Useful Websites For Designers

I've gathered together a list of the websites I find most useful when designing.

Design Cuts

You can access some of the best creative resources here at heavily discounted prices (often up to 99% off). They offer really useful bundles of vectors, fonts, backgrounds, textures etc which include a commercial licence (see their terms for details).

I’ve purchased half a dozen of their bundles over the years and use them all frequently in my work.

They also regularly give out lovely freebies (check out their delightful watercolour freebie here) and they have pages of easy to follow tutorials. I really can’t praise this site highly enough.

Spoon Graphics

Chris Spooner’s blog is a great resource for designers. He regularly posts some of the best tutorials I’ve seen for Photoshop and Illustrator as well as numerous freebies. You also get a big bundle of free resources if you sign up to the newsletter.  I love this video tutorial for creating a blueprint effect in Photoshop 

The site also offers a premium membership for $10 per month, which gives you access to thousands of additional resources including actions, brushes and vectors.

A commercial licence is usually included with all the resources but do check the terms to be certain of the specifics. As with Design Cuts, this is a site I go back to time and time again.

Pinterest

Pinterest has many uses but what I love most are the multitudes of tutorials they have all gathered in one place (for graphic design, crafts, DIY, cooking, cosplay, makeup effects - if you can think of it, you can probably find it on Pinterest). I also obsessively hoard collect colour palettes on there, so I can quickly find great colour schemes for any projects I’m working on. You can find this palette here.

Creative Bloq

A huge site filled with tips, inspiration and tutorials. I love their curated list of the best free fonts available for designers, saving you the effort of trawling through font download sites. You can find it here. 

Hongkiat

Lots of tutorials, freebies and design tips can be found here. Not everything you find on there will be available for commercial use, so check the terms carefully. There's a great list of Illustrator tutorials to try out which you can find here.

Free Design Resources

High quality design resources that are totally free for commercial use. Their freebies include fonts, mockups, graphics and templates.

I hope you find some of the websites as useful as I have!