I totally admit it, I am a complete hoarder when it comes to digital resources – fonts, vectors, textures, patterns, filters, scripts, etc. One of my favorite ways to kill time is browsing graphic design websites.
Honestly, right now on my computer I have over 2000 fonts and over 60 gigs of files – not even counting a second external hard drive. They’re organized by type and then broken down even further into folders. It’s a bit ridiculous but I love them all. We all collect things, at least these don’t collect dust.
Before I got into designing or knew how to use Photoshop or Illustrator, I was desperate to know where do graphic designers find their graphics? I knew they weren’t creating all of them from scratch (well some do, but most don’t).
Where were all the graphic design websites? This was back in the late 1990’s, early 2000’s. I would see the same image used by multiple designers, so I knew they were coming from a source. Back then all I knew about were those clunky multiple CD-Rom clip art sets with humongous companion books. Not super convenient.
It really wasn’t easy back then to find what you were looking for. Nowadays, I can design the graphics or fonts myself but why reinvent the wheel. If it’s already out there, it’s just easier and a time saver to use what’s available. There are so many great artists offering their designs, you really can find exactly what you’re hunting for if you know where to look.
I have compiled an extensive list below of some of my favorite resources which include bundle sites, marketplaces, freebie sites, and subscription based library graphic design websites. One special note before you go downloading all willy nilly, be sure to look over licenses, especially if you’re planning on using them commercially.
Graphic Design Marketplaces
Marketplaces feature individual digital artists who have set up shop on a website with their own profile and store but still have to obey the guidelines of the website they are listing on. They are a great way to see everything the artist has available or to be able to communicate with them to get something custom designed.
Creative Market: One of my all time favorite places to sit and browse around for inspiration. Creative Market is by far the most popular marketplace for digital artists. They even offer six new freebies every Monday for registered users. Everything from fonts, icons, WordPress themes, graphics, and more and they are available to re-download at any time in your account. They are basically the graphics and design equivalent to Etsy. Just about anything design you can think of is on Creative Market.
Envato Market: Similar to Creative Market, Envato has a ton of different offerings from graphics to codes to WordPress themes. They have broken their offerings down into themed stores like Graphic River, which features graphics, and Theme Forest, which offers themes for things like forums and blogs. They also have a companion website, Envato Studio, where you view portfolios and purchase custom jobs which makes it really easy to find the designer you need.
Etsy: We all know and love Etsy for handmade goods and supplies but sellers also sell a lot of digital files, myself included. There are so many beautiful clip art packages, logos, templates, and even complete website packages. Some of my favorite sellers are: WatercolorNomads, LagartixaShop, OctopusArtis and YesFoxy.
Fiverr: I wouldn’t consider Fiverr exactly a marketplace but it is worth mentioning. Most “gigs” start out at $5 on Fiverr but don’t think that you will walk away only spending $5. If you want something custom, fast, high quality and unique, there will likely be many up-charges; however, it is a great place to find artists to make your vision reality. It will take weeding through a lot of cookie cutter type sellers, but there are some hidden gems. Check portfolios and feedback and do some research before you purchase a gig.
HypeForType: Online font marketplace with some of the top font designers with more than 35,000 fonts available for free and for purchase.
Bundle Graphic Design Websites
I love a good bundle site. Completely addicting for anyone that has a love for graphics and fonts. While offering great deals on oodles of goodies, most bundles offer extended licensing which is great for designers. One suggestion before you go to town purchasing bundles – make sure you have a way to organize all the files. You will be getting lots of files all at once and it helps to keep everything organized and maybe on a separate external hard drive or a free online hard drive like Dropbox. Some of the sites will even sync with your Dropbox account which makes it really easy.
Creative Market: While I mentioned Creative Market above, it also has to be noted that they have a bundle offering every month near the beginning of the month. For $39, you can purchase over $1,000 worth of digital products. Sign up for the Creative Market newsletter to get an e-mail when the monthly bundle is released.
