ideal image size yourself.
27. iLoveIMG
iLoveIMG offers a whole collection of free image editing tools in one place. You can resize, crop, compress, convert, and even upscale images. It also allows bulk processing, so you can edit multiple images at once.
28. TinyPNG
Despite its name, TinyPNG lets you compress more than just PNG files. It also supports many other formats such as AVIF, WEBP, and JPEG. The tool itself uses intelligent compression techniques that ensure the file size is reduced while preserving image quality.
Logo Maker
Creating a logo using a tool is getting very popular. If it’s something you wish to do for your brand, these are the best logo generators you’ll find online:
29. Logogenie
Logogenie is an online platform that allows users to design professional-looking logos quickly. It offers a wide range of customizable logo templates featuring different icons, shapes, and styles. You can also edit the colors, fonts, and other elements of a logo using their beginner-friendly editor.
30. FreeLogoDesign
FreeLogoDesign is another online tool that offers thousands of logo templates that you can customize to match your brand. You can also experiment with different colors, shapes, icons, and fonts using their online editor. Once you're happy with the design, you can simply download it in PNG format for free.
Screenshot Tools
Screenshot tools are really helpful, especially when you are working with a team. They allow you to share important information and even save ideas for later. I use these two almost every day:
31. Snipping Tool
Snipping Tool comes built into Microsoft Windows. It’s a great tool that lets you capture your entire screen, a single window, or a specific area. You can also annotate screenshots, make quick edits, and save your captures to your computer. It comes in handy when you need to share something quickly without installing additional software.
32. LightShot
LightShot is a lightweight screenshot tool that you can install on your desktop or add as a browser extension (I prefer the latter). It allows you to quickly capture a selected area of your screen and edit the screenshot by adding text, arrows, lines, and colors.
You can then copy and share the screenshot directly or upload and save the URL for later.
Design Inspiration Websites
Inspiration can come from anywhere, but sometimes you need a little help getting those creative juices flowing. That's why I am including some good design inspiration websites in this list of free graphic design resources.
33. Landbook
Landbook is a curated gallery of website designs that you can browse whenever you need fresh ideas for your next project. It features full web pages across different industries and styles, making it easier to explore layouts, typography, and color combinations.
34. Dribbble
Dribbble is a popular platform among designers where they share their work. Here you can find everything from website designs and mobile app interfaces to social media graphics, illustrations, and motion graphics.
35. Really Good Emails
Really Good Emails is all about email design inspiration. It's a niche resource, but a useful one when you want to explore real marketing emails, including newsletters, promotional campaigns, welcome emails, and product announcements.
It's also worth exploring if you're looking for email signature design ideas.
36. One Page Love
One Page Love is dedicated to one-page websites. It’s useful when you are creating landing pages for your marketing campaigns. My favorite thing is that here I can explore particular sections of a website such as pricing tables, testimonial grids, call-to-action blocks, header navigation, etc.
37. Adfolio
Adfolio is a curated library of B2B ads from platforms such as Meta and LinkedIn. But it doesn't just show you the ads; it also breaks down their hooks, visuals, and calls to action. This makes it much more helpful when you are shaping an entire ad campaign.
Even though the ads featured cover various platforms and formats, I like browsing the collection when I want Google Display ad examples.
Summing Up: Free Graphic Design Resources
I tried to cover as many categories as I could under free graphic design resources. These would be enough to make the entire design process easier for your team. But if this isn’t enough, you can explore our blog, as it’s filled with more useful resources and practical tutorials.
Now, did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below if there are any other free graphic design resources you'd like me to add to this list!
Hey
It’s so useful for every freelance or graphic designer…thanks for sharing this knowledge