Time for me to spill the beans. Even designers need a little bit of help sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time. When I was in school, our instructors taught us to be purists and do everything ourselves. Copy, illustrations, photography, the whole nine yards. In fact, we really frowned upon the word ‘template’ (and rightfully so). Enter the real world of deadlines and thin budgets, and it’s simply not always possible to do everything from scratch. I’ve learned that the key is to find solid resources, and to further tailor and customize something so it doesn’t remain generic.
With that said, here are six freebies for you.
Creative Market is one of the largest online market for graphic assets. Having said that, sometimes you have to do a little digging to find A-grade material from the best vendors. Their free email subscription includes 5 free resources every week: usually at least one is a typeface, random watercolour image set or illustrations, vector icons, and print/web template.
While there are other free stock image sites available, Unsplash is currently one of the best ones out there. So good in fact, that I’ve seen some of the more popular photos pretty often these days. If you’ve got one particular project that you’re working on, you can also try Death to Stock’s free 14-day trial.
The Lost Type is a collaborative digital, pay-what-you-want type foundry. Many of the fonts are decorative in style, but they are pretty decent fonts. In particular, I like Pigeon and Prospectus.
Icons, anyone? The Noun Project is a free, online database where you can access and unlimited amount of icons—basically, a vector-based illustration consisting of one solid colour. Vector-based icons are great because they can be infinitely scaled up or down without losing quality. They are based on mathematical formulas rather than pixels, which means their file sizes generally stay tiny.
Yup, I like Canva. Although I don’t use it myself, I know people who do and it’s been very effective for them. It’s great when you need something nicely designed and don’t have the time nor budget to pay a designer. There’s a basic free version, and 2 other paid options.
Ok, this one is a big deal. You can virtually learn anything digital through lynda.com. Most notably: design, software, business and marketing, video/photography, architecture. You name it, they probably have it. Even my university professors recommended us to master techniques that they didn’t know through lynda.com. While it isn’t free, oftentimes a city library might purchase access for its cardholders. Where I live, the Toronto Public Library offers full access for FREE. It’s a real hidden gem.