HungryJPEG: HungryJPEG offers monthly and themed bundles on the regular that are 90% or more off and occasionally have $1 deals. Most all their products come with their complete license which includes both personal and commercial use. Their bundles are always from high quality designers.
Deal Jumbo: Great bundle site that features smaller sized bundles (with the occasional large one) and lots of under $5 offerings with 30 to 40 offerings at any given time with new bundles added 3 times a week. Be sure to sign up for their newsletter as they have coupon codes and freebies available all the time to their subscribers.
Design Bundles: A new find for me with a ton of FREE design resources – SVG’s, mockups, icons, templates, backgrounds, textures & royalty free images! Loving all their bundles that come with commercial licenses.
The Fancy Deal: Lots of graphics and fonts bundles. They also frequently have Mia Charro floral graphic sets available – I just love the floral sets. For anyone that loves making digital floral wreaths, you would love her design bundles.
My Design Deals: Another of my favs. They only offer bundles and have great bundle deals. Most of their offerings are 90+ percent off and all come with extended licensing.
Inky Deals: They offer bundles for everything from WordPress design resources to vector graphics to fonts and more. Prices start at $8 currently with a variety of coupon codes available regularly. Their offerings are extensive and have some great gems in the mix. Sign up for their newsletter and get 100 vector illustrations for free.
Mighty Deals: Oodles and oodles of free offerings plus an extensive catalog of deals. I have purchased software from here that erases backgrounds and discounted subscriptions from other subscription graphics sites to collections of watercolor graphics. They offer more than just graphics and fonts. Definitely worthy of checking them out.
Pixelo: Lots of freebies and a featured graphics and fonts bundle offering that includes graphics. Their current bundle is 99% (that’s right, 99%) off the price that designers sell their products for individually. Such a deal!
Craft Bundles: SVG & DXF cutting files great for use with die cutting machines like Cricut or Silhouette machines. Commercial licenses are included with every purchase.
Font Bundles: Bundle website dedicated to font bundles. They also have FREE fonts available almost all the time. There is a marketplace to purchase single items also if you prefer non-bundle purchases.
Design Cuts: I have purchased so many bundles through Design Cuts. I LOVE their bundles. Most bundles focus on fonts, vectors, textures, and layers and sell for around $30. Their bundles are normally themed for a particular niche or holiday. Design Cuts offer a ton of freebies and companion tutorials to teach you how to get the most out of the files. Plus they have a curated marketplace that designers sell their products at 20 to 50% off.
Stack Social: A ton of offerings available for designers, developers, or just anyone that wants to learn a new skill. It will take a long time to get through looking at all of them to find the hidden gems in the mix. They offer a lot of other things also like online courses, software, and discounted website subscriptions. They even have pay what you want bundles where you set the price and the higher the price, the more resources you unlock. Make sure to sign up for their newsletter to receive a discount code on your first order.
Bundle Hunt: While not really a graphics bundle website, I think it is worthy of checking out for Mac owners. On the regular, they offer make your own bundles that include your choice of everything from PDF converters to photo size optimizer software.
Font and Graphic Design Subscription Websites
There are a ton of subscription sites out there – A TON!! Some you pay a flat fee and get access to their entire library, some you pay a flat fee and get a certain number of downloads per month/day, and then there are some where you purchase credits and pay per picture according to file types and sizes. They all have their merits. Below are some of the ones I personally use, love and recommend.
Creative Fabrica: Starting out this section with something so addicting, you won’t be able to stop yourself! FONTS!!! Creative Fabrica gives you access to their entire library of fonts – right now over 1,600 fonts available. Script fonts, handwritten fonts, serif, sans serif, dingbats, and more – Oh My! For as little as $9 a month, you have access to download every font in their library. It’s a bit more monthly for the commercial license. They also some freebies to check out.
Creative Fabrica Crafts: In addition to fonts, they have a crafts section with over 1,000 SVG/PNG/DXF/EPS files to use with Circut, Silhouette, or other die cutting machines. There are a lot of cool cutting files in there. You get 3 months of access to all files for $12. Can’t be beat.
