Free Design Resources for Creatives on a Budget

What’s better than free stuff? Free stuff that makes you a rock star designer who wins the internetz. These free design resources offer you great looks that rival costly alternatives, whether you’re looking for some fresh new fonts, images that sizzle, icons, or textures. Find the last piece to your puzzle from our top recommendations or link to the complete list for each type of resource.

Don’t forget to give credit where credit is due! In your search for the perfect materials, check the licensing to make sure you’re crossing all your t’s and dotting all your i’s by providing proper attribution if it’s required. That typically includes a direct link to the source, the creator’s name, and a statement of what kind of license it is, but you already knew that right?

Stock photos that stun

Finding the perfect photo can sometimes feel like a quest for the holy grail, but when you find the right one, it really does make for an eye-popping design. These resources offer high resolution, dynamic, and interesting images so you don’t waste your time sifting through hundreds of photos and can focus on flexing your creativity instead.

1. Flickr
2. Albumarium
3. Unsplash

See our full list of stock photo resources.

Gorgeous public domain images

For free images that bring a vintage feel to your design, check out these public domain image collections. You’ll have vast numbers of stunning images with enough diversity in content that you can find almost anything. The National Art Gallery offers retro and classic material while the Getty and Public Domain Archive allow you to peruse modern images donated to the public domain by generous and talented photographers as well as graphic designers.

1. The Getty
2. National Gallery of Art
3. Public Domain Archive

Check out all our recommended public domain options.

Iconic icons and clip art

PicMonkey’s graphic collection has expanded and continues to grow! We add more icons and graphics all the time, but you can bring in any that you get from other sites using the “Your own” button atop the Graphics menu. Peruse these resources for polished icons, clip art, and other visual assets that help you achieve that special ~lewk~. Bonus: most of them fall under the Creative Commons Zero license, meaning you get restriction-free use.

1. Pixabay
2. Smashing Magazine
3. Freepik

Get the whole list of clip art options now.

Textures that rock

Layering a texture onto your photo or design adds dimension and can dramatically change the mood. Click the Textures tab, in PicMonkey, and you’ll find a collection of metal, fabric, and other textures. But if you want to add your own, check out these resources: 

1. TextureKing
2. Free Stock Textures
3. Texturify

Check out our complete list of texture resources.

Fonts for all occasions

Having the right font sets the tone of your design before the audience even reads your message. PicMonkey’s got tons of them, but you may just have a hankering for one you’ve seen elsewhere. These resources offer a wide variety of font-tastic options  for creative projects and business designs. Once you’ve downloaded them to your computer, you can access them in PicMonkey by clicking the “Your own” button atop the text menu. 

1. Google Fonts
2. Font Squirrel
3. Urban Fonts

See our full list of fonts.

Just because your wallet is on a diet doesn’t mean your designs have to be. Get creative with all these free design resources and then drop us a comment or tag us on social with #picmonkey to show off your masterpiece.

With your free trial of PicMonkey, use your free resources and make a free-kishly awesome design!

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Emily Eppley

When she’s not rocking the freelance writer life, Emily cohosts a podcast about books that get turned into movies and why the book is (almost) always better. She has strong feelings about the Oxford comma, loves to dote on her cat Ophelia, and hopes to someday take a food tour of Italy. If you know of a site where she can edit her pasta photos before she posts them on Insta, please let her know.

July 17, 2018

Categories:Design, Resources

Tags:inspiration, Photo Editing, tips