To become a successful graphic designer, you will need some help as doing everything on your own gets too overwhelming. There are so many tools available online, both free and paid that can help your process. Here are some of my favorites:
Images
1. Unsplash
By far, my favourite site to get free stock images. Now they offer a free and paid version but the free version for me, is sufficient. It has high-quality, aesthetic images for any style and project.
2. Pexels
Pexels is another great choice for stock images as well as stock videos. There's a great community as well too. They have great high-quality and creative photos.
3. Pixabay
Pixabay is yet another great website to get images from but also videos, music, and more free to use on your creative projects.
4. Adobe Stock
While this one is not free, I wanted to mention it because of the great graphics it provides. This could be one of the best options for stock images, videos, templates, vector art, illustrations, audio, fonts and more. It has an incredible variety of assets which you can use in your projects
Software
If you get the full substitution you can get access to all their apps including Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Premiere Pro, etc. There's no one better than Adobe in the design industry. It may be a bit pricey but for what they offer, it's worth it.
6. Canva
If you're looking to create some very basic graphics for free, Canva is a good option. It has lots of ready-to-use graphics which you can import into your artboard. Perhaps it doesn't provide flexibility for designers but it's a great resource to create eye-catching social media posts, CVs, presentations, and more.
7. Inkscape
Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor and a great free alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
Artboard Studio 'aim to build the ultimate online design tool for marketing designers, advertising agencies and social media marketers'. It has all the tools a designer may need from vector design, motion design, audio design, mockup design,s etc. Everything you may need in one place.
Color
9. Adobe Colour
Adobe Colour is great for finding color palettes for inspiration but also for creating your own.
10. Coolors
You can browse through trending color palettes or you can use its tools like its palette generator, image picker, and contrast checker.
11. Color Lisa
Its tagline ' Color palette masterpieces from the world's greatest artists ' sums up what this website is all about. You can search for artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Van Gogh and see the color palettes of their paintings.
12. Color Mind
An AI color generator that allows you to generate color palettes. You can insert the color you know you want and it can complete the palette for you.
13. Khroma
A different type of tool powered by AI that generates color palettes for you based on the colors you initially pick. It's quite different from the tools above but worth a try.
Vector Illustrations
14. Freepick
Freepick is one of the biggest marketplaces of stock images and illustrations. With free and premium options, it makes it a great choice to get graphics from. There are millions of assets to look through including photos, vectors, icons, and templates.
15. Storytale
Storytale is not free and requires a subscription but it's worth considering as it offers amazing graphics making it a good option for web designers. However, the illustrations are suitable for any kind of graphic design project. The good thing is once you download assets through a subscription there's no need to pay monthly to use the same illustrations.
16. Humaaans
This is a nice little website that allows you to mix and match different illustrations of people. It has a large library of people, you can create a scene, use its templates, and more. You can use Blush which allows you to customize the art.
17. Drawkit
Drawkit has a large library of 2D & 3D Illustrations, icons, animations and mockups. It also has collections with illustrations of the same color palette and style which is great for large projects to keep the branding consistent.
18. Open Peeps
Similar to Humaaans, this is also used with Blush but this time the illustrations of the people are in a hand-drawn style. You can choose the position of the character and then edit its features to your liking.
19. Open doodles
Open doodles as its name suggests is a set of free, open illustrations in the style of doodles. It's great because they can also be used with Blush . You can browse its many illustrations and compositions, then edit, remix, copy, etc, and can be used for commercial projects for free.
20. Absurd
Absurd is an independent project where you can download free illustrations as well as become a member if you want to support the creator. These are not your typical illustrations you would find in an illustrations library making this website very unique.
Icons
21. Flaticon
If you are looking for flat icons, Flaticon is what you want. It has thousands of icons for anything that you can think of. You can use this site for inspiration or pay a subscription to get access to all the icons and be able to use them directly in your projects.
22. The Noun Project
A website offering millions of icons perfect for any project. As they say on their website their 'community of designers from 120+ countries is building the most diverse and extensive collection of iconography ever created'
23. Simple Icons
Another great website with a great selection of icons that you can easily download in SVG format. A simple website with a great variety.
Inspiration
24. Dribbble
The first place I go for inspiration. An amazing website where designers from around the world showcase their designs which you can browse through for inspiration for your project whether that is graphic design, illustration, UX design or product design.
25. Behance
Another great place to look for inspiration. Remember that you can also use Behance (just like Dribbble) to upload your work and use it as a portfolio to reach more people.
26. What Font
This is a Chrome Extension which allows you to identify any font. If you see a font on a website and don't know what it is, use the extension to see it.
27. It's Nice That
A design website that shares designs, shares stories from around the world and offers insights. It's a great community and it's a cool website to browse through when you are looking for unique and one-of-a-kind ideas.
Fonts
28. Google fonts
Browse through thousands of fonts and filter through fonts based on different properties. You can download the fonts or get the embed codes if you design apps for example.
29. Font squirrel
Font Squirrel is a popular website among designers to download fonts for commercial use. You can browse through the different categories to find the one that best suits your needs.
30. Dafont
DaFont has thousands of fonts that are free to use but it does give you the option to donate to the designer. You can browse through themes, new fonts and if you create fonts, you can also submit your own,
31. Font Fabric
Font fabric not only provides fonts to browse through and download but they can even design you your own custom font if you want to take your project to the next level.
32. FontSpace
With 130,000+ Free Fonts to choose from, you are certain to find one that fits your project. You can even share your own fonts and become part of the community.
Mockups
33. Unblast
The first place I go to search for mockups is Unblast. It has a very wide range of mockups whether you are looking for poster mockups, packaging mockups, or any kind of mockups, they have it. And it's free.
34. Mockups Designs
Another website that I often use has a very big selection of designs to choose from. Most of the mockups are free for commercial use.
35. House Of Mockups
House of Mockups has a range of free and premium mockups that look professional and make your projects stand out from the crowd. They even have some video mockups!
Special Mentions
36. Printful
I recently started a store on my website and Etsy. And as I was just getting started, I didn't want to print things myself and sort through inventory, so I chose Printful to do that for me. The seamless integration means you don't have to do anything when a customer buys your product so you can focus on designing.
37. Etsy
As mentioned above, Etsy is a great choice to sell your prints. But the good thing with Etsy is you can also sell digital items. So you can sell posters, templates, etc as digital files! The reasons I love Etsy is because of all its features on the sellers' dashboard that allows you to grow your shop.
38. Wix
I currently use Wix for my website and I love the flexibility it gives you. It also allows for a shop as well. I can showcase my projects in an impressive way and it's super easy to use.
39. ClickUp
Another software that I couldn't function without is ClickUp. ClickUp is a great solution for teams and individuals. I just use it to organize my projects, plan my social media content and keep track of projects. It's a nice way to keep everything in one place and not forget about deadlines and important tasks.
Finally, my Wacom tablet has made such a big difference and allowed me to get better as a designer and illustrator. I tend to connect it while I use Photoshop as I like adding texture to my designs using the Photoshop brushes and this simple tablet does a perfect job.
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