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!

Copyright Free Images For Commercial Use

I used to really struggle to find good quality free images that allow use without restriction in commercial projects. To save you a similar struggle, I’ve gathered together a list of the best sites I’ve found.

As with all “free” image sites, it’s always best to double check the licence/terms of use for any images before putting them in projects you plan to sell/use publicly – just in case!

Unsplash

They have a collection of stunning high resolution photos, to do with as you please. There are some really lovely photos on here, including lots of nature shots and this rather handsome chap.

Pixabay

A huge amount of images which are free for any commercial use without restriction. The site includes photos, vectors and illustrations.

The Graphics Fairy

This is a great site for old photos and images of all kinds; often taken from public domain books and similar sources.

There are a couple of reasonable restrictions, such as only using a maximum of 6 images in any one project and not giving away the images for free. Although they do allow you to sell the images as long as you stick to the rule of 6. Check the site’s terms  of use for more information.

They also have a big list of tutorials and craft projects using images taken from the site.

MMT

All photos are totally free for commercial use. They are particularly good for beautiful nature and macro shots.

Magdeleine

They add one new high resolution photo each day. This site has an excellent search function where you can look for photos containing a specific dominant colour. There are separate search buttons for public domain and/or attribution required images.

Happy picture hunting!