Graphic Stock: Such a great site for vectors and illustrations. In addition to those, they have photos, graphics, design elements, templates, and more. For $99/year you get unlimited downloads that are yours to keep forever with no additional fees. All images come with royalty-free license, meaning you never have to worry about hidden copyright fees. You’re free to use everything you download in commercial projects!
Stock Unlimited: 800,000+ vectors & photographs from categories such as business, shopping, backgrounds, vintage, infographics, and more. For $9 a month or $69 a year, you get complete access to their library with unlimited downloads. Files come with their standard license but extended licenses can be purchased.
Design Shock: They are one of the biggest bundle/subscription sites you can find in one place including icons, avatars, graphic elements, GUI packs, design sets and both web and print templates. All of them are ready and easy to use, for any purpose. Source files are vector based and they are fully organized and editable files. For a single payment of $39, you get access to all their design packs. They also have additional plans for $59 and $129 (or $14 a month). The $129 single payment full shock bundle gives you access to all their bundles, including the sister websites, plus lifetime updates.
Vector State: Similar site to Graphic Stock, but with some different images (some the same). They do specialize in vectors. For $49/year (early bird price), you get entire access to their site library – over a million vectors. They do limit you to 100 downloads per month with a lifetime royalty free license. To use in commercial projects, you do need to purchase their extended license. They have a 30 day money back guarantee if your not happy with their offerings.
Graphics Factory: Over 2 million royalty free images for $89.95/year (they do have monthly plans). This includes a commercial license, so you can use the images in items you sell. Files come in a variety of formats for download including EPS, AI, JPG, PNG, SVG, and more. You can even create a Graphics Factory storefront and make some money. When I am looking for some basic images that are less intricate, Graphics Factory is my go to place.
Shutterstock: A little more of a pricey option but if your looking for something super specific or more premium, Shutterstock might be what you’re looking for. I signed up a while back for a couple of months and downloaded a ton of photos and graphics that I expected would be useful within the next year. The plan I picked was the month to month 350 images for $199 a month (less than $0.60/file) with no download limits. You will find great images for social media, feminine styled mock-up pictures, vectors, logos, and more. They have just about every photo or graphic you could think about.
Adobe Stock: Sign up for 10 free stock images (first month free)! Another site like Shutterstock but a bit different. If you have Adobe CC, this service works great in conjunction with Creative Cloud. For $29.99/month, you get 10 assets per month or for $169.99/month, you get 350 assets on their annual plans.
DreamsTime: Part subscription site and part freebie site, DreamsTime offers both. Lots of beautiful royalty-free images for download but also a similarly priced subscription plan to the other premium plans. You can try them out by getting your first 5 photos for 5 cents!
Free Design Graphics Sites
Pixabay: Over 850,000 high quality stock photos, vectors, and art illustrations. All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.
Pexels: Similar to Pixabay, pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use. Pexels is mainly for photographs.
Public Domain Archive: New stock photos added every single week free for personal and commercial use.
Unsplash: They post 10 new high-resolution photos every 10 days. 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.
Adobe Edge Web Fonts: Edge Web Fonts gives you access to a vast web font library made possible by contributions from Adobe, Google, and designers around the world. Edge Web Fonts is powered by Typekit, a commercial font service from Adobe, so you can be sure of high performance and stability. Just choose the fonts you want to use on your website, copy a line of JavaScript into your site’s HTML to enable them, and you’re ready to start using the fonts in your site’s CSS. That’s all there is to it. No sign up, no subscription, no cost.
Some other free resources:
- Google Fonts
- Death to the Stock Photo
- PicJumbo
- Stockvault
- MorgueFile
- Gratisography
- Visual Hunt
- DaFont
- Font Squirrel
- RGB Stock
While there are a ton of other resources not mentioned, I hope the list above will help you find exactly what you’re looking for. I want to again reiterate that you inspect and understand the licensing terms for each resource you intend to use in your commercial projects.
If you have a resource not mentioned above you love that I missed, comment below! I would love to check them out and possibly add them to the list.
